Big Ideas: Improving Democracy Conversation with Dr. Danielle Allen and Yuval Levin

Between the stresses imposed by the COVID pandemic and our highly polarized political environment, the country is facing a range of challenges. The inaugural event in our Big Ideas Webinar Series discussed the status of American democracy, the effects of the current health and economic crises on our political system and institutions, and what solutions could be adopted to strengthen our system of government. 

Listen to the podcast.

Danielle Allen is the James Bryant Conant University professor at Harvard University, and director of Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. She is a political theorist who has published broadly on democratic theory, political sociology, and the history of political thought. Widely known for her work on justice and citizenship in both ancient Athens and modern America, Allen is also the principal investigator for the Democratic Knowledge Project, a distributed research and action lab at Harvard University. Allen 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.

Yuval Levin is the director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute and the editor of National Affairs, a quarterly journal of essays on domestic policy and politics. He is also the Hertog Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributing editor of National Review. He was also a member of the White House domestic policy staff (under President George W. Bush) and a congressional staffer. His essays and articles have appeared in numerous publications and he is most recently the author of A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream. Levin graduated from American University with a bachelor's degree in Political Science. He holds an MA and PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.