Elizabeth Kiss

Oxford, England

Elizabeth Kiss (pronounced ‘quiche’) became Warden of Rhodes House and CEO of the Rhodes Trust in August 2018, the first woman to hold this position. She oversees the world’s oldest graduate scholarship, the Rhodes Scholarship, as well as several partnership programs. Before joining the Rhodes Trust, Dr. Kiss served for twelve years as president of Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, Georgia. During her tenure, Agnes Scott broke records for enrollment and retention and was named the second “Most Diversified College in America” by Time, the country’s most successful liberal arts college for graduating low-income students by the U.S. Department of Education, and the #1 Most Innovative National Liberal Arts College by U.S. News and World Report. From 1997 to 2006 Dr. Kiss served as the founding director of Duke University’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, building a university-wide interdisciplinary center focused on promoting moral reflection and commitment in personal, professional, organizational, and civic life. She has also taught at Randolph-Macon College (Virginia), at Deep Springs College (California), and at Princeton University for eight years. Dr. Kiss is a scholar of moral and political philosophy who has published on moral education, human rights, ethnic conflict and nationalism, feminist theory, and transitional justice. She received her B.A. in philosophy from Davidson College in North Carolina, becoming Davidson’s first female Rhodes Scholar and received a BPhil and DPhil in philosophy from the University of Oxford.