Anita L. Allen

Anita L. Allen is the Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy. A graduate of Harvard Law School with a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Philosophy, Allen is internationally renowned as an expert on philosophical dimensions of privacy and data protection law, ethics, bioethics, legal philosophy, women’s rights, and diversity in higher education. She was Penn’s Vice Provost for Faculty from 2013-2020 and chaired the Provost’s Arts Advisory Council.

Allen is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Law Institute and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 2018-19 she served as President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. From 2010 to 2017, Allen served on President Obama’s Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Allen has served on the faculty of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell, for which she is an advisor. A two-year term as an Associate of the Johns Hopkins Humanities Center concluded in 2018. She has been a visiting professor at Tel Aviv University, Waseda University, Villanova, the University of Arizona, Harvard Law and YaleLaw, and a Law and Public Affairs Fellow at Princeton. She was awarded an honorary Doctorate from Tilburg University (Netherlands) in 2019 and from Wooster College in 2021.