I’ve Done a Lot of My Writing in the Swimming Pool

Zócalo Book Prize Winner Danielle Allen Loves John Adams

Danielle Allen is the director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and a professor of government at Harvard. She won Zócalo’s fifth annual book prize earlier this year, when she was UPS Foundation professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Before delivering her lecture on how the Declaration of Independence can help Americans relearn how to talk and think about equality, she talked about her affinity for nutty cheeses, mock pear trees in Princeton, and the last time she watched TV in the Zócalo green room.

Q:

Who is your favorite founding father?


A:

That’s funny. I think my favorite founding father is John Adams, which is something that happened over the course of working on Our Declaration. He was not one I’d paid a lot of attention to, but I came to see him as really responsible for the Declaration of Independence and responsible for its anti-slavery elements. And so I have a profound respect for him.


Q:

What’s on your nightstand right now?


A:

I’m just finishing Sheri Fink’s Five Days at Memorial. It’s on my Kindle, and my Kindle’s on my nightstand.


Q:

What TV station is most likely to have been on last in your house?


A:

I’m embarrassed to say we don’t actually have television. We will get TV again soon. I watch television every four years, during presidential election season. So the last TV that was on in our house was the last set of presidential debates in 2012.


Q:

If you went back to college today, what would you major be?


A:

I don’t know, but I would definitely want to take computer science classes, and I would want to take a lot more economics.


Q:

How do you combat writer’s block?


A:

I wish I suffered from writer’s block. I think my problem is more that I have too much I want to write and not enough time to write it in. And I have trouble prioritizing my writing projects, so I can let my time be taken up by lots of small projects when I should be doing big projects. When I’m actually tackling a problem in writing, the real answer for me is to go swimming. Swimming is about rhythm, and writing is about rhythm, and I’ve done a lot of my writing in the swimming pool.


Q:

What do you consider beautiful?


A:

I live in Princeton, New Jersey, and one of the central streets in town is called Witherspoon, and every year in April the mock pear trees on Witherspoon bloom in an incredible profusion of white blossoms, and that stretch of trees is one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen anywhere. So the short answer is, I love light in trees, changing patterns of light on the leaves of trees. My orientation toward beauty is visual, and the natural world is where my focus tends to go.


Q:

What cheese best describes you?


A:

Well, I don’t want to be a smelly cheese! So what cheese would I like to be? A really good Italian parmesan, one of those hard cheeses that’s got that great nutty, subtle flavor. Not that you grate onto pasta but peel slices off of just to eat on their own.


Q:

What’s your hidden talent?


A:

Making sweet potato pies, I suppose. I love to cook. I’m a committed pie-maker, especially at Thanksgiving time, and sweet potato is the family recipe. It’s a tradition.


Q:

What do you love to hate?


A:

Bad writing.


Q:

Who was the last person to leave you a voicemail?


A:

My friend Michelle from kindergarten.