Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Emily Chang and this is Bloomberg Studio.
Speaker 1: One point out, I am especially excited about this next
Speaker 1: episode because it took me back to my alma mater
Speaker 1: and a woman who made history when she was named
Speaker 1: the first woman president of Harvard University. Drew Faust took
Speaker 1: the top job in two thousand seven, and she was
Speaker 1: kind of an unlikely candidate, a Civil War historian and
Speaker 1: a multi time author who didn't have a Harvard degree.
Speaker 1: But she went on to lead the university for a decade,
Speaker 1: tackling thorny issues like immigration and same sex social clubs,
Speaker 1: and raising record breaking amounts of capital, all while fighting
Speaker 1: to prove and Ivy League education is still worth the
Speaker 1: rapidly rising cost. Now, Faust has passed the torch to
Speaker 1: her successor, but before she did, she opened up about
Speaker 1: her tenure running Harvard and her next chapter. This is
Speaker 1: my conversation with Drew Faust, outgoing president of Harvard University.
Speaker 1: You've been president for ten years and this is your
Speaker 1: last year. How do you feel? Is it bittersweet? I
Speaker 1: feel really good about it. I think that jobs like
Speaker 1: a presidency have a certain rhythm, and you move through
Speaker 1: an agenda, and you accomplish things, and you work together
Speaker 1: with people, and then it's good to have fresh eyes
Speaker 1: and somebody with another agenda caring, you hope, caring your
Speaker 1: agenda forward, but nevertheless bringing new skills and new approaches
Speaker 1: and new energies to it. So I feel terrific about
Speaker 1: what we have been able to accomplish. You were the
Speaker 1: first woman president of Harvard, and when you took over,
Speaker 1: you made a point to say, I am President of Harvard.
Speaker 1: I'm not Harvard's woman president. Why was it important for
Speaker 1: you to say that. I felt that people were going
Speaker 1: to label me as special or in a different category,
Speaker 1: or perhaps imply that I was there only because I
Speaker 1: was a woman, and I didn't want that. I wanted
Speaker 1: to make clear from the start that I was as
Speaker 1: real and and complete and full a president of Harvard
Speaker 1: as any of my twenty seven predecessors. But I had
Speaker 1: a very interesting experience in the aftermath of of that announcement,
Speaker 1: which is I got letters and messages from little girls
Speaker 1: all over the world saying how much it meant to
Speaker 1: them that there was a woman president of Harvard. So
Speaker 1: I wanted ultimately to be both the woman president of Harvard,
Speaker 1: who could be perhaps an inspiration or a model for
Speaker 1: women all over the world. But I wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure that people understood I was as much of a
Speaker 1: president of Harvard as anyone else. I wasn't a president
Speaker 1: with an asterisk or or some special status. I'd love
Speaker 1: for all the little girls who are watching to learn
Speaker 1: how you got there. You were born in New York City,
Speaker 1: you were raised in Virginia, You had three brothers. What
Speaker 1: was that like? Well, I grew up on a farm,
Speaker 1: and I was always a tomboy. I enjoyed raising it
Speaker 1: worked in the barn raising animals, and I played war
Speaker 1: with my brothers. But I always was aware that there
Speaker 1: were privileges they had that I didn't, and that things
Speaker 1: were expected of me in terms of wearing little lacey
Speaker 1: dresses at appropriate times and um exhibiting a demeanor that
Speaker 1: didn't always seem to me consistent with being as noisy
Speaker 1: and boisterous as my brothers were allowed to be. So
Speaker 1: I think I had a very astute sense from early
Speaker 1: on that girls were given certain roles in that society
Speaker 1: in Virginia in the nineteen fifties, and that I was
Speaker 1: not entirely comfortable with being relegated to such a role.
Speaker 1: What did you believe about what women could and could
Speaker 1: not achieve? I did not have very many models of
Speaker 1: women who were even in the workforce or had careers.
Speaker 1: My mother didn't even finish high school. My grandmother was
Speaker 1: a force in her own right, but she wasn't someone
Speaker 1: who worked outside the home, and so I didn't have
Speaker 1: very many indications of what was possible for women. And
Speaker 1: the expectation of me when I was growing up was
Speaker 1: essentially that I would find some man to marry and
Speaker 1: become a housewife and raise a family. So how did
Speaker 1: you break out of that? I always was good in school,
Speaker 1: and I loved school, and so as I pursued my
Speaker 1: educational ambitions, that took me to college and into a
Speaker 1: world where different expectations prevailed and I could see. I
Speaker 1: went to all women's college, I went to Brindmore College
Speaker 1: and was taught by powerful, um intellectual, scholastic, academic women.
