It differs somewhat from the specific Harvard recommendations in the fields and components it projects for the future AKU. But in its broad character as an open international university devoted to free enquiry and to enhanced futures for both men and women in the Muslim and developing worlds, AKU projected by this report holds to the principles traced by its predecessors.

Just as it took the devoted and generous efforts of very many people to bring AKU to celebration of its first decade, translating the conceptions of the future AKU set forth in this report into working realities will pose demanding challenges to all concerned with AKU's future. The Commission was given a broad charge and faithfully kept its thoughts on the longer term future and the general design of the University. It was conscious that it could not and should not try to work out detailed plans for the components it has proposed for the future AKU. Meetings with the present faculty and staff, and study of memoranda they prepared, have had important effects on the Commission's views. And these exchanges, like those with the Board of Trustees, heightened the Commission's awareness of the immense amount of detailed planning and focused effort that lies ahead if its recommendations are to be seriously pursued. But it has been concerned that these efforts be guided by a common vision and that the future AKU be more than a collection of faculties and institutes each absorbed in its own work. The Commission has projected AKU as an international university with branches in different parts of the world and addressing different fields of knowledge. But these branches must be linked among themselves and to networks in the wider academic world by utilising the best of modern communications and information processing. The University must have a sense of coherence in its mission through commitment to common values such as openness and the advancement of women, and to high and common standards of scholarship, research, teaching and service. Our hope must be that the conceptions set forth in this report will provide guides and reference points to keep the builders of AKU's future on a common path as they press forward with their own specific responsibilities.

The great future for which we aspire for AKU must depend above all on the quality and commitment of those who will shoulder the thousands of specific tasks that lie ahead. The appointment of the Chancellor's Commission was inspired by the faith that a clear and credible vision of what AKU can and should be will inspire and guide our efforts. Plans and visions are poor things if they engender no action. It is our hope that wide distribution of this report among those who have made AKU what it now is, and care about its future, will stir lively interest and careful examination of the ideas it contains. The Commission itself has now completed its work and dissolved into history. But the acceptance of this report by the Trustees, and by myself as Chancellor, means that we will be seeking to use it as a guide in our efforts to build the AKU of the future. And it assures our receptive attention, and that of all our senior leaders, to reactions from members of the University community of what-ever station.

It is my belief that the very wide-ranging view of the needs and problems of the developing and Muslim worlds, and particularly in higher education and research, which the Commission has taken will be of interest considerably beyond the Aga Khan University. The Trustees and I have thought that the Commission's efforts to conceive what a university concerned with the developing and Muslim worlds might aim to do in the next quarter century might also offer ideas to others facing similar challenges for the future.

We believe that the Commission has viewed the future with sober realism but also with hopeful imagination. We find its report a source of inspiration for AKU that we intend to keep before us. We hope others too may find inspiration and enlightenment from it.

Chancellor, Aga Khan University.

Page 1 2 3