Danielle Allen and Robert Kagan, two of the nation’s prominent scholars and commentators on matters of democracy, freedom, and the American idea, are joining The Atlantic as contributing writers, editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg announced today. Both writers join The Atlantic from The Washington Post, where they served as opinion columnists.
“The Atlantic is deeply committed to covering the crisis of democracy in all its manifestations, and having Danielle Allen and Robert Kagan join our already excellent team represents a real boon for our readers,” Goldberg said.
Allen, who serves as the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, is a political philosopher and scholar of public policy. She is also director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, and director of the Democratic Knowledge Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has published numerous books on justice and citizenship, including 2023’s Justice by Means of Democracy, as well as Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality and the acclaimed memoir Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A. Allen has contributed several articles to The Atlantic, the most recent about the history of a forgotten Black Founding Father.
Kagan is a senior fellow in the foreign-policy program at the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Brookings Institution. He has written for The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and The Wall Street Journal, and is the author of a number of critically acclaimed and best-selling books, most recently Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart—Again. He is also the author of The Ghost at the Feast: America and Collapse of World Order, 1900–1941; The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World; and Of Paradise and Power. Kagan served in the State Department from 1984 to 1988 as a member of the policy-planning staff, as principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and as deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs.
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