The moral purpose of higher education.

Dr. Nannerl O. Keohane, president of Wellesley College MA from 1981-1993 and Duke University NC from 1993-2004, is a leader among women in higher education. Her book Higher Ground: Ethics and Leadership in the Modern University is a collection of essays and speeches on the mission of higher education.

She graduated from Wellesley in 1961, studied at Oxford University UK and got her PhD in political science at Yale University CT. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College PA and Stanford University CA.

Political theory and leadership experience come together in Higher Ground, an expression of her deep personal convictions on critical issues facing higher education today.

Distinctive goals

"I regard colleges and universities as intergenerational partnerships in learning and discovery, with compelling moral purposes that include not only teaching and research but also service to society," she writes.

Higher education is a response to deep human needs. It nurtures a passion as deep as any other. Women and girls in Afghanistan rushed to take advantage of educational opportunities long denied them. Students and teachers in Iraq keep coming to bombed-out classrooms.

Responsibilities of research universities are not only to discover and share knowledge but also "to see that such knowledge is used to improve the human condition." Scholars have moral obligations to predecessors and successors in their field, their students and one another.