Thanks to the good work of classmate Steven Horwitz, we are pleased that Professor Danielle Allen will join us for a Casual Conversation on Thursday, June 4 from 1:00 to 2:15 pm Eastern Time.
Professor Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor; Director, Democratic Knowledge Project, Harvard Graduate School of Education; and Director, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Her Harvard website, https://danielleallen.scholars.harvard.edu/, describes her current work as follows:
Danielle Allen is a political philosopher whose current research focuses on democracy renovation: how to reconnect citizens to civic power through education and institutional redesign, how to make political institutions more responsive, accountable, and participatory, and how to make public policy that supports democracy.
. . .
Through the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, she leads applied research on electoral reform, civic infrastructure, institutional design, and democracy-supportive public policy. Through the Democratic Knowledge Project-Learn at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she develops and scales civic education curricula for preK-12 students and higher education.
She is the publisher and founder of The Renovator Substack and a contributing columnist at The Atlantic Magazine.
From her cv, which can be found in short and long versions athttps://danielleallen.scholars.harvard.edu/curriculum-vitae , we learn that her fields of expertise include
• History of moral and political thought: Greek and Roman, early modern, American political thought, 20th & 21st centuries
• History of democracies; American political and legal history; Athenian political and legal history
She employs her full set of knowledge in her book Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (Liveright Publishing Corporation (2014), Her thesis is that equality and freedom both live within the Declaration and that this is exposed by a close reading of the document, which she does over some 280 pages, with the first part of her book devoted to Professor Allen’s personal and professional lives and how she progressed to this study of the document.
This Casual Conversation marks the third time a close reading of documents is the (or a) subject of our discussions. Most recently, independent scholar Charles Murray gave his close attention to the Greek Bible to make his case that the common dating was wrong and that the Gospels were informed by eyewitness testimonies. We have also been fortunate to have had Loyola University Maryland Professor Diana Schaub, author of a book that subjected three of Abraham Lincoln’s greatest speeches, including the Gettysburg Address, to an intense close reading.
Professor Schaub was a visiting professor at Harvard when she spoke with us, and with Professor Allen, we have a full professor at the Cambridge MA university to spend time with us. Close reading requires us to see a document that we are familiar with anew, as if for the first time. And what better time than now and what better document than this, as our 250th anniversary as a Nation is marked this July 4th. So, join us one month early to commence our own celebration of July 4th.
Usual rules apply: let me know of your desire to be with us by email by close of business July 2 at: arthur.fergenson@ansalaw.com .
Arthur Fergenson
P.S. With Professor Allen we will have had Casual Conversations with professors from five of the Ivies: Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Yale, and, of course, Dartmouth.