Faust Wraps Up Trip to Asia with Speech at Women's University in Seoul

After discussing virtual education earlier in the week, University President Drew G. Faust wrapped up her trip to Asia Friday on the note of female empowerment in a speech at Ewha Womans University—the largest women’s educational institution in the world—in Seoul, South Korea.

Seoul was the second of two stops on the five-day trip, which began on Monday in Hong Kong. In both cities, Faust attended events with several hundred alumni, as well as meetings with students and leaders in business and education.

In Seoul, where Faust was honored as a distinguished fellow at Ewha, she advocated for increased educational opportunities for women, noting the success of Ewha alumni as well as her own experience at Bryn Mawr, a women’s liberal arts college in Pennsylvania.

“Imagining the world without female achievements is increasingly difficult, in every field,” Faust said, according to her prepared remarks. “And yet much of this talent goes untapped.”

She said that educating women is not only morally and economically imperative but also “transformative.”

“When education becomes too focused on immediate measurable outcomes, on grades and awards, or when it becomes merely a path to money or prestige, we risk forgetting the inherent value of learning and of our broader aspirations,” Faust said. “Educated women change not just their own lives, and work not just for their own success, but for the world. We see countless examples.”

That transformation allows young women to aspire to leadership in their own fields, Faust said, using her own path to becoming Harvard’s first female president as an example.

“As I crossed the green at Bryn Mawr as an undergraduate, I had no inkling I would one day be a university president,” Faust said. “But the idea of a female leader seemed natural to me, because of all the women before me who had dared to lead.”

While in Seoul, Faust also held a question-and-answer session with more than 300 Harvard alumni and met with Korean educational leaders.

Her schedule in Hong Kong included similar events with alumni and others, as well as a discussion on edX, the virtual education initiative launched by Harvard and MIT last May.

The trip was comparable to Faust’s visits to India in January 2012 and China and Japan in March 2010. During these visits, Faust worked to build and reinforce ties to alumni and other leaders in Asia while also exploring the future of education, and in particular its use of technology, on an international scale.

—Staff writer Samuel Y. Weinstock can be reached at sweinstock@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @syweinstock.