Back in the trenches: outgoing Duke president steps down to return to roots—teaching and research

Black Issues in Higher Education, July 1, 2004 by Hilary Hurd Anyaso

Dr. Nannerl Overholser Keohane became Duke University's eighth president when she arrived on campus in July 1993. She also became the university's first female president. And after 11 years of leading the 12,900-student campus in Durham, N.C., Keohane is stepping down this month to return to teaching and research. Keohane has been called a prodigious fundraiser. In December, Duke completed an eight-year capital campaign, raising $2.36 billion, the fifth-largest in American education history, and the most ever by a Southern school, according to reports. Keohane also made headlines last year when she and her counterpart from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser, raised concerns about expanding the NCAA's Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).

A political theorist, she is the author of Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment (1980) and co-editor of Feminist Theory: A Critique of Ideology (1982). Before assuming the presidency of Wellesley College, her alma mater, in 1981, she taught at Swarthmore College, the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University, where she was chair of the faculty senate and won the Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Just weeks away from turning over the Duke presidency to her successor, Dr. Richard Brodhead, former dean of Yale College, Keohane spoke with Black Issues about leadership, diversity on campus and her future plans.

BI: What were your goals when you arrived on the Duke campus, and 11 years later would you say you met those goals?

NK: I didn't come with a large set of goals. First of all, I didn't know the institution well. I knew it by reputation, but I had never been a student or a faculty member here. So my first goal was to get to know the place--I think I did that pretty quickly. And then in concert with my colleagues, developed some goals for everything from residential life to a stronger health system to an improved campus plan to fund raising, to reaching out to our community, building the diversity on campus--both in terms of numbers and in quality for the faculty, students and staff--and making it more an inclusive place, making it a more international place. All those goals began to emerge fairly quickly in the first couple of years. I think we've made progress on all of them, but there is still plenty to be done.

BI: Looking back, what was the appeal of the Duke position?

NK: Duke was such an appealing prospect as an institution that I have long admired. Having grown up in the South, I had always wanted to come back to the South some day to help this very special, but troubled region, face some of the challenges that it faces, and partly because I love it. I feel deep roots in the South, but I also feel some awareness of the particular challenges of segregation and Jim Crow, and the way in which there are vestiges that are left even in the best institutions. And I wanted to come back and help a strong institution become even stronger.

BI: How were you received as Duke's first female president?

NK: I was received very warmly. Almost nobody said to me, or even hinted, that there was any problem because I was a woman. But I'm quite aware though, that a lot of people behind the scenes were saying, "How on earth can this woman from Wellesley run Duke?" But they were gracious enough not to say it to me. And because I had already done the job at Wellesley, where there has been nothing but women presidents, it never occurred to me that a woman couldn't be a president. One of my few regrets is that I probably should have been more aware throughout my time at Duke of how important it was in a positive sense. I think I could have been a little bit more active as a person conscious that I was a role model for faculty members, for students ... but since it seemed irrelevant to me in many ways, I probably didn't pay enough attention to that until the last few years.

BI: You have now led two different types of institutions. What did you learn from your Wellesley presidency that you were able to apply to the Duke presidency?

NK: Good question. I did find that I had learned a number of useful skills that served me in good stead as a second-time president. For one thing, I had dealt with a number of issues along the way that were sort of generic higher education issues, whether it was students concerned about some problem on campus, or faculty members concerned about their pensions, or trustees concerned about whether one is focusing on the values of the university in the correct way--I had dealt with those types of issues, and I learned that I could. And I learned some mechanisms for making people feel listened to but then being willing to make a tough decision, explaining it thoughtfully and moving on. Those are useful skills that I was able to bring pretty much intact from Wellesley to Duke. I guess I also learned that you have to pace yourself and I tried to bring that skill, too. I didn't always pace myself at Wellesley because there was so much to do, and sometimes I just got really exhausted. But then I learned you have to take some breaks. You have to go off for a weekend; you've got to take a real vacation; you've got to exercise almost everyday.