Danielle Allen: How Can Democratic Values Guide Us When Facing A Global Crisis?

Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode Lessons From The Summer

In a democracy, what does the path through a pandemic look like? Political theorist Danielle Allen says the solution require us to preserve individual lives, individual rights, and equality. A version of this segment was originally heard in the June episode, The Greater Good?

About Danielle Allen

Danielle Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and Director of Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, where she now spearheads their COVID-19 Response Initiative, which has published the Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience, the nation's first comprehensive operational roadmap for mobilizing and reopening the U.S. economy in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis.

Allen has published widely on justice, government, and citizenship. She is also the lead investigator for Harvard's Democratic Knowledge Project, a research and action lab that strives to strengthen democracies. Previously, Allen was the chair of the Mellon Foundation Board and the Pulitzer Prize Board and is a current member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

She graduated from Princeton University with a classics degree in 1993 and earned a PhD in classics from King's College at Cambridge University in 1996. She received a second PhD in government from Harvard in 2001.

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