Speaker 1: So I began to see possibilities in their lives that
Speaker 1: I was then able to imagine from my own. You
Speaker 1: had some other firsts. You were the first Harvard president
Speaker 1: without a Harvard degree. You went to brin mar you
Speaker 1: majors in history, and then you went onto the University
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania and became a history professor. I was much
Speaker 1: a student activist in college, and very involved in politics,
Speaker 1: civil rights issues, Vietnam War protests, and cared a lot
Speaker 1: about changing the world and having an impact on the world.
Speaker 1: And when I graduated from college, I worked for two
Speaker 1: years for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and
Speaker 1: so I hoped, in the very idealistic way, to move
Speaker 1: into maybe urban planning or some area that would enable
Speaker 1: me to carry on my concerns about public service and
Speaker 1: changing the world. But I so missed intellectual life and
Speaker 1: ideas and the kind of debate that is at the
Speaker 1: heart of a university. So I applied to graduate school
Speaker 1: at Penn and went back and got a PhD at Penn,
Speaker 1: and then that led me ultimately to a faculty position
Speaker 1: at Pen that I held for five years. You wrote
Speaker 1: six books. Tell me about that. I became a historian
Speaker 1: of the American South and began to explore questions that
Speaker 1: were not all that distant from some of the questions
Speaker 1: I'd asked as a young child growing up in a
Speaker 1: segregated society. My first book, which came out of my
Speaker 1: pH d dissertation was about people who defended slavery, because
Speaker 1: I found that so unthinkable and couldn't imagine how people
Speaker 1: came to convince themselves that this was a position that
Speaker 1: was um justified or acceptable. And I think I was
Speaker 1: projecting some of my questions about people who had embraced
Speaker 1: segregation in my own home community when I was growing
Speaker 1: up in Virginia in the nineteen fifties. So what makes
Speaker 1: people defend the indefensible and then what makes change? You
Speaker 1: must have some strong opinions about how President Trump has
Speaker 1: spoken about some of the Civil War heroes are are
Speaker 1: are not heroes, and the monuments are in a very
Speaker 1: interesting moment with Civil War memory and some of the
Speaker 1: challenges that have been made to monuments and um accounting
Speaker 1: for the pay. I think it's a very healthy moment
Speaker 1: because to understand what our history has been and to
Speaker 1: understand that the Civil War was one in which a
Speaker 1: whole section of the country was defending fighting in favor
Speaker 1: of the system of slavery. I think we've hidden from
Speaker 1: that a lot as a as a nation, and to
Speaker 1: bring out those divisions and understand them fully and understand
Speaker 1: the context in which race relations today um operate is
Speaker 1: a very important dimension of moving forward as a nation.
Speaker 1: So you think those monuments and statutes should come down.
Speaker 1: I think it varies. I think that many of them should.
Speaker 1: I think there are other others that perhaps we could
Speaker 1: simply elucidate or explain. So how does one get from
Speaker 1: Civil War historian to first woman president of Harvard. It's
Speaker 1: about being part of a university over a long period
Speaker 1: of time, and living a life in a university where
Speaker 1: I came to realize the wonder of education and opening
Speaker 1: minds and contributing to the growth and flourishing of individual talent,
Speaker 1: and thinking about universities as places where people pursue truth
Speaker 1: and challenge accepted wisdom, and devote themselves to learning and scholarship.
Speaker 1: So I had come to believe that universities are among
Speaker 1: the most important institutions in our society. And I began
Speaker 1: to be invited to take on leadership rules and moved
Speaker 1: from Penn to Harvard in two thousand one to be
Speaker 1: the head of the Ratcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, which
Speaker 1: had just been made a part of Harvard University, and
Speaker 1: then from there I went on to become president. Does
Speaker 1: the being the first woman president part of it, the
Speaker 1: woman part of the equation. Does it come with an
Speaker 1: extra pressure or sense of responsibility? A lot of eyes
Speaker 1: were on me, and would I be able to do it?
Speaker 1: And what would that say about women generally? Not just
Speaker 1: about could Drew Faust do this job? But could a
Speaker 1: woman do this job? And I would just have young
Speaker 1: women be mean at me, people I didn't know. They
Speaker 1: just would give me the biggest smiles, as if to say,
Speaker 1: you go, girl, it's for us too. And so throughout
Speaker 1: I felt that I could perhaps be the kind of
Speaker 1: role model that I didn't initially have when I was
Speaker 1: a child, but found in professors when I got to
Speaker 1: college and saw women doing extraordinary things. Amen to that.
