Education and Equality to be Subject of Lecture by Danielle Allen at Institute for Advanced Study
Danielle S. Allen, UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, will present “Education and Equality” on Wednesday, November 16, at 4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the Institute campus.
Allen is a political theorist who has published broadly in democratic theory, political sociology and the history of political thought. She is widely known for her work on justice and citizenship in both ancient Athens and modern America. The author of The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (2000), Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education (2004), and Why Plato Wrote (2010), Allen is currently working on books on citizenship in the digital age and education and equality.
Current educational policy discussions frequently invoke “equality” as the reigning ideal. In this lecture, Allen will discuss the question of how to understand the ideal of equality in the context of educational policy. She will go on to examine how clear a view we have of what we mean by this and what exactly we are trying to achieve.
Allen received her undergraduate degree in Classics from Princeton University in 1993. She earned a Master of Philosophy degree in 1994 and a Ph.D. in 1996, both in Classics, from King’s College, University of Cambridge. Harvard University awarded her an M.A. degree in 1998 and a Ph.D. in 2001, both in Government. Allen joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in the Department of Classical Languages and Literatures in 1997 as Assistant Professor. In 2001, she was named Associate Professor and in 2003 she was named Professor. From 2004–07 she also served as Dean of the University’s Division of Humanities. Allen joined the Institute as UPS Foundation Professor in 2007.
In 2002, Allen was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for her ability to combine “the classicist's careful attention to texts and language with the political theorist's sophisticated and informed engagement.” She also received the Hare Prize in Ancient Greek History from the University of Cambridge in 1996 and Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from the University of Chicago in 2001. Allen is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves on the Pulitzer Prize Board and the Editorial Board of the Quarterly Journal of Speech. She is a Trustee of Amherst College, the Institute for the International Education of Students, the Mellon Foundation and Princeton University.
For further information about the lecture, which is free and open to the public, please call (609) 734-8175, or visit the Public Events page on the Institute website, www.ias.edu.
About the Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute exists to encourage and support curiosity-driven research in the sciences and humanities—the original, often speculative thinking that produces advances in knowledge that change the way we understand the world. Work at the Institute takes place in four Schools: Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Social Science. It provides for the mentoring of scholars by a permanent Faculty of approximately 30, and it ensures the freedom to undertake research that will make significant contributions in any of the broad range of fields in the sciences and humanities studied at the Institute.
The Institute, founded in 1930, is a private, independent academic institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. Its more than 6,000 former Members hold positions of intellectual and scientific leadership throughout the academic world. Thirty-three Nobel Laureates and 40 out of 56 Fields Medalists, as well as many winners of the Wolf and MacArthur prizes, have been affiliated with the Institute.