Dr. Elizabeth Kiss, President of Agnes Scott College

Elizabeth Kiss became the eighth president of Agnes Scott College on August 1, 2006. Before coming to Agnes Scott, President Kiss spent 10 years at Duke University, where she was Nannerl O. Keohane Director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics and an Associate Professor of the Practice of Political Science and Philosophy. Previously, she taught at Princeton University for eight years and has also taught at Randolph-Macon College and Deep Springs College.

Kiss specializes in moral and political philosophy and has published on moral judgment and education, human rights, ethnic conflict and nationalism, feminist theory, and justice in the aftermath of human rights violations. She has spoken about ethics, moral education, and academic integrity to audiences around the country and has developed and led interactive ethics workshops for a wide array of groups, including middle-school students, undergraduates, university and college staff, community leaders, business people, and elected officials. She and Peter Euben are co-editing a book titled Debating Moral Education.

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 at Melbourne University’s Centre on Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics.

A trustee of Duke University, Kiss is currently on the board of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics and the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta  She is also a member of American Council on Education’s Commission on Women in Higher Education, the Rotary Club of Atlanta and the CIFAL Atlanta Gender Equality steering committee. Kiss was named one of the Women of Distinction for 20062007 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. 

Her husband, Jeff Holzgrefe, is an academic whose focus is international relations and ethics. He is teaching in the Law School at Emory University fall semester 2007. Mr. Holzgrefe has taught at Duke, Princeton, and St. Andrew's universities and served as visiting scholar at Harvard and Melbourne universities. He recently 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.