The university, the scene of controversy two years ago over the president's unscripted comments about women and science, is expected to make a formal announcement tomorrow, the Boston Globe reported.
Its expected choice, Drew Gilpin Faust, 59, emerged as the frontrunner for the post late last month when another leading contender, Thomas Cech, who was awarded a Nobel in chemistry, took himself out of the running. Dr Faust, 59, and dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, is widely seen as the antidote to the tumultuous reign of Lawrence Summers, who stood down in 2005.
"The corporation nearly always elects someone who is the polar opposite of the most recent occupant of the office," the Reverend Peter Gomes, the head of Harvard's memorial church, wrote in the Harvard Crimson.
The university is soon to embark on other changes following a report calling for the first major curricula reforms in 30 years, which would include greater emphasis on civic life and ethics. The report also proposes that professors devote more time to teaching rather than research, now the priority.
In his relatively brief term at Harvard, Dr Summers, who had served as treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, had multiple run-ins with members of the faculty. His arrival at Harvard soon led to the acrimonious departure of a prominent African-American professor, Cornel West, to Princeton. Dr Summers went on to acquire a reputation for an abrasive management style.
He also angered some department heads because of his efforts to exert greater central control over budgets in advance of an ambitious expansion programme across the river from the Cambridge campus. But his downfall in the end was due to unscripted musings about the lack of prominent women in science and mathematics, made at a conference about minorities and academics.
As one of his explanations, he offered up the notion that women lack an "intrinsic aptitude" for science, which provoked accusations of sexism, targeted at Dr Summers and at Harvard as an institution.
Dr Faust, a historian and women's studies professor, is seen as a consensus builder.
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