“We are so pleased that Drew Faust is joining the Getty Board of Trustees,” said Maria Hummer-Tuttle, board chair. “Her academic leadership is inspiring, and the board welcomes her wisdom and expertise.”
Faust recently concluded eleven successful years as president of Harvard University, where she continues as the Lincoln Professor of History in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
A distinguished historian of the Civil War and the American South, Faust was the founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. Previously, she served as the Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a member of the faculty for 25 years.
Faust is the author of six books, including Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 1996), for which she won the Francis Parkman Prize in 1997. Her most recent book, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), looks at the impact of the Civil War’s enormous death toll on the lives of 19th-century Americans. It won the Bancroft Prize in 2009, was a finalist for both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, and was named by The New York Times one of the “10 Best Books of 2008.” It is also 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 has served as a trustee of Bryn Mawr College, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the National Humanities Center, and she serves on the educational advisory board of the Guggenheim Foundation. She has also served as president of the Southern Historical Association, vice president of the American Historical Association, and executive board member of the Organization of American Historians and the Society of American Historians. She served on the Pulitzer Prize history jury in 1986, 1990, and 2004. Recently she joined the board of directors at Goldman Sachs, where she will serve on their governance, public responsibilities, and risk committees.
Her honors include awards in 1982 and 1996 for distinguished teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. She was elected to the Society of American Historians in 1993, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994, and the American Philosophical Society in 2004.
In June, it was announced that she will receive the 2018 John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity, an award administered by the Library of Congress that recognizes work in disciplines not covered by the Nobel Prizes.
“Drew brings extensive experience to the board,” said James Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. “Her contributions to the humanities are of the greatest distinction and I look forward to working with her to further the Getty’s mission in the service of the world’s cultural heritage.”
Faust will join the Getty Board of Trustees in September 2018.