Speaker 1: You go, girl, what do you see as your biggest success?
Speaker 1: I hope that I have made the university a more
Speaker 1: open place, have expanded access for people from all kinds
Speaker 1: of backgrounds, points of view, economic circumstances, and made Harvard
Speaker 1: more affordable and more open, but also made it a
Speaker 1: place that has felt more are welcoming and inclusive once
Speaker 1: they got there, a place where women would not just
Speaker 1: feel that they were there on sufferance, or students from
Speaker 1: less advantage backgrounds would feel they were just there on
Speaker 1: the origins, but this was their Harvard to and that
Speaker 1: they owned Harvard as much as any of the more
Speaker 1: traditional um kinds of students who who might be there.
Speaker 1: You're listening to my conversation with Drew faust outgoing president
Speaker 1: of Harvard University. Coming up, We discussed the cost of
Speaker 1: higher education? Is it still worth it? I'm Emilli Chang.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Studio. At one point out the most
Speaker 1: oft use measure of success for a school president is
Speaker 1: the money that they've raised and you met or succeeded goals.
Speaker 1: The endowment is now thirty eight billion dollars. Do you
Speaker 1: think this is the best measure of success for your field? No,
Speaker 1: I don't at all. It is important, obviously to have
Speaker 1: the resources to accomplish what you want to accomplish, But
Speaker 1: it depends, of course, what are you going to use
Speaker 1: those resources for. Money is an enabler, it isn't an
Speaker 1: end in itself. The way our endowment works is the
Speaker 1: income that it generates through investment um funds about thirty
Speaker 1: five to thirty six percent of our operating budget, so
Speaker 1: that those billions of dollars are working capital that are
Speaker 1: producing income every year that we then apply to the
Speaker 1: wide range of activities that we undertake, research, teaching, financial aid,
Speaker 1: maintaining our buildings. University endowments are a big chunk of
Speaker 1: the money that funds venture capital firms, that funds the
Speaker 1: future companies of Silicon Valley, and historically LPs and and
Speaker 1: and endowments have been very quiet about their strategy and
Speaker 1: what they care about. There's a big sort of movement
Speaker 1: within the tech community UM to push out peace, to
Speaker 1: care more about funding diversity and funding UM. You know,
Speaker 1: not all male venture capital firms for example. I mean,
Speaker 1: is it all about just making money or is it
Speaker 1: about who you're giving that money too. We've had a
Speaker 1: position that has been articulated pretty um forcefully in response
Speaker 1: to request that we divest from fossil fuels. We've had
Speaker 1: a policy that is our endowment is about funding the
Speaker 1: core mission of the university, which is teaching and research.
Speaker 1: It's not a fund that is meant to be a
Speaker 1: social intervention fund. And so we have not divested in
Speaker 1: response to the pressures put upon us, and we've not
Speaker 1: used our endowment as a political weapon or tool. In part,
Speaker 1: the logic of that is that what what are the
Speaker 1: issues and how many of them? And what are the priorities?
Speaker 1: Would it be fossil fuels, would it be diversity, would
Speaker 1: it be other kinds of very admirable concerns that might
Speaker 1: distract from what our core businesses, which is funding teaching
Speaker 1: and research. How do we bring down the cost of
Speaker 1: higher education? That is something we need to get under
Speaker 1: under control and address more fully. Technology is going to
Speaker 1: help with that. What can we do online UM to
Speaker 1: supplement or replace certain parts of instruction so that we
Speaker 1: can leave to people the parts that we absolutely need
Speaker 1: need people for and streamline some of the other parts.
Speaker 1: I think we'll see some of that coming forward. But
Speaker 1: constraining costs is going to be a real challenge for
Speaker 1: all of higher education. There are a lot of companies
Speaker 1: trying to disrupt higher education, and some say that a
Speaker 1: Harvard degree won't matter by the time my children go
Speaker 1: to college. How do you respond to that. We have
Speaker 1: to make sure we attract the best talent, and that's
Speaker 1: why UM affordability is so important. The experience of being
Speaker 1: in that community, living in that community with other students
Speaker 1: from whom you learn, probably as much as you learn
Speaker 1: in any class you take. That is the core of
Speaker 1: what a Harvard education really is, so that it at
Speaker 1: its best, the residential dimensions of Harvard education are essential
Speaker 1: to the full experience of what it can be, and
Speaker 1: that is not going to be disrupted by a simply
Speaker 1: online experience. Not bumping into somebody in a corridor and
Speaker 1: finding that they challenge you in ways that you never expected,
Speaker 1: or that the ways they're different from you expand your
Speaker 1: understanding of the world. That is such an important part
Speaker 1: of what happens both in and outside are classrooms. There's
Speaker 1: a sense here from you know, the heart of Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley that Stanford has surpassed Harvard, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to technology and you know, becoming a feeder for you know,
Speaker 1: the biggest and most powerful companies in the world. Is
Speaker 1: that a fair assessment of course not? Of course not.
