Prof. 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 PhD from the University of Michigan in Philosophy,  Allen is internationally renown 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. In 2018-19 she served as President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosiphical Association.

From 2010 to 2017, Allen served on President Obama’s Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. She was presented the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in 2015, and chaired its Board,  2019-2022.  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 and Yale, and a Law and Public Affairs Fellow at Princeton. She was awarded an honorary Doctorate from Tilburg University (Netherlands) in 2019.  She has written over a hundred articles  and chapters, and her books include Unpopular Privacy: What Must We Hide (Oxford, 2011); Privacy Law and Society (Thomson/West, 2017); The New Ethics: A Guided Tour of the 21st Century Moral Landscape (Miramax/Hyperion, 2004); Why Privacy Isn’t Everything: Feminist Reflections on Personal Accountability (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), and Uneasy Access: Privacy of Women in a Free Society (1988). Allen has given hundreds of talks all over the world and appeared on television, radio and written for major media.  She currently serves on the Board of the National Constitution Center, and has served on numerous other boards and professional advisory boards, including the Pennsylvania Board of Continuing Judicial Education, the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the AALS Executive Committee, the Maternity Care Coalition and the West Philadelphia Alliance for Children. She is a member of the Pennsylvania and New York bars, and formerly taught at Georgetown University Law Center for ten years and the University of Pittsburgh, after practicing briefly at Carvath, Swaine & Moore.