♪ emily: in february 2007, drew faust made history when she was appointed president of one of the most prestigious and storied institutions in the world come of becoming the first woman president of harvard university. a civil war historian and author, faust let the university for a decade, tackling immigration and same-sex social clubs and raising record amounts of capital, well fighting to prove an ivy league education is worth the rapidly rising costs. as she passes the torch to her

successor, faust opened up about her most recent and next chapter. joining me today on "bloomberg studio 1.0," outgoing president drew faust. for 10e been president years and this is your last year. how do you feel? bittersweet? it.: i feel good about i think jobs like a presidency have a certain rhythm. you move through an agenda and accomplish things and work together with people. it is good to have fresh eyes and people with another agenda carrying your agenda forward, but nevertheless bringing new approaches and energies to it, so i feel terrific about what we have been able to accomplish. emily: you were the first woman president of harvard. why was it important for you to say what you said? labeli felt people would me as special or in a different category, or imply i was there

only because i was a woman. i did not want that. i wanted to make clear from the start that i was as real and complete and full a president of harvard has any of my 27 i had anors, but interesting experience in the aftermath of that announcement, which is i got letters and messages from little girls all over the world saying how much it meant to them that there was sooman president of harvard, i wanted ultimately to be both the woman president of harvard who could be perhaps an inspiration or model for women all over the world, but i wanted to make sure people understood i was as much of a president of harvard as anyone else. i was in a president with an asterisk. emily: i would love for all the little girls watching to learn how you got there. you were born in new york, raised in virginia, had three

brothers. what was that like? farm andrew up on a was always a tomboy. i worked in the barn raising animals and played war with my brothers, but there were privileges they had that i didn't, and things were expected of me in terms of wearing little lacy dresses at appropriate times and exhibiting a demeanor that did not always seemed to me consistent with being as noisy and boisterous as my brothers were allowed to be, so i had an astute sense early on that girls were given certain roles and that society in virginia in the 1950's, and that i was not entirely comfortable eating relegated to such a role. emily: would you believe about what women could and could not achieve? drew: i did not have many models of women in the workforce or who had careers. my mother didn't finish high

school. my grandmother was a force in her own right. i did not have many indications of what was possible for women. the expectation when i was growing up was essentially i would find some man to marry and become a housewife and raise a family. emily: how did you break out of that? and: i was good in school loved school, so as i pursued my educational ambitions, that took me into college underworld where different expectations prevailed. i went to an all women's college and was taught by powerful ,ntellectuals, academic women so i began to see possibilities in their lives that i was able to imagine for my own. emily: you were the first harvard president without a harvard degree. -- and ino bryn mawr

went on to the university of pennsylvania and became he history professor -- a history professor. student activist and college come involved in politics, civil rights issues, vietnam war protests, and cared a lot about changing the world and having an impact on the world. when i graduated from college i worked in the department of housing and urban development, and i hoped in an idealistic way to move into may be urban planning or some area that would enable me to carry on my concerns about public service and changing the world, but i so missed intellectual life and ideas and the kind of debate that is out the heart of the university, so i applied to graduate school and went back and got a phd. that led me to a faculty position at penn that i held for 25 years. emily: you wrote six books. became as storing of the

american south and begin to explore questions not all that distant from questions i ask as a young child growing up in a segregated society. my first book was about people who defended slavery, because i found that so unthinkable and could not imagine how people came to convince themselves that this was a position that was , and ied or acceptable think i was projecting some of my questions about people who had an brace segregation in my own home community when i was growing up in virginia in the 1950's, so what makes people defend what is indefensible, and what makes change? must have strong opinions about how president trump has spoken about these civil war heroes, or not heroes, and the monuments? interesting in an

moment with civil war memory and some of the challenges made to monuments and accounting for the past. i think it is a healthy moment, because to understand what our history has been and to understand the civil war was one in which the whole country was ofending, fighting in favor slavery. i think that is hidden from us a lot as a nation, and to bring out those divisions and understand them fully and the race relationsh today is operated sekar important dimension of moving fort as a nation. emily: so you think is monuments and statues should come down? drew: i think it varies. many of them showed. others i think we can explain. emily: how does one get from civil war historian to first woman president of harvard? drew: it is about being part of the university over a long time, and living a life in a

university where i came to educatione wonder of and opening minds and contributing to the growth and flourishing of individual talent , and thinking about universities as places where people pursue truth and challenge accepted wisdom and devote themselves to learning and scholarship. so i had come to believe that universities are among the most important institutions in our society. i began to be invited to take on leadership roles and move from penn to harvard to be the head of an institute for advanced study, which had just and made a part of harvard university, then from there i went on to become president. emily: does being the first woman president part of it, the woman part of the equation, does