Speaker 1: We um are different institutions, and I think that's a
Speaker 1: great strength of American higher education is that there are
Speaker 1: different emphasies and different opportunities that institutions like Stanford and
Speaker 1: Harvard can offer. I don't want to sit and you know,
Speaker 1: have a Stanford Harvard competition here in front of you
Speaker 1: and say, oh, we're so good at this. We have
Speaker 1: a growing presence and technology, and in fields of engineering
Speaker 1: are students concentrating and engineering have tripled in the last
Speaker 1: ten years. So that's an area and I think we're
Speaker 1: paying more attention. But we then we did a decade
Speaker 1: or two decades ago. But we also have such deep
Speaker 1: seated strengths in life sciences, in the humanities and the arts,
Speaker 1: and such a commitment in social sciences and the endeavors
Speaker 1: that are not simply involved in technology. And we compete
Speaker 1: very successfully with Stanford for students and for faculty, and
Speaker 1: so we're very pleased to be Harvard, and we expect
Speaker 1: to remain Harvard. That was Drew Faust outgoing president of
Speaker 1: Harvard University. Up next, we talk about the controversial same
Speaker 1: sex finals clubs, a topic that students were always talking
Speaker 1: about when I was there, and Faust opens up about
Speaker 1: her successor Larry back out. I'm Emily Chang, and you're
Speaker 1: listening to Bloomberg Studio one point out, what is Harvard
Speaker 1: doing differently to train the worker for tomorrow? Differently from
Speaker 1: do you think Harvard needs to do anything differently to
Speaker 1: arm workers with the skills necessary to succeed in a
Speaker 1: modern economy. Well, there's been some changes in how we
Speaker 1: approach education over the past decade that respond in part
Speaker 1: to what you're saying, which is, we find our curriculum
Speaker 1: much more oriented and our students much more eager for
Speaker 1: hands on experience in a variety of ways. There tends
Speaker 1: to be many more internships or um public service opportunities
Speaker 1: tied into curricular um offerings. Doing and thinking are intertwined
Speaker 1: much more closely. One of the things I've been following
Speaker 1: as an alum is Harvard's crackdown on single sex clubs.
Speaker 1: And Harvard has had a long tradition of all male
Speaker 1: finals clubs as they're called, and more recently all female
Speaker 1: clubs have sprung up. I'm curious how your position on
Speaker 1: this evolved over the course of your tenure at Harvard,
Speaker 1: and how that due to the decision that they needed
Speaker 1: to change in a big way. The issues surrounding final
Speaker 1: clubs came into my consciousness almost as soon as I
Speaker 1: arrived at Harvard as dean of the Racliffe Institute in
Speaker 1: two thousand one, with a lot of debate and discussion
Speaker 1: about the exclusion of women from these clubs and the
Speaker 1: centrality of the clubs in undergraduate student life. By the
Speaker 1: time I came president, therefore, I'd been hearing about these
Speaker 1: issues for many years, and hearing them about them also
Speaker 1: increasingly after I became president, from the Dean of the College,
Speaker 1: from people who were head of the undergraduate houses, and
Speaker 1: worrying about unsupervised drinking in these independent organizations, the experience
Speaker 1: of women sexual assault in these organizations, and they were
Speaker 1: just a constant drumbeat of issues of inequality and exclusion
Speaker 1: and student safety related to those clubs. And so in
Speaker 1: sixteen we issued a policy that became a matter of
Speaker 1: great debate and dispute, but we thought was necessary to
Speaker 1: welcome women into full citizenship at Harvard and say that
Speaker 1: these much valued and sought after spaces from which they
Speaker 1: were excluded should no longer dominate student life and have
Speaker 1: a kind of second class status delivered to women at
Speaker 1: our nard. So what is the policy as it stands now.
