Danielle Allen is Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is a political theorist who has published broadly in democratic theory, political sociology, and the history of political thought. Widely known for her work on justice and citizenship in both ancient Athens and modern America, Allen is the author of The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens(2000), Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown vs. the Board of Education (2004), Why Plato Wrote (2010), Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (2014), and Education and Equality (2016). She is the co-editor of the award-winning Education, Justice, and Democracy (2013, with Rob Reich) and From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in the Digital Age (2015, with Jennifer Light). Her newest book is Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A., a memoir about her relationship with her cousin, who was a convicted felon by the age of fifteen and was murdered at the age of twenty-nine. Allen looks back on her family’s past and digs deeply into her cousin’s life in a book Kirkus called “a searing memoir and sharp social critique.”
Our Declaration review by the Washington Post