Acclaimed scholar and author Danielle Allen to speak at Notre Dame Forum event
Danielle Allen, the James Bryant Conant University Professor and director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at Harvard University, will deliver a public talk as part of the 2024-25 Notre Dame Forum at 4 p.m. March 27 in McKenna Hall, Rooms 215/216, and via livestream.
The lecture, titled “Bringing Democracy Back from the Brink: A Strategic Vision and a Call to Action,” is co-sponsored by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, part of the University’s Keough School of Global Affairs, and will also serve as the 31st annual Hesburgh Lecture in Ethics and Public Policy.
Allen will reflect on this year’s Notre Dame Forum theme, “What do we owe each other?” as she explores ways to revitalize democracy in the United States. She will also discuss why she believes the path to health lies in rebuilding a supermajority of people from all political ideologies who are ready to work together to support constitutional democracy.
University President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., will offer words of welcome, and Asher Kaufman, the John M. Regan, Jr. Director of the Kroc Institute, will introduce Allen and the Hesburgh Lecture series. Mary Gallagher, the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School, will facilitate a discussion after the lecture, followed by a reception and book signing.
A professor of political philosophy, ethics and public policy, Allen is also a renowned author and advocate. In addition to writing and editing numerous books on democracy, she is a contributing columnist at The Atlantic and wrote a column on constitutional democracy for the Washington Post from 2008 to 2024.
In 2020, Allen was awarded the Library of Congress’ Kluge Prize, which rewards scholarly achievement in the disciplines not covered by the Nobel Prize. The Library of Congress recognized Allen for “her internationally recognized scholarship in political theory and her commitment to improving democratic practice and civics education.”
Allen is the founder and chairperson of the board for the nonprofit organization Partners in Democracy, which seeks to scale up civic education curricula and democracy renovation policies. She served as chair of the Mellon Foundation from 2015 to 2019, and currently she chairs the board of the nonprofit FairVote and co-chairs the Our Common Purpose Commission at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Her leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the country’s first-ever Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience; her team’s policies were adopted in federal legislation and a presidential executive order. Allen was also a lead author on the Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy, a framework for securing excellence in history and civic education for all learners in grades K-12. Released in 2021, the framework was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education.
Since its establishment in 2005, each year the Notre Dame Forum invites campus-wide dialogue about issues of importance to the University, the nation and the larger world.
Allen’s lecture is also the 2025 Hesburgh Lecture in Ethics and Public Policy. This annual lecture was established by the Kroc Institute in 1995 to honor the late Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., president emeritus of Notre Dame, a global champion of peace and justice and the founder of the Kroc Institute. Each year a distinguished scholar, policymaker and/or peace advocate is invited by the Kroc Institute director to deliver a major lecture on an issue related to ethics and public policy in the context of peace and justice.
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