Speaker 1: The policy is that if you choose to join one
Speaker 1: of these single sex social organizations, there's certain privileges to
Speaker 1: which you will not have access, and those are leadership
Speaker 1: positions in the recognized student organizations that are funded in
Speaker 1: part by Harvard College. And that you will not be
Speaker 1: given um dean's recommendations for certain fellowships and other honors.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of protests and people who say
Speaker 1: that this unfairly targets women who historically haven't had the
Speaker 1: same access to the privileges and resources that men have had,
Speaker 1: and that men who have been part of finals clubs
Speaker 1: at Harvard have have had. What is your response to
Speaker 1: women who feel this disenfranchises them. Well, the protest coming
Speaker 1: from women is about the single gender women's organizations that
Speaker 1: grew up to compensate for women's exclusion from the male organizations.
Speaker 1: But there remained enormous differentiations in the power of those organizations,
Speaker 1: in the resources support those organizations, and in the centrality
Speaker 1: to student life of those organizations. They still were a
Speaker 1: kind of second class status within student life. We have
Speaker 1: been concerned about the issues that made women feel they
Speaker 1: needed separate spaces for themselves, and so a number of
Speaker 1: these organizations have now said they will continue and they
Speaker 1: will allow men to join, but they will also have
Speaker 1: their own activities within the organization, And we want to
Speaker 1: support the needs of women on campus. But we don't
Speaker 1: think that these separate organizations are the way to accomplish
Speaker 1: what needs to be done. Should an all female organization
Speaker 1: be given the same status as an all male organization
Speaker 1: or African American organization? For example? Recognize student groups at
Speaker 1: Harvard have to admit any student. They cannot discriminate on
Speaker 1: the basis of race or gender or any other identity
Speaker 1: based status. They can discriminate on the basis of whether
Speaker 1: you can sing well enough to get into them, or
Speaker 1: whether you can play football well enough to get into them.
Speaker 1: That kind of differentiation is acceptable. So we have, you know,
Speaker 1: a variety of organizations that students join, like the football
Speaker 1: team or the glee club where you have to try out,
Speaker 1: but it can't be derived from an accident of birth.
Speaker 1: So what do you think of your successor Larry back O?
Speaker 1: What do you hope that he will accomplish? I am
Speaker 1: delighted by his appointment. I first got to know Larry
Speaker 1: Um when I was just becoming president and he was
Speaker 1: president of Tufts, and he invited me to dinner at
Speaker 1: the president's house at Tufts the very first day I
Speaker 1: was president, July one, two thousand seven, and he cooked dinner,
Speaker 1: and he talked about being president and offered to help
Speaker 1: and we became good friends and spend a good bit
Speaker 1: of time together. I'd come to him with problems, and
Speaker 1: when the financial crisis happened, we consulted one another and
Speaker 1: he joined the Harvard Corporation, which is the governing body,
Speaker 1: and so I've been the beneficiary of his wisdom on
Speaker 1: that group ever since. I am delighted that his experience
Speaker 1: and wisdom will be carrying forward Harvard's next chapter. What
Speaker 1: do you think will be the biggest challenges for your
Speaker 1: successor and for Harvard in the political atmosphere that we're
Speaker 1: in today. Cost of higher education and how to make
Speaker 1: it accessible and affordable. That's something that UM any president
Speaker 1: is going to have to Harvard or elsewhere is going
Speaker 1: to have to attend to. Another element is that there's
Speaker 1: such suspicion and hostility emerging to higher education, a sense
Speaker 1: that higher education is not serving a broad public, but
Speaker 1: a place like Harvard is much too elite and in
Speaker 1: its impact. How do we reach out beyond our own
Speaker 1: walls and both do more and explain how much we
Speaker 1: are already doing to improve the lives of people across
Speaker 1: the country and around the world. So that's an important
Speaker 1: agenda item for a new president as well. What's next
Speaker 1: for you? I want to see if I can learn
Speaker 1: to be a historian again. Really yes? So does that
Speaker 1: mean writing another book? I hope, so, I hope. So.
Speaker 1: I've got some ideas of different projects that I might pursue.
Speaker 1: And so I have a sabbatical next year and I'll
Speaker 1: begin to investigate some of the US Let's see what
Speaker 1: might work. What's your advice to future women leaders or
Speaker 1: women who want to be leaders? What a great question. Um,
Speaker 1: just believe in yourself. Don't let anyone cause you to
Speaker 1: doubt yourself. All right, true? Fast outgoing president of Harvard University.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you,
Speaker 1: and Berg Studio and Point Oh. It's really an honor.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Studio at One Point Oh is produced and edited
Speaker 1: by Kevin Hines. Our executive producer is Candy Chen. Our
Speaker 1: managing editor is Daniel Culbertson. I'm Emily Chang, your host
Speaker 1: and executive producer. This is Bloomberg m