Allida Black
Distinguished visiting scholar at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, adviser to Hillary Clinton, human rights activist
Unity doesn't require unanimous consent. America has never had that. What it does demand is the courage to realize that compromise is good -as long as you compromise "up." Only then will we understand what lines should never be crossed.
Allida Black, Ph.D., is Special Advisor and Historian to former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Visiting Distinguished Scholar at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, and the Managing Director of the Allenswood Group, LLC, a collaborative she founded to strengthen democracy through education and civic engagement and to preserve and document women’s political history. She founded and co-directs the Hillary Rodham Clinton Oral History Project, a policy-driven exploration of Clinton’s service as the nation’s 67th Secretary of State and advises the Secretary on her archives and other history-based initiatives.
Dr. Black is also recognized as a leading expert on Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. From 1999-2010, as Research Professor of History and International Affairs at The George Washington University, she conceptualized and directed The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, a documentary collection of archival material gathered from 263 archives in the US and abroad, to preserve, teach and apply Eleanor Roosevelt’s writings and discussions of human rights and democratic politics. In 2009, she conceptualized and led the Courage to Lead, a symposium of 100 women leaders from 50 post-conflict nations, for the US Department of State and the UN High Commission for Human Rights.
In 2010, she served as executive editor of the fdr4freedoms Digital Initiative, a web-based digital history of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt era for Four FreedomsPark -a public space dedicated to contemplating freedom from fear and want and freedom of speech and worship.She has written and edited ten books as well as a variety of articles on women, politics, and human rights policy and has curated exhibits for presidential libraries, the United Nations, national historic sites, and private museums.
Outside the academy, she has led workshops around the world on human rights, conflict resolution, and women and girl’s empowerment for the United Nations, the US StateDepartment, and non-governmental organizations.
She is a trustee of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library; secretary of the Gaea Foundation; and a director of the Campaign School at Yale, the Marjorie Kovler Center for the Survivors of Torture, the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology, the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Foundation, the Center for New Deal Studies at Roosevelt University, and the University of Mary Washington.
She holds a doctorate in recent US political history from The George Washington University and is the winner of multiple awards for her scholarship, teaching, and community service.She lives in Arlington, Virginia with her spouse Judy Beck and their two dogs, Rocky and Granger.