Nannerl "Nan" Overholser Keohane (born September 18, 1940, in Blytheville, Arkansas)[1] is an American political theorist and former president of Wellesley College and Duke University. Currently Keohane is the Lawrence S. Rockefeller Distinguished Visiting Professor of Public Affairs and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.[2][3]
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Keohane earned her first undergraduate degree in 1961 from Wellesley College,[4] and her second bachelor's degree at Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar. Keohane received her doctorate in political science from Yale University in 1967.[1]
Keohane began her career in academia teaching at Swarthmore College (1967–73), Stanford University (1973–81), and the University of Pennsylvania.[1] At Stanford, she was chair of the faculty senate and won the Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, the university's highest teaching honor.
Keohane served as eleventh president of Wellesley from 1981 to 1993, while also continuing to teach political science.[1] At Wellesley, she oversaw increased enrollment of minority students, led the expansion of the Sports Center and the construction of the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, and implemented major advances in technology throughout the campus.[5]
Keohane became the eighth president at Duke in 1993. During her tenure, she was also a professor of political science, led efforts to increase minority student enrollment, diversified faculty, and oversaw the Women's Initiative. Keohane also helped raise $2.36 billion during The Campaign for Duke, which ended in 2003, making it the fifth largest campaign in the history of American higher education.[6]
Leaving her position at Duke in 2004, Keohane was named Laurance S. Rockefeller Distinguished Visiting Professor of Public Affairs and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University in 2005.[7]
Keohane's books include Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment (1980) and Feminist Theory: A Critique of Ideology (1982). Some of Keohane's speeches were published in 1995 in A Community Worthy of the Name.[1]
Keohane was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1995.[1]
In 1996, following nearly 3 years of intense litigation over the estate of Doris Duke, Keohane was named as one of the "six people [who] would sit as trustees of the charitable foundations established by Miss Duke's will.".[8] In 2008, Keohane was chair of the Board of Trustees of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF)[2] during the controversy[9][10][11] over the Trustees decision[12] to close and dismantle Duke Gardens, established in 1958[13] by Doris Duke in honor of her father James Buchanan Duke.[14] Representatives of the DDCF stated that the Gardens were "perpetuating the Duke family history of personal passions and conspicuous consumption."[15]
Keohane is also a member of the Harvard Corporation, the governing body of Harvard University, and is the only current member of that body, save for current Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust, not to have earned a degree from Harvard.
Keohane was born in Blytheville, Arkansas, and graduated from high school in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Her husband is Robert Keohane, also a noted political scientist.[3] Her sister, Geneva Overholser, is a prominent journalist and currently Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting at the Missouri School of Journalism in the University of Missouri.[16]
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