For the First Time, a Black Woman Will Lead The Harvard Crimson

Writers and editors at The Harvard Crimson have gone on to be presidents (John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt), tech billionaires (Steve Ballmer, the former chief executive of Microsoft), media bosses (Jeff Zucker, the head of CNN) and a number of my colleagues at The New York Times. But what the newspaper had in power, it lacked in diversity.

Now Kristine E. Guillaume will lead The Crimson’s “146th guard,” making her the third black president and first black woman to helm the organization since its founding in 1873.

Guillaume, a junior majoring in literature, history and African-American studies, won the job with a promise to steer the paper toward a more diverse, digital future.

The college and, by extension, The Crimson have long served as pipelines to the American establishment, but both have struggled to become more diverse.

“If my being elected to The Crimson presidency as the first black woman affirms anyone’s sense of being at Harvard, then that will continue to affirm the work that I’m doing,” Guillaume said as she was preparing to visit her parents in New York City for Thanksgiving.

The position of Crimson president holds an almost mythical place in journalism. Author Cleveland Amory, who held the job in the 1930s, famously said that “once you had been president of The Harvard Crimson in your senior year at Harvard there was very little, in after life, for you.”

Nearly 40 of Guillaume’s peers at the paper had deliberated over who would get the job in a grueling, monthslong process — known as the “Turkey Shoot” — that can be rife with political allegiances and backstabbing. She said she was appreciative of the heft of the position, and hoped to lift up different types of journalistic voices and perspectives.

“It’s your job, no matter what stage of leadership, to make sure you are imparting knowledge to younger writers, but also reporting on things especially pertinent in today’s climate with cultural sensitivity,” Guillaume said.

Born to a Chinese mother and Haitian father, both physicians, Guillaume, 20, said she took an interest in journalism while growing up in New York City. On Sundays, with her mother on hospital duty, her father took her and her younger sister — along with the weekend edition of The Times — to a diner for breakfast. As part of the ritual, he would ask his daughters to read columns by David Brooks and Paul Krugman “to get a conservative and a liberal view,” Guillaume said.

“Both of my parents have a strong emphasis on education and knowing what’s going on in the world around us,” Guillaume said. “They were always very encouraging of us to break out of our middle school or high school problems and think about larger forces at play.”

But Guillaume’s parents did not want her to spend so much time at The Crimson, hoping she would pursue medicine or law. “It’s the classic immigrant parent narrative,” Guillaume said. She let out a sigh. “There’s a lot of tension that I don’t take more science classes.”

Guillaume said she planned to pursue a doctorate in African-American studies and a career in academia, with some writing on the side. She cited author Ta-Nehisi Coates as a role model.

At Townsend Harris High School in Queens, Guillaume edited the literary magazine, The Phoenix, which had a rivalry with the school’s newspaper, The Classic, where her younger sister, Isabelle, now serves as editor-in-chief.

At Harvard, Guillaume has edited Let’s Go travel guides on the side, a job that included a stint as a reporter in Léon, France. And for the past three years, she has been part of The Crimson’s “news board,” which is what the newspaper calls the editors and reporters who cover the campus and beyond. She has written on immigration and, taking on one of the paper’s most high-pressure beats, has covered the school’s leadership. In a recent article, she wrote that, for the first time, four of Harvard’s schools were led by black women.

“She is able to command a room, but also be a really friendly, approachable presence,” said Leah Yared, a senior who has mentored Guillaume at The Crimson, including discussing coverage and writing articles with her at Tasty Burger on Harvard Square. Yared, one of the few black women in the paper’s top echelon, helped with the process of choosing The Crimson president this year. The students involved in the Turkey Shoot followed a process that included implicit bias training.

“The Crimson has historically had problems attracting underrepresented minorities and retaining those people,” Yared said.

Those problems are not limited to The Crimson. Indeed, the news organizations that some Crimson alumni will strive to join have remained overwhelmingly white and male. In 2018, people of color made up 22.2 percent of employees of daily newspapers, according to a survey conducted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

“One of the significant reasons that trust in newsrooms has declined is simply because we don’t reflect the audiences we’re trying to reach, which means we’re missing stories,” said Raju Narisetti, a journalism professor at Columbia University.

Derek Xiao, the current president of The Crimson, said Guillaume’s vision to make the paper into a nimbler, more digitally oriented publication, as well as her work as chairwoman of the paper’s diversity and inclusivity committee, made her pitch stand out at “41 P” — Harvardese for 41 Plympton St., the location of The Crimson’s redbrick offices.

“The Crimson is a volunteer organization, so making people feel like their work is valuable and that they themselves are valuable in this building is important,” Xiao said.

On a recent Sunday night, Guillaume had been reading a book for her class on mass incarceration and listening to Rihanna when Xiao and the rest of The Crimson masthead called to tell her she had gotten the job.

“I screamed into the phone,” Guillaume said. “It was a very, very shrill scream.”

Yared told her friend and mentee to brace for an onslaught of attention. “Prepare to be embarrassed,” she texted her.