it come with an extra pressure or sense of responsibility? ,rew: a lot of eyes were on me and would i be able to do it? and what would that say about women generally, not just could drew faust do this job, but could a woman do this job? i would have young women aiming at me. people that i did not know would give me the biggest smile to say, you go girl. i could be thelt kind of role model that i didn't initially have when i was a child, but found in professors when i got to college and so women doing extraordinary things. emily: amen to that. you go girl. what do you see as your biggest success? drew: i hope i have made the university a more open place, have expanded access for people from all kinds of backgrounds, points of view, economic circumstances, and made harvard more affordable and more open,

but also made it a place that has felt more welcoming and inclusive once they got there, a place where women would not feel , or were there on severance students from less attended backgrounds would feel they are there on the margins, but this was their harvard too, that they own harvard as much as any of the more traditional kinds of students who might be there. ♪ emily: we have to make sure we attract the best outcome and that is why affordability is so important. ♪ ♪

emily: the most often use measure for measure success is the money presidents race. do you think this is the best measure of success for your field? don't at all.

it is important to have the resources to accomplish what you want to accomplish, but it depends. of course, what are you going to use those resources for? money is an enabler. it is not a resource in and of itself. fund 35% we generate to 36% of our operating budget, so that is working capital producing income every year that we can apply to the wide range of activities we undertake. teaching, financial aid, maintaining our buildings. emily: university endowments are a big chunk of the money that funds venture capital firms and the future companies of silicon valley, and historically endowments have been quite about their strategy in what they care about. there is a big movement in the tech community to push towards

funding diversity and not all-mail venture capital firms. is it about making money or who you are giving that money to? drew: we have had a position that has been articulated pretty forcefully in response to request that we divest from fossil fuel. we have a policy, our endowment is about funding the core mission of the university, which is teaching and research. it is not a fund meant to be a social intervention fund, and so not developed in response to the pressures put upon us or used our endowment as a political weapon or tool. ispart, part of the logic what are the issues and how many of them, and what are the priorities? fossil fuels, diversity, other kinds of admirable concerns that

might distract from what our core businesses, which is funding, teaching, and research? emily: how do we bring down the cost of higher education? drew: that is something we need to get under control and address more fully. technology will help with that. what can we do online to supplement or replace certain parts of instruction so that we can leave to people the parts we absolutely need people for and streamlined the other parts? constraining costs will be a real challenge for all of higher education. emily: there are a lot of companies trying to disrupt higher education and say a harvard degree won't matter by the time my children go to college. how do you respond to that? drew: we have to make sure we attract the best talent, and that is why affordability is so important. the experience of being in that

community, living in that community with other students from whom you learn as much as you learn in any class you take, that is core of what a harvard education really is. , the residential dimensions of a harvard education are essential to the full experience of what it can be. that will not be disrupted simply by an online experience. you are not bumping into rridor andn a cour find they challenge you in ways you never expected, expand your understanding of the world. such an important part of what happens in and outside our classrooms. emily: there is a sense here from the heart of silicon valley that stanford has surpassed harvard, especially when it comes to technology and becoming a feeder for the biggest and

most powerful companies in the world. is that a fair assessment? drew: of course not. of course not. we are different institutions, and that is a great strength in american higher education. there are different indices and different opportunities -- emphases and different opportunities that harvard can offer. i don't have a competition here in front of you and say, we are so good at this. we have a growing presence in technology and engineering. our students in engineering have tripled in the last 10 years, so that is an area where we are paying more attention than we did a decade or two decades ago, but we also have such deep-seated strengths in life sciences, the humanities, the arts, and such a commitment in social sciences, and the endeavors that are not simply involved in technology. we compete very successfully

with stanford for students and for faculty, so we are very pleased to be harvard, and we expect to remain harvard. ♪ emily: we want to support the needs of women on campus, but we don't think separate organizations are the way to accomplish when it's to be done. ♪

emily: what is harvard doing differently to train the worker for tomorrow? drew: differently from? emily: do you think harvard needs to do anything differently to arm workers with the skills necessary to succeed in the modern economy? there have been changes in how we approach education over the past decade that respond in part to what you are saying. we find our curriculum much more oriented and students were eager for a hands on and a variety of ways. there tends to be more

