Speaker: Danielle Allen
The Declaration of Independence will have been written 250 years ago in July 2026. This document more than any other in the United States’ history is entrenched in the minds of its citizens as the nation’s representative text. But the Declaration’s signers were full of contradictions, espousing liberty and equality while many owned human beings and practiced elitism. This lecture shows how this founding text changed the world a quarter of a millennium ago and still can today as a document about political equality as much as it is about individual liberty.
Danielle Allen is James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is also Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at the Harvard Kennedy School and Director of the Democratic Knowledge Project-Learn, a research lab focused on civic education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is a professor of political philosophy, ethics, and public policy as well as a seasoned nonprofit leader, democracy advocate, tech ethicist, distinguished author, and mom. She is a contributing columnist at “The Atlantic Magazine” and was the 2020 winner of the Library of Congress’ Kluge Prize, which recognizes scholarly achievement in the disciplines not covered by the Nobel Prize. She is the author of several books, including “Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality” and “Justice by Means of Democracy.”