Caribbean Win, first black woman to head Harvard University of Haitian descent 

By Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer 

December 16, 2022 – The first head of Harvard of African descent and only the second black woman to head any ivy league university will take up her position in July 2023, according to the University.  The first and only other time this happened was two decades ago.

Harvard announced on Thursday, December 15 that Dr. Claudine Gay, a Social Scientist, would be their newest president succeeding Larry Bacow.

Gay, the daughter of Haitian immigrants follows in the footsteps of Dr. Ruth Simmons who headed Brown University in 2001; Simmons was the daughter of US sharecroppers.

Describing her as ‘widely admired higher education leader and distinguished scholar of democracy and political participation’ Harvard lauded Gay in the announcement who is an alum herself.

She spoke fondly about her parents who moved to the US as youngsters.  Her mother is a registered nurse while her father had a degree in engineering.  She said her parents had hoped she would gravitate to the STEM field, like they did.

“I was supposed to be a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer, a lot of my decisions as an undergrad was sharply structured around those kinds of expectations.” But it was not to be.   Gay entered the field of political science and did not look back. She told Harvard in a video interview, “One of the ways that being the daughter of Haitian immigrants has influenced the approach I take to teaching is that I often work with children who are either first generation or also from immigrant families.”

She said her unique position allowed her to bring the sort of sensitivity that students like this needed to help balance the wishes of family and their own hopes and dreams.

Gay was distinguished in both her undergraduate and PhD classes as the student with the best thesis.   After, it was Harvard which chased her, recruiting her for a position as a Professor and she moved up in the ranks over time.

She has previously served as the Edgerley Family Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Gay said she was humbled by the confidence that the governing boards had placed in her. She is described as someone with “bedrock integrity” and “a keen mind, great leadership and communication skills, excellent judgment, and a basic decency and kindness” by outgoing President Larry Bacow.

She currently serves on the boards of the Pew Research Center, Phillips Exeter Academy, and the American Academy of Political and Social Science.