Mitchell Cohen

Mitchell Cohen is an author, political essayist, and since 1991, co-editor of Dissent, one of America’s leading intellectual quarterlies. Born in New York in 1952, he received his doctorate from Columbia University. He is professor of political science at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He blogs at the Huffington Post.

Cohen’s articles and books treat diverse themes ranging from social democratic theory and the idea of cosmopolitanism to the relation between political ideas and culture, especially opera. He defines himself as a “social democrat” or a “liberal socialist” and coined the term “rooted cosmopolitanism” to describe how a citizen can be linked to his or her own society while being a universalist at the same time. He has guest lectured at numerous European and American universities, was National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton and a visiting professor at Stanford. He is “American Correspondent” of Raisons politiques and a member of the editorial board of Jewish Social Studies. His articles and essays have appeared in numerous publications and languages including the Times Literary Supplement, Les Temps Modernes, Musik & Aesthetik, and the New York Times Book Review.