Harvard University has appointed the first black president of an Ivy League university.

Dr. Claudine Gay, a Harvard dean and democracy scholar, has been named the school's 30th president.

She is only the second woman to lead the prestigious Cambridge College in Massachusetts.

The university announced that Dr. Claudine will succeed Lawrence Bacow as president in July 2023.

She will be the only black person to lead an Ivy League university in 2023 and the second black woman ever to head one of the colleges.

Dr. Claudine has "brought to her roles a rare blend of incisiveness and inclusiveness, intellectual range and strategic savvy, institutional ambition and personal humility,"  said Penny Pritzker, a senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation and the chair of Harvard's presidential search committee.

"This is crazy, right?" Dr. Claudine said as she was introduced to applause at the Smith campus center on Thursday, adding she felt "humbled" by the appointment.

She said: "The idea of the 'ivory tower"—that is the past, not the future, of academia."

"We don't exist outside of society, but as part of it."

"That means that Harvard has a duty to lean in, engage, and be of service to the world."

She is the daughter of Haitian immigrants and received her bachelor's degree from Stanford University in California in 1992.

Dr. Claudine received her doctorate degree in 1998 from Harvard, where she won the Toppan Prize for the best dissertation in political science, according to the university.

She joined Harvard's faculty in 2006 as a professor of government, and in 2007 she was promoted to professor of African and African-American studies.

Dr. Claudine's research has primarily focused on the relationship between race and politics in America, including how social and economic factors affect political opinions and voting behavior.

Her appointment comes as the Supreme Court is reviewing a case that could require Harvard to change its admissions process.

The case focuses on whether an applicant's race should be a factor in the admissions process.