Drew Gilpin Faust ’64

Drew Gilpin Faust is president emerita of Harvard University and the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor. As president of Harvard from 2007 to 2018, Faust expanded financial aid to improve access to Harvard College for students of all economic backgrounds and advocated for increased federal funding for scientific research. She is also the author of six books, including most recently This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (2008), which chronicles the impact of the Civil War’s enormous death toll on the lives of 19-century Americans. It was awarded the 2009 Bancroft Prize and the New-York Historical Society’s 2009 American History Book Prize, and was recognized by The New York Times as one of the “Ten Best Books of 2008.” This Republic of Suffering is the basis for a 2012 Emmy-nominated episode of the PBS American Experience documentaries titled Death and the Civil War, directed by Ric Burns. Faust is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her newest book, Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury, a history/memoir of the 1950s and ’60s, will be published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in August 2023.