Mitchell Cohen

For the U.S. federal judge, see Mitchell Harry 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.

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.

Selected bibliography

Books

• The Wager of Lucien Goldmann (Princeton University Press)
• Zion and State (Columbia University Press)
• Co-editor, Princeton Readings in Political Thought (Princeton University Press)
• Editor, Rebels and Reactionaries: An Anthology of Great Political Stories (Dell Books)
• “Why I am still ‘Left’,” Dissent, Spring 1987
• “Rooted Cosmopolitanism,” Dissent, Fall 1990.
• “Decades of Dissent” intro. to N. Mills and M. Walzer, eds Fifty Years of Dissent Magazine (Yale Univ. Press).
• “An Empire of Cant: Hardt, Negri and Post-Modern Political Theory,” Dissent, Summer 2002.
• “In the Murk of it: Iraq Reconsidered,” in T. Cushman ed., A Matter of Principle (University of California Press)
• “France: Red Rose , Blue Fist,” Dissent, Fall 2007,
• “A Roasted Cat will never make a hare-pie’: Thoughts on Political Opera,” in Musik & Ästhetik; and Raisons politiques, May 2004.
• “The New Atheism: An Interview with Mitchell Cohen,” Dissent on line (Fall 2007) at (http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=928)
• “Anti-Semitism and the Left that Doesn’t Learn,” Dissent, Winter 2008 and on line at (http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=972).
• “To the Dresden Barricades: The Genesis of Richard Wagner’s Political Ideas,” T. Grey, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Wagner (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
• Elisabetta Ambrosi, “The Turin Book Fair Controversy: Interview with Mitchell Cohen,” Reset Magazine (Rome, March 11, 2008) On line at (http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1094)

Articles

• "Notes on Jewish Crises". TELOS 33 (Fall 1977). New York: Telos Press

References

• Dissent Magazine website (http://dissentmagazine.org)
• Baruch College, City University of New York Website (Dept of Political Science)
• Graduate Center, City University of New York Website (Dept of Political Science)
• Nicolaus Mills and Michael Walzer, eds., Fifty Years of Dissent Magazine (Yale University Press)

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Name	Cohen, Mitchell
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Date of birth	1952
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