MacArthur Foundation, which doles out as much as $500,000 to individuals like Danielle Allen, a Classics professor at University of Chicago, to help her write about Thucydides, Aristotle, and Hobbes.
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Open Society Institute
2004 Soros Foundations Network Report
No conversation in the United States—or anywhere in the world, for that matter, since skin color seems to be a universal indicator of status—is as charged and complex as the one about race. It is, among other things, quite personal—what MacArthur Fellow Danielle Allen calls “racial distrust” is deeply ingrained, and every person brings to these matters his or her sense of pride, principle, and hurt. The consequences of past and continuing discrimination affect virtually every matter that OSI deals with, for there can be no truly open society where access and opportunities are limited by race.
Widely known for her work on justice and citizenship in ancient Athens and its application to modern America, Danielle Allen is the author of The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (2000) and Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown vs. the Board of Education (2004).
In 2002 she 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.”
Allen’s plans for future work include a theoretical study of politics and change; an historical study of Platonic political thought; an examination of the concept of equality; and a theoretical study of democracy, knowledge and higher education.