Commencement Danielle S. Allen

May 20, 2018

Danielle S. Allen is a political theorist and public intellectual who has published broadly in democratic theory, political sociology and the history of political thought. As the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard, director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, Allen is widely known for her work on justice and citizenship in both ancient Athens and modern America. Allen believes that understanding democracy is a prerequisite to being an effective citizen. In her work, she combines intellectual questions with practical concerns, considering such topics as the role of anger in the judicial system, what egalitarian political empowerment looks like, and the importance of ties that connect across differences in conjunction with valuing diversity.

Allen is the principal investigator for the Democratic Knowledge Project, a distributed research and action lab at Harvard University. The project seeks to identify, strengthen and disseminate the bodies of knowledge, skills and capacities that citizens need in order to successfully operate their democracy.

A former trustee of Amherst College and former chair of the College’s External Advisory Committee on Diversity, Inclusion and Excellence, Allen is author of The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (2000), Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown v. Board of Education (2004), Why Plato Wrote (2010), Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (2014), Education and Equality (2016) and Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A. (2017). She is co-editor of the award-winning Education, Justice, and Democracy (2013, with Rob Reich) and From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in a Digital Age (2015, with Jennifer Light).

Allen is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, chair of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Board and past chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board. She has been a MacArthur Fellow and a Marshall Scholar. Allen holds an A.B. from Princeton University, an M. Phil. and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.