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Person looks toward the camera and smiles, they are standing in front yellow and green fall foliage in the background.
Danielle Allen, photo courtesy of the Harvard Graduate School of Communication

Danielle Allen will mark the nation’s semiquincentennial at ߣ¶ÌÊÓÆµ

Renowned political philosopher, Danielle Allen, will present the 11th Kuroda Symposium in Early American Politics and Culture lecture at ߣ¶ÌÊÓÆµ.

Danielle Allen, author of “Our Declarationâ€� (2014), hailed as a modern classic of American civic thought, draws the arc from 1776 to today, showing how the Declaration’s promise of equality has been contested, betrayed, and renewed across two and a half centuries — and what it demands of us now. 

The lecture, “America at 250: The Declaration’s Unfinished Promise,â€� will take place at 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23, in the gallery at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery. The talk is being held in conjunction with the exhibition “Mark Thomas Gibson: We Are a Constellation,â€� on display at the Tang through Jan. 3, 2027.

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. Professor Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. 

Her most recent book, “Justice by Means of Democracyâ€� (University of Chicago Press, 2023), provides the theoretical foundation for this work. Her forthcoming book, “The Radical Duke,â€� a biography of an 18th-century British political reformer, is due out with Liveright/Norton in 2026. 

Through the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, Allen leads applied research on electoral reform, civic infrastructure, institutional design, and democracy-supportive public policy. Through the Democratic Knowledge Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she develops and scales civic education curricula for prekindergarten through 12th-grade students and higher education. She is the publisher and founder of The Renovator Substack and a contributing columnist at The Atlantic magazine.

The Kuroda Symposium was established to honor Professor Tadahisa Kuroda’s contribution in American history and pedagogy at ߣ¶ÌÊÓÆµ. It is a collaborative effort between the °ä´Ç±ô±ô±ð²µ±ð’s History, Political Science, and American Studies departments.