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Posts tagged as “Danielle Allen”

Professor and Poet Elizabeth Alexander Named President of Mellon Foundation

By goodblacknews on February 9, 2018

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Elizabeth Alexander (photo via elizabethalexander.net)

by Robin Pogebrin via nytimes.com

Elizabeth Alexander, whose memoir was a finalist in 2016 for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award and who wrote and recited an original poem at Barack Obama’s 2009 inaugural, will be the next president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the country’s largest humanities philanthropy.

“All of the things that I’ve cared about my whole life and worked toward my whole life Mellon does,” said Ms. Alexander in a telephone interview, citing areas like higher education and scholarship, arts and cultural heritage, and diversity.

She added that “arts and humanities are not the most protected entities right now.”

Ms. Alexander succeeds Earl Lewis, who has served since 2013. She will start in March, becoming the foundation’s first female president.

“She has deep experience in cultivating partnerships that extend and amplify creative vision,” Danielle Allen, the foundation’s chairwoman, said in a statement, adding that Ms. Alexander “brings an artist’s forward-looking energy to institutional purpose.”

Ms. Alexander, who has written six books of poetry and two essay collections, was most recently a humanities professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Before that, she served as the director of creativity and free expression at the Ford Foundation, where she helped design Agnes Gund’s $100 million Art for Justice Fund.

“This appointment is a milestone in the history of American philanthropy,” said Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation. “It’s the combination of being both rooted in the arts and grounded in the humanities and understanding philanthropy that is going to make her a success.”

Ms. Alexander has also worked closely with the Poetry Center at Smith College; the nonprofit Cave Canem, which trains aspiring poets; and Yale University, where she spent 15 years on the faculty and helped rebuild the African-American Studies department.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/arts/design/mellon-foundation-president-elizabeth-alexander.html

Danielle Allen Named University Professor at Harvard – Its Highest Faculty Member Honor

By goodblacknews on November 19, 2016

Harvard University Professor Danielle Allen (photo via harvardgazette.com)
Harvard University Professor Danielle Allen (photo via harvardgazette.com)

article via jbhe.com
Danielle Allen was appointed the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, effective January 1. This is the highest honor bestowed on a faculty member at Harvard. Currently there are 24 University Professors at Harvard, including Henry Louis Gates Jr. and William Julius Wilson.
In announcing the appointment, Harvard President Drew Faust stated that “Danielle Allen is one of the most distinguished and creative scholars of her generation. Her interests bridge an extraordinary range of fields, her ideas illuminate new avenues of scholarship and education, and her influence extends across the academy and well beyond.”
Dr. Allen joined the faculty at Harvard in 2015. She is a professor of government, professor of education, and the director of the Edmond L. Safra Center for Ethics at the university. Before joining the faculty at Harvard, Dr. Allen was the UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Earlier, she served on the faculty at the University of Chicago for more than a decade.
Professor Allen is a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University where she majored in the classics. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in the classics from Cambridge University. In addition, she has a master’s degree and Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University.
Dr. Allen is the author of five books including The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (Princeton University Press, 2000) and Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (Liveright, 2014).