Anita L. Allen

By AI Staff

Anita L. Allen current holds the titles of the Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and is Vice Provost of Faculty. Within the university, Allen has also worked with the bioethics department, the Africana Studies program, and the gender, sexuality, and women’s studies program. Outside of the University of Pennsylvania, Allen has also taught at places including Georgetown University, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Tel Aviv University. Allen received her BA from the New College of Florida, and her MA and PhD in philosophy from the University of Michigan.

Allen is often cited as an international expert on issues of law and ethics, especially in regards to privacy, as well as women’s rights and diversity in higher education. Much of Allen’s work investigates the intersection between privacy, ethics, and society, and what these things mean in an increasingly advanced age in which the nature and role of privacy in our everyday lives and decisions is constantly shifting. These concerns extended to bioethics as well; in fact, in 2010 Allen was selected by President Barack Obama for the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

For her work, Allen has received numerous honors, awards, and appointments, including election to the National Academy of Medicine, the American Law Institute, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Association, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2022, Allen received the Hastings Center 2022 Bioethics Founders’ Award.

Academic Website

Featured in Top Influential Philosophers Today

Major published works by Anita L. Allen:

• The New Ethics: A Guided Tour of the Twenty-First Century Moral Landscape
• Uneasy Access
• Why Privacy Isn’t Everything