Drew Gilpin Faust

Harvard’s former president Drew Faust on making “necessary trouble”

Drew Faust, Drew Gilpin Faust, David Solomon

Former Harvard University President Drew Faust details her transformation from a girl raised in segregated Virginia to a civil rights activist and historian in her new memoir, *Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Mid-Century*. The book chronicles her early resistance to gender norms, her pivotal travels to East Germany and the American South that solidified her commitment to racial equality, and her participation in major 1960s protests alongside figures like John Lewis. Faust concludes by contrasting her era's battles for personal freedom with modern higher education's challenges, which now require navigating deep ideological divides and global conflicts within diverse campus communities.