Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy Anita L. Allen has received two prestigious awards that recognize her leadership and pioneering scholarship on privacy.

The American Philosophical Association (APA) selected Allen for its Philip L. Quinn Prize, the greatest tribute the APA has to offer in recognition of service to philosophy and philosophers.

The award celebrates Allen, former President of the APA Eastern Division, for her extraordinary blend of scholarship and leadership.

“This award means the world to me,” Allen said. “It reflects the unexpected success of my interdisciplinary commitments as a scholar, teacher, and mentor. It was remarkable to have been the first Black woman APA president in 2018–19 and it’s a special achievement, as a Black woman, to be receiving the highest award for service to the discipline.”

In a separate ceremony, Allen received the 2022 Berkeley Center for Law & Technology Privacy Award at the 10th Annual BCLT Privacy Law Forum.

Anita L. Allen
Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy

BCLT Faculty Director Chris Hoofnagle said, “Professor Allen’s scholarship has long been at the forefront, foreseeing shifts in the privacy zeitgeist. Her work Unpopular Privacy explores the complex reasons why restraints on freedoms might enhance liberties. This work presages the limits of pursuing an individual-focused, rights-based privacy approach and emphasizes the need to consider privacy as a group value that should be both a right and a duty. Her work on privacy and feminism demonstrates that much of the privacy afforded by institutions is the kind we do not want.”

Allen is an internationally renowned 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 and the American Law Institute and has also served on the faculty of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell, for which she is an advisor, and a two-year term as an Associate of the Johns Hopkins Humanities Center.

A prolific scholar, Allen has published more than 120 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).

She was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in 2015 and chaired its Board (2019–2022). Allen formerly taught at Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Pittsburgh, after practicing briefly at Cravath, Swaine & Moore and teaching philosophy at Carnegie-Mellon University.

She is a graduate of Harvard Law and holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Michigan.