Harvard University appoints first black president

(Maddie Meyer/FILE)
The Harvard University campus is shown, March 23, 2020 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

(Maddie Meyer/FILE) The Harvard University campus is shown, March 23, 2020 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

(CNN) — Harvard University has appointed its first black president.
The University Claudine Gay will serve as Harvard’s 30th president.

Gay has served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences since 2018.
She was born to Haitian immigrants and received her PhD in government from Harvard in 1998.

She takes over for current Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow, who announced in June he would be stepping down.