internships or public service opportunities tied into a curricular offering, doing and thinking are intertwined much more closely. emily: one of the things i have been falling as an alone is harvard's crackdown on single-sex clubs. traditions had a long of all-male clubs, and more recently all-female clubs have sprung up. i am curious how your position on this involved over the course tenure and that it should change. drew: the issue came into my consciousness almost as soon as i arrived at harvard in 2001 with lots of debate and discussion about the exclusion of women from these clubs and the centrality of the clubs and undergraduate student life. ,y the time i became president

i have been hearing about these issues for many years. hearing about them also increasingly after i became president from the dean of the college, from people head of the undergraduate houses, and about unsupervised drinking in these independent organizations, sexual assault in these organizations, and there was a constant drumbeat of issues of inequality and exclusion and student safety related to those clubs, and so in 2016, we issued a policy that became a matter of great debate and dispute, but we thought was toessary to welcome women in the citizenship at harvard and say that these much valued and sought after spaces from which they were excluded should no longer dominate the student life and have a second-class status delivered to women at harvard. emily: what is the policy as it

stands now? drew: if you choose to join one of these single-sex social organizations, there are certain privileges to which you were not have access, leadership positions in the recognized student organizations funded in part by harvard college, and that you will not be given dean's recommendations for certain fellowships and other honors. emily: there has been a lot of protest and people who say this unfairly targets women, who historically have not had access to the privileges and resources that men have had, and men who have been part of finals clubs at harvard have had. what is your response to women who feel this disenfranchises them? drew: the protests coming from women is about the single gender women's organizations that grew up to compensate for women's exclusion from the mail organizations, but there

remained in norm is's in the power of those organizations, the resources of those organizations, and the centrality to student life of these organizations. they were still kind of the second-class status within student life. have been concerned about the issues that make women feel they needed separate spaces for so a numberand it's of these organizations have said they will continue and allow men to join, but will also have their own activities within the organization, and we want to support the needs of women on campus, but we don't the separate organizations are the way to accomplish what needs to be done. emily: should an all-female organization be given the same status as an all-male organization or african-american organization, for example. drew: they have to admit any student and cannot discriminate on the basis of race or gender

identity-based status. they can discriminate on the basis of whether you can sing well enough, plate football well enough, that kind of differentiation is acceptable. we have a variety of organizations that students join like the football team or the glee club, where you have to try out, that it can't be derived from an accident of birth. emily: what do you think of your successor, and what do hope that he will accomplish? drew: i am delighted by his appointment. when i got to know larry was just becoming president, and he was president of tufts me tosity, and he invited dinner the first day i was president, july 2007, and he cooked dinner and talked about being president and offered to help. we became good friends and spent

a good bit of time together. i would come to him with problems. when the financial crisis happened, we consulted one another. he joined the harvard corporation, which is the governing body comes so i have been the beneficiary of his wisdom on that group ever since. i am delighted his experience and wisdom will be carried forward with harvard's next chapter. emily: what do you think will be the biggest challenges for your successor and harvard in the political atmosphere we are in today? drew: the cost of higher education and how to make it accessible and affordable is something any president is going orhave to come a harvard elsewhere, will have to attend to. is there is such suspicion and hostility emerging to higher education, but since it is not serving abroad public, but is much to delete in its impact. how do we reach out beyond our own walls and do more and

explain how much we are already doing to improve the lives of people across the country and around the world, so that is an important agenda item for a new president as well. emily: what is next for you? drew: i want to see if i can learn to be a historian again. emily: really. does that mean writing a new book? drew: i have different projects i might pursue. i will be investigating some of those. emily: what is your advice to women who want to be leaders? drew: what a great question. just believe in yourself. don't let anyone cause you to doubt yourself. , outgoingw faust president of harvard university, thank you for joining us today on "bloomberg studio 1.0." drew: thank you. emily: it is really an honor.

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rishaad: trade angst lingers. tensionsension to between the world's two biggest economies. elsewhere, the greek prime minister telling bloomberg there can be no return to spending habits that triggered the financial meltdown in his country. i am rishaad salamat in hong kong. haidi: i am haidi lun. from grilling burgers to chilling beer, how electric carmakers are giving used batteries and new charge and retirement. this is "bloomberg markets: asia."

♪ haidi: rish, we are headed for an 11 today of weakness for the yuan, the quickest pace of depreciation, down 5% this month, since 2015. take a look at non-deliverable forwards. blog indicates we could get close to equilibrium for that trade. if we know one thing, the chinese currency, either way you have a tendency to get burned. rishaad: the oil market on a tear, up to levels we have not seen since 2014. part of this is down to donald trump suggesting his allies should not be buying iranian