Anita L. Allen, the Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, has received the 2026 Career Achievement Award from Future of Privacy Forum, a nonprofit organization for privacy leadership and scholarship that aims to advance data practices in support of emerging technology.
Professor Allen, a Penn faculty member since 1998, is an internationally renowned expert on philosophical and social justice dimensions of privacy and data protection law. She is also known for her scholarship on ethics, bioethics, legal philosophy, women’s reproductive rights, and faculty advancement. Throughout her career, she has published more than 130 articles and chapters and several books, including Why Privacy Isn’t Everything: Feminist Reflections on Personal Accountability (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003) and Unpopular Privacy: What Must We Hide? (Oxford University Press, 2011).
At Penn, Professor Allen holds an appointment as a professor emeritus of philosophy in the School of Arts & Sciences. She previously served as the Ivy League institution’s vice provost for faculty from 2013 to 2020. Professor Allen has also held visiting roles with Cornell University, the Johns Hopkins Humanities Center, Tel Aviv University in Israel, Waseda University in Japan, Villanova University, Harvard Law, Fordham Law, Yale Law, Princeton University, and the University of Oxford.
An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Law Institute, the American Philosophical Society and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Professor Allen is a former president of the eastern division of the American Philosophical Association. From 2010 to 2017, she served on President Obama’s Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.
Professor Allen is a graduate of New College of Florida, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in philosophy, classics, and literature. She holds a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School and both a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Michigan.