Robert H. Edwards

Colby College awarded Edwards an honorary degree in 2001.

In 1999, Edwards became a member of the board of trustees of Aga Khan University again. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000 and was succeeded by current president Barry Mills in 2001.

In 1990, he became president of Bowdoin, where he significantly changed the college's governance and residential life. In 1995, he merged all board members from Trustees and Overseers into a single Board of Trustees. The next year, the Trustees voted to phase out fraternities, immediately terminating the recruitment of new members, and to abolish fraternities entirely by 2000. The college acquired all fraternity chapter houses by the summer of 2000, to be absorbed after renovation into the college's new residential house system.

After leaving Carleton, Edwards returned to Pakistan, going to Karachi to join the Secretariat of His Highness the Aga Khan, heading the Department of Health, Education and Housing. He also served on the board of trustees of Aga Khan University from 1987-1990.

In 1977 Edwards became president of Carleton College. As Carleton's president, he helped launch the "Science, Technology, and Public Policy" program and expanded and remodeled the school's library. While at Carleton, he was a respected leader who challenged the faculty and raised awareness throughout the community. When he left in 1986, he received an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters.

A graduate of Deerfield Academy, Edwards attended Princeton University and graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. in English in 1957 after completing a senior thesis titled "The Lesson of the Master." He also earned a B.A. and an M.A. at Cambridge University and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School. In 1961, after law school, he earned admission to the U.S. federal bar. For several years he worked for the U.S. State Department on matters related to African countries that had been colonies and were making the transition to independent nationhood. After leaving the U.S. government, he joined the Ford Foundation, where he worked from 1965 to 1977 in Pakistan and New York, heading the foundation's Middle East and Africa Office.

Robert Hazard Edwards (born May 26, 1935) is an American educator who was the seventh president of Carleton College and the thirteenth president of Bowdoin College.