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There was pretty much no way they could not name a woman, but I'm very glad they chose someone already at the institution -- one of the biggest blocks Harvard had to getting tenured female professors (well, other than having Summers as president, since tenure offers to women fell dramatically during his presidency) was their infuriating habit of making their assistant professors go make their names elsewhere, then hiring them back after they were "proven." It's hard to keep moving families back and forth across the country simply in order to prove to Harvard that you're a decent professor, especially after you've already proven to them that you're good enough to teach there once.
So I was finding it annoying that they were debating getting a female president by hiring away some other university's president, because that seemed to be severely missing the point.
"With Faust’s appointment, half of the eight Ivy League schools will have a woman as president.
...Faust is the first Harvard president who did not receive an undergraduate or graduate degree from the university since Charles Chauncy, an alumnus of Cambridge University in England, who died in office in 1672. She attended Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pennsylvania, where she was also a professor of history." *
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