In a rousing and razor-sharp April 8 talk, political scientist and author Danielle Allen painted a vivid picture of a democracy at a crossroads.
Hosted by the Tadler Center for the Humanities and co-sponsored by Endicott’s new Center for Civic Participation, Allen’s lecture explored what she calls “democracy renovation”—a bold reimagining of civic power, state-level reform, and the urgent need for institutional redesign in the age of AI, authoritarian drift, and eroding trust in federal governance.
Allen’s visit supported Endicott’s 2024–25 academic theme, Join the Conversation, which empowers students to engage with complex issues, analyze diverse perspectives, and become active participants in academic and public discourse, which dovetails with the Center for Civic Participation’s mission to foster a culture of civic responsibility through education, dialogue, and community collaboration.
For Allen, the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation and the Democratic Knowledge Project, democracy is personal. It’s what she called her “inheritance.”
Her grandfather helped found one of the first NAACP chapters in northern Florida in the 1940s, while her great-grandparents helped fight for women’s right to vote.
“My great-granddad marched with suffragettes on Boston Common in 1917. So, I was fortunate—I grew up in a family that sees empowerment, and therefore democracy, as the bedrock of human thriving and well-being.”
In 2009, Allen’s thinking about democracy coalesced around the death of her cousin, Michael.
“I was like, you know, hang on, this democracy thing is not supposed to be abstractly valuable,” said Allen. “We embrace these ideals of freedom and equality. But the idea is that when we do, it delivers a society that makes it possible for every generation to do a bit better than the previous generation.”
Instead, Allen was seeing firsthand, through Michael’s untimely death, the stratification of the entire country through income inequality, mass incarceration, and political polarization.
“So, I started banging my head on the question of how to change the dynamics of our democracy to deliver on the promise of democracy.”
For a while, her work focused on criminal justice reform, which taught her that even when common sense and cross-partisan solutions were at play, “it was almost impossible to get them through, especially through Congress, because of government dysfunction, especially in our federal government,” she said.
Allen noted that in 2013, Congress’s approval rating was just nine percent, which has remained unchanged.
“I registered that the institutions of our democracy were fundamentally broken,” she said. “At the end of the day, Congress is supposed to be the voice of the people, and so we, the people, don’t approve of our own voice.”
She began working on “democracy renovation,” a project to reconnect people to their civic power, experience, and responsibility while redesigning American institutions to be worthy of people’s time and participation.
But to fix what’s broken in Washington, “we have to work at the state level,” she said. “That’s one of the paradoxes.”
While it may feel easier to fixate on the drama of federal politics, Allen, a 2021 Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate, urged the audience to focus on the mechanics of electoral systems, particularly the primary process. She argued that how we elect candidates—especially in heavily gerrymandered or low-turnout districts—directly affects whether politicians can compromise and govern effectively.
Allen said that adopting all-candidate primaries and ranked-choice voting, like in Alaska, Louisiana, and California, where every voter—regardless of party—can weigh in from the start, will result in more competitive elections, more public debate, and more moderate candidates who are incentivized to appeal to a broader swath of the electorate.
“When people are elected by such a small percentage of the electorate, that’s who they work for,” she said, citing that Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana break from partisan strongholds when they need to because they have more freedom in their decision-making, thanks to their states’ election models.
“It means candidates must run to the whole electorate,” she explained. “And that means they can put country over party when it comes down to it.”
Beyond electoral reform, Allen examined the broader geopolitical forces reshaping democracy in real-time, including the rise of artificial intelligence and the consolidation of power in governments and private tech empires. She warned that democracy’s most significant challenges may not always arrive with fanfare or obvious intent. Sometimes, they come in sleek packaging and under the guise of efficiency.
To illustrate this, Allen introduced a vivid metaphor: the duck-rabbit illusion, a classic optical trick in which a single image can appear to be either animal depending on one’s perspective.
“Can y’all see both?” she asked the audience. “Same set of lines on a page. Exactly the same set of facts, in other words. But you might think it’s a duck, or you might think it’s a rabbit. And that’s the challenge of the political world that we’re currently living in.”
Allen explained that in today’s hyper-polarized information environment, people can look at the exact same events or data and come away with drastically different interpretations. That, she argued, makes this moment in American democracy especially precarious: “Some people will say it’s a duck. Other people are going to say it’s a rabbit. So, one of our jobs is to figure out what we’re watching in Washington—a rabbit or a duck.”
President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are at the heart of this conundrum. In Trump’s case, Allen acknowledged that one interpretation—the rabbit—is a constitutionally grounded vision of a unitary executive, consolidating authority within the presidency but still operating within checks and balances. But others may see a duck: a monarchical figure dismantling institutional guardrails, undermining democratic norms, and exploring extra-constitutional paths to power.
Musk, meanwhile, represents a different kind of duck entirely. His growing ownership and influence over digital infrastructure—from AI to satellites to payment systems—spur questions about innovation and governance. Allen pointed to his role in creating DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency), a restructuring of the U.S. government’s tech backbone, raising red flags about surveillance, data monopolies, and the unchecked power of unelected technocrats.
“This is a historical contest over what framework of political economy is going to define the world as AI transforms it,” she said.
In such a moment—when facts can be framed as either duck or rabbit—Allen’s message underscored that the future of democracy depends not just on what happens in Washington or even Silicon Valley but on what we’re willing to do in our own backyard.
“If we’d like to see a national government that is working for us, is working to solve problems, is treating human beings well, is putting human flourishing at the center of the work, we can make that happen by working at the state level,” she said.
To do that, building a pluralistic supermajority that’s cross-ideological and multiracial is essential, she said, “because we’re committed to the idea that we should own these institutions—and they should work for us.”
The Presidential Speaker Series featuring Sean Astin, sponsored by the Endicott Center for Civic Participation, will take place on April 23 at 6 p.m. in the Cleary Lecture Hall. Tickets are going fast.