Jelani Cobb is the dean of Columbia Journalism School, where he joined the faculty in 2016. Cobb is also a staff writer at The New Yorker, since 2015, and was a 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Commentary finalist. He is the author of “The Substance of Hope” and “To the Break of Dawn” and editor of “The Matter of Black Lives” and “The Essential Kerner Commission Report.” Cobb previously taught history and directed the Africana Studies Institute at University of Connecticut. He is an American Journalism Project board member and a New York Public Library trustee. Cobb received a Peabody Award for his 2020 PBS Frontline film “Whose Vote Counts?” and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023.
Previously

Our country is in the midst of a heated debate about the limits of free speech — and it manifests in a number of contexts. How should the problem of hate speech be resolved, e...

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For our annual signature event in the Benedict Music Tent, the 2018 Aspen Ideas Festival hosts former secretary of state John Kerry in a candid conversation about geopolitics...

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