Introduction to Drew Faust
Writer:Wenhan Zhu
#建议：蓝色部分不用讲，放到PPT上
Good morning,ladies and gentlemen:
Today,I’m going to introduce a president of Harvard University,Drew Faust.
Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust (born September 18, 1947)is an American historian who served as the 28th president of Harvard University, the first woman in that role.She was Harvard’s first president since 1672 without an undergraduate or graduate degree from Harvard and the first to have been raised in the South.She has been ranked among the world’s most powerful women by Forbes, including as the 33rd most powerful in 2014.
1. President of Harvard University and author of 6 books
On February 8, 2007, Faust was selected as the next president of the university.During a press conference on campus, Faust said, “I hope that my own appointment can be one symbol of an opening of opportunities that would have been inconceivable even a generation ago.” She also added, “I’m not the woman president of Harvard, I’m the president of Harvard.”
Faust took lots of actions to improve Harvard.
First ,she significantly increased financial aid to students at Harvard College.This greatly relieve the pressure on students with poor family conditions and was followed by Stanford, Yale, and many other private U.S. universities and colleges.
In addition to promoting access to higher education, Faust has testified before the U.S. Congress to promote increased funding for scientific research and support of junior faculty researchers.
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Knopf, 2008)
This Republic of Suffering made the New York Times Book Review list of “10 Best Books of 2008” as chosen by the paper’s editors.The book was also a finalist for the National Book Awards (2008) and the Pulitzer Prize. (2009)This Republic of Suffering received the 2009
Bancroft Prize from Columbia University
Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 1996)
Southern Stories: Slaveholders in Peace and War (University of Missouri Press, 1992)
The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South (Louisiana State University Press, 1982)
James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (Louisiana State University Press, 1982)
A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South, 1840-1860 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977)
Faust also had six books published.Her primary passion was digging through archives for her research. The several books on Civil War-related topics, delving into the lives of Confederate intellectuals and women. Herbook examines how the incredible death change the Civil War changed American culture.
2. Lasting spirits of independence from her childhood till now
As a child, Faust grew troubled by racism. Her school and church were all white. At home, the black servants used the back entrance and a separate bathroom. When Faust, at age 9, wrote a letter to President Eisenhower opposing racism.
“She’d see the bigger picture,” said a former grade-school classmate. “All the rest of us just went to school. I didn’t really think, or care, that there weren’t black people.”
Faust also clashed with her mother about the role of women for years. At last ,her mother was proud of her daughter’s accomplishments, and had her own independent streak. “I think the expectation of me was that I’d grow up, get married, have a family, probably not even have a job outside the home,” Faust said in an interview in her Radcliffe office.
At Concord Academy, then all girls, she found like-minded girls and a role model,headmistress Elizabeth B. Hall , wife of a Harvard professor.“Mrs. Hall’s point of view was much more that it’s not a man’s world. It’s our world,” said Mendenhall , Faust’s former English teacher.
In September 1967, Drew Gilpin Faust led a delegation of Bryn Mawr College students to ask trustees to abolish their 2 a.m. curfew. At the women’s college near Philadelphia, students had to sign a log when they went out at night, saying where they were going and with whom. When they returned to campus in darkness, “lantern men” guided them to their dormitories.They felt that their world was opening up and the college had no right to rein them in. Faust, who was student government president, and other student leaders met with a handful of trustees in a small conference room . Faust would win the trustees over with a quiet, confident, persuasive style that many say led Harvard University to tap her two weeks ago as its next president.
As we can see,all her experience results in her great achievements later.
3. Conclusion
“She was always looking ahead and reaching as high as she could. She was an amazingly
strong kid,” said Mendenhall . “She was smart enough to see opportunities and brave enough to
seize those opportunities in a quiet sort of way.”
Drew Faust is such a legendary figure,a tireless historian and a university president who dares to reform.Now,let’s enjoy her speech to the class of 2016!
PLEASE CORRECT THE MINOR MISTAKES OF THIS SPEECH