As we celebrate 250 years of American democracy in 2026, join The McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State for a lecture from one of the country's leading democracy scholars and practitioners, Danielle Allen. In this talk, Allen draws an arc from the American founding to the present to explore how the original vision of the Declaration of Independence can serve us still, even as we also recognize and remedy its imperfections. She will also discuss reforms that can strengthen American democracy moving forward.

Danielle Allen is James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is also Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at the Harvard Kennedy School and Director of the Democratic Knowledge Project, a research lab focused on civic education. She chairs the board of FairVote, the nation’s leading advocate for ranked choice voting, and is a co-chair of the Our Common Purpose Commission at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where she is a member. Her books include Justice by Means of Democracy, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, and Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus.

This event is co-sponsored by Penn State's Africana Research Center, Humanities Institute, and the Richards Civil War Era Center.