‘⁉t is the men,†Hector tells Andromache in the sixth book of the Iliad, who ust see to the fighting,”†explains the Stanley I. Sheerr Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, in the opening of a breezy 1990 tract entitled ⁁ltars of Sacrifice: Confederate Women and the Narratives of War. †
Today, 17 years later, it is the same author who must see to the fighting that has, of late, characterized the academic politics of our university. Drew Gilpin Faust, who has since migrated from her university chair in Philadelphia to keep house at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, will exemplifys Harvard first woman president⁴hose inversions of traditional gender roles that she is so fond of studying.
Along with her Radcliffe deanship, Faust boasts credentials as an expert in the intellectual history of the American South focusing on issues of gender. She is, so this page tells us, a cientifically-literate †administrator, a ⁴rouble-shooter, †an cademic jack-of-all-trades, †and ⁶ery solicitous of the views and opinions of others. †
Former University President Lawrence H. Summers critics, it seems, should be happily sated: Faust appears to be everything Summers was not. In the stead of a bold albeit tactless social scientist and a former cabinet secretary, Harvard has ensconced a career academic and mid-level administrator culled from the women studies henhouse. Where Summers elicited controversy, Faust brings consensus. Summers†chauvinistic disregard for the humanities will be replaced by the interdisciplinary tolerance of Faust, who nows people in just about every department on campus. †
But does the ow-profile †Faust, known for her ubtle skill †and ompassion, †have the requisite vision to steer this $30-billion ship, with its crew of cranky and coddled professors?
To fairly evaluate Faust qualifications, we should begin with her captaincy of Radcliffe, the basis by which most observers have adjudged her presidential fitness. The actual Institute lies in that nether-world between the Yard and the Quad, prompting me and similarly-ignorant classmates to ask: What, exactly, do these women do?
The offerings of Radcliffe fellows includes, ⁔he Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic, † ⁈omesickness for Things, †and ⁗eaving Christ Body: Clothing, Femininity, and Sexuality in the Marian Imagery of Byzantium —⁴his last one explores ⁴he extensive use of spinning, weaving, and clothing as metaphors of Christ incarnation in Byzantine art and literature. †At Radcliffe, intellectual and administrative rigor is, apparently, not a prominent characteristic.
Indeed, Radcliffe dwells in its own little world of peripheral curiosities, its spat of fellows united only by their obsessive imposition of oftentimes-anachronistic endered †perspectives on their subject fields. Unlike many of the professional schools over which Faust will soon preside, the Radcliffe Institute is not on the cutting edge of scholarship or research.
Yet Radcliffe obscurantism does not alone sufficiently call into question Faust capacity to bridge the academic breadth of Harvard University. Radcliffe, one might argue, could have been her benefice of choice, to gain much-needed administrative experience while biding her time for a prestigious university presidency to open.
Sadly, though, that does not seem to be the case. Faust own background in fact made her a perfect choice to lead the Radcliffe Institutend yet a patently imperfect one to govern a university.
Faust has carved out a niche for herself all-too-typical of the intellectual provincialism characteristic of many of this generation scholars, having fashioned a career scribbling about vacuous constructions of ender †and itual †during a time period in which they had little acknowledged meaning.
A small sampling of Faust bibliography will unavoidably elicit snickers from those outside the confines of the Academy: ⁔he Rhetoric and Ritual of Agriculture in Antebellum South Carolina, † ⁔he Civil War Soldier and the Art of Dying, †and the above-mentioned ⁁ltars of Sacrifice. †
Meanwhile, Larry Summers effectively administered the $11-billion budget of the Treasury Department.
In Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard has selected an academic indisputably well-qualified by the standards that govern today professional scholarship. But the Harvard President occupies a position more prominent than just that of a primer inter pares among the hundreds of professors.
With the 50-year Allston plan, the implementation of the new General Education program, and such endeavors as the Stem Cell Institute looming, what Harvard needed was a capable manager and an administratornd not just an accomplished scholar previously confined to the intellectual fantasyland of ⁷omen studies. †
Perhaps Faust will serve quite capably and admirably in the new administration at Massachusetts Hall. Perhaps her academic specialties will perfectly prepare her to write a new chapter in gender relations on the college campus. Yet we should not get ahead of ourselves.
The greatest hope we can entertain is that the new president does not effect any drastic changes at the University. Indeed, to ensure that she not interpret her mandate too widely, Dr. Faust would do well to heed the lesson of the similarly-named character in Marlowe tragedynd not ⁰ractice more than heavenly power permits. †
Christopher B. Lacaria ‰9 is a history concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.
