Danielle Allen

Danielle Allen
Born	(1971-11-03) November 3, 1971 (age 49) Takoma Park, Maryland, U.S.
Education	Princeton University (BA) King's College, Cambridge (MPhil, PhD) Harvard University (MA, PhD)
Spouse(s)	James Doyle[1]
Children	2[2]
Awards	Marshall Scholarship MacArthur Fellowship Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Main interests	political theory, history of political thought, political sociology, Greek and Roman political history

Danielle Susan Allen (born November 3, 1971)^[3] is an American classicist and political scientist. She is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, where she is also the Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard in 2015, Allen was UPS Foundation Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study^[4][5] in Princeton, New Jersey. As of January 1, 2017, she is also James Bryant Conant University Professor, Harvard’s highest faculty honor.^[6][7] Allen is the daughter of political scientist William B. Allen.^[2]

Allen was a contributing columnist at The Washington Post until she announced in December 2020 that she was exploring a run for Governor of Massachusetts in 2022.^[8][9][10] She formally announced her campaign in June 2021.^[11]

Education and academic career[]

Allen graduated from Princeton University in 1993 with an A.B. in Classics. She earned summa cum laude honors and an induction into Phi Beta Kappa.^[12] Allen completed a 178-page senior thesis, titled "The State of Judgment", under the supervision of Andre Laks.^[13] As a Marshall Scholar, she studied at King's College, Cambridge University, where she received an M.Phil. in classics in 1994 and a Ph.D. in classics in 1996. Allen then pursued further graduate studies at Harvard University, earning an M.A. in government in 1998 and a Ph.D. in government in 2001. From 1997 to 2007, she served on the faculty of the University of Chicago, earning appointments as a professor of both classics and political science, as well as membership on the university’s Committee on Social Thought. She served as Dean of the Division of the Humanities from 2004 to 2007.^[14] She organized The Dewey Seminar: Education, Schools and the State, with Rob Reich.^[15]

She is former trustee of Amherst College^[16] and is a past chair of the Pulitzer Prize board,^[17] where she served from 2007 to 2015.^[1] She spent the next eight years as the UPS Foundation Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, before joining the Harvard faculty and becoming director of the Safra Center in 2015.^[18]

Her scholarly contributions have been widely recognized. She was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 2001, in recognition of her combining “the classicist’s careful attention to texts and language with the political theorist’s sophisticated and informed engagement”. An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society,^[19] Allen is a past chair of the Mellon Foundation board of trustees and a past chair of the Pulitzer Prize board, and has served as a trustee of both Amherst College and Princeton University.

In addition to her teaching and scholarship, Allen has become an integral University citizen since her return to Harvard. She serves as co-chair of the newly appointed University-wide task force on inclusion and belonging, and is a member of both the Faculty Council of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the University’s Advisory Committee on Honorary Degrees. She has also been recognized for her outstanding teaching, earning high Q scores from Harvard students and having received the University of Chicago’s Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

The New Yorker published Allen's "The Life of a South Central Statistic" in its July 24, 2017 issue.^[20]

Together with Stephen B. Heintz and Eric Liu, Allen chaired the bipartisan Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[21] The commission, which was launched "to explore how best to respond to the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in our political and civic life and to enable more Americans to participate as effective citizens in a diverse 21st-century democracy", issued a report, titled Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century, in June 2020. The report included strategies and policy recommendations "to help the nation emerge as a more resilient democracy by 2026".^[22]

Political career[]

Allen announced in December 2020 that she would explore a candidacy in the 2022 Massachusetts gubernatorial race.^[23]

Awards and honors[]

• 1993 Marshall Scholar
• 2001 Quantrell Award for Excellence ^[24]
• 2001 MacArthur Fellows Program^[25]
• 2009 Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences^[3]
• 2015 Francis Parkman Prize^[26]
• 2017 James Bryant Conant University Professor^[7]
• 2018 Doctor of Humane Letters, Amherst College^[27]
• 2020 John W. Kluge Prize, Library of Congress^[28]

Works[]

• "It's Up to Obama", Democracy Issue #16, Spring 2010
• The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens, 2000, (reprint Princeton University Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-691-09489-2)
• Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown vs. the Board of Education, University of Chicago Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-226-01466-1
• Why Plato Wrote, John Wiley & Sons, Limited, 2010, ISBN 978-1-4443-3448-7
• Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, Liveright, 2014, ISBN 978-0871406903
• From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in a Digital Age, University of Chicago Press, 2015, ISBN 978-0-226-26212-3
• Education and Equality, University of Chicago Press, 2016, ISBN 978-0226373102.
• Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A., W. W. Norton & Company, 2017, ISBN 978-1-63149-311-9

References[]

External links[]

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• "An interview with Danielle S. Allen", University of Chicago Press, 2004. About Talking to Strangers.
• Mosk, Matthew, "An Attack That Came Out of the Ether", The Washington Post, June 28, 2008
• American Denial, PBS Independent Lens, broadcast February 22, 2015. Featured interview.