A search for a university president is truly an exciting task for an institution to undertake, but a trying one nonetheless. This is especially true when the former president left amid controversy.

It was for this reason that I assumed that Harvard would take a page out of Cornell’s playbook and make sure that when it selected its next president, it would choose someone with strong experience at the highest levels of a top university, preferably a sitting university president.

Whatever the reason for President Lehman’s departure two summers ago, there is no escaping the fact that some of the deficiencies in communication in Day Hall and issues with fundraising might not have occurred if he had prior experience as a president of a university as complex and unique as Cornell. As dean of University of Michigan Law School, he was a so-called “super dean” prior to coming here, but not a leader of a living, breathing organism that has as many moving parts as Cornell and other large research universities.

So, while we can’t completely chalk his departure up to his inexperience, you would think that our peer universities would probably take stock in what happened here on The Hill, and make sure that the next time they choose a president, that person is not only sentimentally qualified, but experientially qualified as well.

That’s why I was shocked when I found out that Harvard had selected Drew Gilpin Faust as its 28th president.

Now, just to be clear, it’s not that I don’t think that she will be successful in the position, it’s that I just don’t know.

I also think it’s great that Harvard chose a woman. And not because it needed to as a result of all the gender-related controversy in Cambridge last year. But because it’s about time that the presidential glass ceiling at Harvard was broken, because of what it symbolizes.

The fact is, I thought that Cornell was going to choose a woman last spring (I had my money on Molly Corbett Broad, former president of the University of North Carolina). But, in the end, I think most people would agree that the Board of Trustees really hit this one on the head in picking President Skorton, who pretty much personifies Cornell.

Anyway, college columnists and editorial boards around the country seem to fall into two camps on the issue of the Harvard presidency: (1) Faust is getting short-changed on her credentials because people assume she was picked solely because she is a woman or (2) Harvard picked Faust solely because she is a woman, and it is a problem that it did so.

The validity of these viewpoints is really of no consequence.

If she is getting short-changed on her credentials, so what? She’s the president of Harvard now and no one is taking that away from her. She has the opportunity to prove her critics wrong on the biggest stage.

If she was picked because she is a woman, so what? This is the world we live in. If a particular group, be it gender, race or otherwise, is going to break through a barrier, they have to get the opportunity to do so somehow, no? Someone has always got to be the “first.”

The real question is, why THIS woman?

I’ve got nothing against her personally, but I have no real reason to think that the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study has the experience to run a university as complex, controversial and important as Harvard, especially when the former dean of University of Michigan Law School could not succeed long term at Cornell.

At Radcliffe, Faust oversaw 87 employees and a budget of about $17 million. As president, she will oversee about 24,000 employees and a budget of about $3 billion.

It’s not that she won’t be successful, it’s that there’s hardly a guarantee that she will. And if President Lehman’s tenure at Cornell is any guide, there’s a fairly good possibility that she won’t.

Is this unfair? Possibly. Lehman’s and Faust’s personalities are likely completely different and so it is probably a bit of a stretch to compare the two.

That said, we can reasonably compare the actions of Cornell’s Board of Trustees in its selection of Lehman to the Harvard Corporation in its selection of Faust.

It seems that Cornell’s Board was enamored with having an alumnus as president and was likewise excited about the kind of fundraising opportunities that the selection could garner, especially in light of Lehman’s involvement in the college admissions cases pending in the Supreme Court at the time of his selection.

Likewise, it seems that the Harvard Corporation was at least somewhat enamored with the idea of choosing not only a woman, but a woman versed in gender issues to cure Harvard of the wounds inflicted during Lawrence Summers’ tenure (to be fair, it was highlighted in the media that Thomas Cech, Nobel laureate in chemistry, was being considered for the post before he removed himself from consideration).

The problem is not that Harvard chose a woman for the sake of choosing a woman, it’s that it seems that it did not heed the warning that Cornell’s past has bestowed upon its peer institutions: that “super deans” and lower level university officials do not make good first time presidents at major research universities, no matter the peripheral reasons that a particular person might seem right for the job.

It will certainly be interesting to see how this presidential selection works out.

Eric Finkelstein ‘06 is a former Sun managing editor and is currently a first-year student in the Law School. He can be contacted at ejf33@cornell.edu. Saturdays Excepted appears alternate Mondays.