The day-to-day and year-to-year tasks of building a university require focused attention and persistence through the frustrations and disappointments that inevitably come in any enterprise. The Board of Trustees and I have felt from the beginning that it was important to have a vision of the goals of all this effort, a vision of the character and mission of the Aga Khan University to which we could turn as a guide in good times and bad. Our Charter, The Aga Khan University Order 1983, and my address at the Charter Presentation Ceremony affirmed that this University would engage in the promotion and dissemination of knowledge in the health sciences and other fields, in Pakistan and internationally; it would be a private, autonomous Muslim university open to all without distinction of sex, race, creed or domicile; and it would concern itself particularly with the development and civilisations of the Pakistan nation, the Islamic Ummah and the Third World countries of Asia and Africa.

I was not, however, content with general statements of these sorts, but had sought planning assistance in a study by a Harvard Committee under the chairmanship of Derek Bok, then Harvard's President. The report of this study,a document of some 200 pages, was presented to us in 1983. It confirmed the need for a private, autonomous university of international quality and distinction, that would address generic problems of the developing and' Muslim worlds in fresh and original ways. The report went on to propose specific courses of development through which we might pursue this mission.

Early in the present decade, the Board of Trustees of the University became conscious of a need to review how the development of AKU thus far and the great changes that have gone on in the world might affect its future. There were urgent questions concerning the Faculty of Health Sciences and the hospital which were addressed by a Medical Centre Committee that submitted its report in 1993. The Board had proposed in 1991 that a "senior panel" be appointed to undertake a broader review. The report presented in this volume is the product of two years' study and reflection by a Chancellor's Commission which I appointed in 1992, following on the Board's recommendation. It has been reviewed and formally accepted by the Board and by myself, as Chancellor, as the guiding statement of the mission and character of AKU as we intend it to be in the years to come.

The title of this report, "The Future of the Aga Khan University : Evolution of a Vision" expresses accurately the general conclusions of the Commission. It was asked to review the founding vision of the University and the conceptions for its development that were set forth in the Harvard Report. The Commission undertook a very broad review of changes in higher education and research and in the general situation of the developing and Muslim worlds; it also assessed the effects that our experience and problems in bringing AKU to its present state, and changes elsewhere in the Aga Khan Development Network, might have had. These reviews did not lead the Commission to think any sharp transformations in the original vision of AKU were required for the future. The need for AKU as a private, autonomous international institution of quality and distinction, serving the developing and Muslim worlds in original ways, was found to be at least as compelling as it was when AKU was founded. Like the Harvard Committee, the Chancellor's Commission emphasises that AKU must seek distinction by strong commitments to research and education of the highest standards.

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