President's Biography
Elizabeth Kiss (pronounced "quiche") is the eighth president of Agnes Scott College. Before coming to Agnes Scott in 2006, she was the Nannerl O. Keohane Director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics and an associate professor of the practice of political science and philosophy at Duke University. She has served as interim director of the Center for Genome Ethics, Law, and Policy, co-director of the Humanitarian Challenges at Home and Abroad FOCUS program, a member of the Council on Civic Engagement, and an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Academic Council at Duke. Previously she taught politics at Princeton University for eight years and also taught at Randolph-Macon College and Deep Springs College.
A 1983 graduate of Davidson College, she received a B.Phil. and D.Phil. in philosophy from Oxford University in England. A former Rhodes Scholar, she has held fellowships at the Harvard Program in Ethics and the Professions, the National Humanities Center, and Melbourne University’s Centre on Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. Dr. Kiss specializes in moral and political philosophy and has published on moral judgment and education, human rights, the application of rights theories to issues of ethnic conflict and nationalism, feminist debates about rights and justice, and justice in the aftermath of human rights violations.
Dr. Kiss is currently a trustee of Duke University, the Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education (ARCHE) and the Woodruff Arts Center. A member of the Rotary Club of Atlanta and the Women's Forum of Georgia, she serves on the boards of directors of the Women's College Coalition, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), the Student Aid Foundation, and SunTrust Bank, Atlanta. She also serves on the Westminster Schools President's Advisory Committee, the Southern University Conference Executive Committee, the Georgia Independent College Association Executive Committee, and the District VI Rhodes Scholarship Selection Committee. Dr. Kiss was awarded the Davidson College Distinguished Alumni Award for 2008 and was named as one of the Women of Distinction for 2006-2007 by the Girl Scout Council of Northwest Georgia. She has served as vice chair of the board of trustees of Davidson College as well as on the boards of the Center for Academic Integrity and the Durham Nativity School.
As the founding director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Dr. Kiss helped to build a university-wide initiative whose mission is to support the study and teaching of ethics and to promote moral reflection and commitment in personal, professional, community, and civic life. Kenan Institute projects have focused on business and organizational ethics, academic integrity, research service-learning, and moral education in middle schools and in colleges and universities.
Her husband, Jeff Holzgrefe, is an academic whose focus is international relations and ethics. Mr. Holzgrefe has taught at Emory, Duke, Princeton and St. Andrew's universities and served as visiting scholar at Harvard and Melbourne universities. He co-edited Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal and Political Dilemmas for Cambridge University Press. A native of Australia, Mr. Holzgrefe was educated at Monash University in Melbourne and Balliol College, Oxford.