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WASHINGTON - A quiet revolution has taken place amid the lawns and red brick buildings of America's oldest university, Harvard, where officials have chosen a woman to be their first-ever president.
A year after Lawrence Summers, a former head of the United States Treasury, stepped down, the 30-member board of overseers met to appoint Dr Drew Faust to the new position. Faust is dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at the university.
Harvard may be both the wealthiest and oldest of the US universities - its founding dates back to 1636 - but in terms of promoting women to senior positions it has long lagged behind many of its Ivy League rivals, three of which are led by women. As president of Harvard, Faust, 59, a historian of the American Civil War, will oversee 11 schools and colleges with 24,000 employees, a budget of US$3 billion and an endowment worth 10 times as much.
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