Harvard University has chosen Drew Gilpin Faust as its first woman president in the 371-year history of that venerable institution. The choice is drawing rave reviews that could stand some scrutiny, just like the new president herself.

Since 2001, Drew Gilpin Faust has been serving as dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. This means she is no stranger to the hallowed halls of Harvard, because Radcliffe and Harvard merged in 1999. Before that Dr. Faust taught at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her Ph.D. and directed the women's studies program. A Bryn Mawr graduate, Faust has authored five books and is known as a specialist on the American south. What she is not known for is administrative experience.

That is why her choice came as surprise to some educators. College presidents, after all, are expected to manage. Harvard’s presidency demands much in that regard, including the administration of an endowment of nearly $30 billion. Interestingly enough, some observers thought Faust's lack of experience was a good thing. 

"They didn't want anybody with administrative experience," Joel Trachtenberg of George Washington University explained to reporters. They wanted, among other things, a "political symbol," he said. That is a rather strange way to run a university, but one that drew cheers from the feminist and quota-queen bleachers. Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) gave the game away when she told the Washington Post, "Larry Summers, we couldn't have done it without you." That is both true and revealing.

Mr. Summers, an economist and former treasury secretary, is the former Harvard president whose predicament the Contrarian has addressed twice, "Engendered Strife At Harvard," February 7, 2005, and "Theme from a Summers Place," May 3, 2005. At a conference, Mr. Summers referred to three theories why there might be a shortage of women in the upper echelons of science and math. He said they might face discrimination, that demanding 80-hour commitments might not be so appealing, and that certain "innate differences," between men and women might have something to do with it.

This uncontroversial remark set off militant feminists who believe that women and men are "undifferentiated," and that fewer women than men in any field means that women are "underrepresented" and victims of discrimination, to be remedied, of course, by government action and quotas. Summers apologized to angry feminists and endured a no-confidence motion from Harvard's faculty of Arts and Sciences. The professors also voted to criticize his style of management, all for a single remark intended to promote discussion, not quash it.

President Summers also appointed not one but two task forces designed to increase the role of women in science and on the faculty. He even asked none other than Drew Gilpin Faust to lead these efforts. Faust responded with a strategy and now she runs the whole show. What a cozy world. Indeed, her ascension to the presidency shapes up as a kind of coup d'etat, or at least an inside job.

Consider what is going on here. The most prestigious university in the United States did not select the best administrator for the job, based on experience and merit, and without regard to gender. They made a gender-driven, politically correct, symbolic choice, to remedy a complaint of the campus grievance elite. That hardly sets a good example for higher education, but it is not surprising given the treatment accorded Mr. Summers. He found out the hard way that the "diversity" touted by academics does not include statements at odds with the prevailing ethos on campus.

Universities are supposed to promote free and open inquiry but Harvard now shapes up as a place where nothing less than worshipful of feminist ideology can be tolerated. It is not likely that such conditions will improve under the regime of Drew Gilpin Faust, herself an orthodox feminist and hardliner. Observers got a hint when a Harvard administrator said that Faust had been "a very powerful presence behind the scenes," but declined to identify himself to the reporter. I don't blame him. As Larry Summers' experience confirms, Harvard remains a place where one has to be very careful what one says.

With the selection of professor Faust, women are now at the helm of Harvard, Brown, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania, half of the elite Ivy League colleges.  They could run all of them, or even the whole country, but professional feminists would continue to portray all women as oppressed and in dire need of help from Big Brother. That dialectic looks even more absurd with the selection of Drew Gilpin Faust at Harvard but shows no sign of fading away.

Sally Pipes is President and CEO at the California-based Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. She can be reached via email at spipes@pacificresearch.org.