The former Duke president frequently credited for establishing Duke as a world-class university is visiting campus today to discuss her recently published book, “Thinking About Leadership.” Former President Nan Keohane, who served between 1993 and 2004 and is Duke’s only female president, will speak at 1:30 p.m. in the Sanford School of Public Policy. Keohane’s achievements as president of Duke include the establishment of the Robertson Scholars Program, the Women’s Initiative and the Campaign for Duke, which raised more than $2 billion. Currently, Keohane is teaching at Princeton University as the Laurance S. Rockefeller Distinguished Visiting Professor of Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School. The Chronicle’s Amanda Young talked with Keohane about her new book and past accomplishments.
The Chronicle: Could you describe what you have done since leaving Duke?
Nan Keohane: First, I took a sabbatical year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford [University], where I’d been a fellow twice before. I went back there in 2004-2005. I had a very productive year, did some work on a collection of essays and speeches from Duke. Then, my husband and I were recruited to Princeton, and we’re both teaching at the Woodrow Wilson School. We live here in Princeton and that’s where we expect to be.
TC: What do you think were your biggest accomplishments as the president of Duke?
NK: Of course, it’s hard to distinguish things that I did as my accomplishments because so much of it was a team effort. But in terms of accomplishments during my Duke years, I would think of several. First is the Campaign for Duke that raised several billion dollars to support financial aid and a number of programs at Duke. That was a major effort to get people to support Duke and was one significant legacy. We also built a lot of buildings. We transformed the face of Duke campus. Before, when I came to give lectures in the late 1980s, I found a bewildering campus—everything was very disconnected. So we built a number of useful new buildings in science and engineering and medicine and in arts. That was an important contribution to Duke campus. I also think that Duke became a more diverse and open place through expanded financial aid and reaching out to students in a variety of backgrounds. Over the past decades, Duke has became significantly more international. Another thing we did was reach out to the University of North Carolina [at] Chapel Hill. Continuing to be fierce sports rivals, we organized the Robertson Scholars Program. This way, more people could teach and take classes on the other campus.
TC: Do you have any regrets about your time at Duke?
NK: I wish we could’ve connected to UNC more and put our part of North Carolina on the map. I wish we could’ve done more collaboration with neighboring universities.
TC: What are the most important things that you learned as president of Duke?
NK: The most important things I learned about leadership were things I learned by being president of both Wellesley [College] and Duke. I learned about how to make tough decisions and hold stuff from inside. Most people look at leadership from outside, but I had a chance to do it for a while, and I learned a lot about leadership. This has been very helpful to me as a political scientist. I also learned about the history and traditions of Duke that led me to feel very loyal to the place.
TC: Could you describe what your book is about?
NK: The book is called “Thinking About Leadership.” It is a way of bringing together my long time training as a political theorist with my experience as a leader. There are a few anecdotes about my experiences at IBM board and Duke. It also brings together mini case studies of leaders whom I admire, which include Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher and Lyndon Johnson. These were people who were complicated and who achieved a lot. There are more heads of organizations than leaders at other levels, but leadership comes in all shapes and sizes. People can be very effective leaders in all different sizes of organizations. The book is a way of bringing together theory and practice.
TC: Why did you decide to write this book?
NK: One of the reasons I took the first job as an administrator at Wellesley was because I was curious about having power. I wondered what it feels like to really be a leader instead of just studying leadership. That was one motivation. I said to myself at the time, “Someday after I’m finished as an administrator, I’d like to write a book about this and describe leadership in a distinctive way that only someone who’d done it can do.” This was something I’d been pondering at some level since I left Stanford.
TC: As the first female president of Duke, how do you think your gender affected the way people saw you and your impact on the University?
NK: It’s important to remember that I started off my career as president of Wellesley. I was used to places that women were presidents. When I got to Duke, I brought that self-confidence and it didn’t occur to me that I couldn’t do it. There were some people who thought, “How on earth could this young woman from Wellesley be president of Duke?” However, I had a sense of support because people were willing to give me a chance. That was very empowering. In the end, being a woman was only relevant in two ways. It was relevant to students, that a woman could be president of Duke. It could help people set their own ambitions a little higher. Also, being female helped explain why I spent a fairly large proportion of time working on the Women’s Initiative. I formed the steering committee of women faculty who were going to look at the situation of women in every area at Duke.
TC: What did the Women’s Initiative discover?
NK: We found that women at Duke feel like they are supposed to be perfect but can’t seem to be trying too hard. One sophomore coined the phrase “effortless perfection.” That stuck for people at that time. The first thing we discovered was that people needed more childcare. We doubled size of childcare buildings and created some partnerships with childcare day care centers in area. We could make their lives easier. They were more practical for graduate students, faculty and staff. For undergraduate students, we organized the Baldwin Scholars, one of the direct fruits of the Women’s Initiative. I probably wouldn’t have been as likely to have undertaken that if not a woman.
TC: What are your plans for the future?
NK: I’m 70 years old—I can’t think about being president of another university after already doing it twice for 23 years of my life. I was ready to get back to teaching and research, which I love, and I will continue teaching for a couple of years. So I think I’ll retire afterwards and then have time to read and write and spend time with my grandchildren. I’ll also travel, which was hard to do in 23 years of presidency.
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