- Pritzker Fellows
- Former Fellows
- Jelani Cobb
Jelani Cobb
Staff Writer at The New Yorker
Jelani Cobb is the Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism at Columbia University’s Journalism School. He joined the faculty in 2016. He has contributed to The New Yorker since 2012, and became a staff writer in 2015. He is the recipient of the 2015 Sidney Hillman Award for Opinion and Analysis writing and writes frequently about race, politics, history and culture.
He was most recently an Associate Professor of History and Director of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut where he specialized in post-Civil War African American history, 20th century American politics and the history of the Cold War. Dr. Cobb is also a recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright and Ford Foundations.
He is the author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress as well as To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic. His articles and essays have appeared in the Washington Post, The New Republic, Essence, Vibe, The Progressive, and TheRoot.com. His collection The Devil and Dave Chappelle and Other Essays was published in 2007. He has also contributed to a number of anthologies including In Defense of Mumia, Testimony, Mending the World and Beats, Rhymes and Life.
He is editor of The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader. Born and raised in Queens, New York. He is a graduate of Howard University and Rutgers University where he received his doctorate in American History.
Seminars
“Race, Reckoning & Progress”
This seminar will examine the intertwined themes of racial inequality, social protest and politics, with particular emphasis upon the dynamics that have defined the chaotic domestic politics of the current moment in the United States. We will also utilize a historical lens where appropriate to contextualize the events we are seeing today and the dynamics that have led us to the present moment.
The spring of 2020 witnessed a trinity of crises: a pandemic, a deep recession and nationwide protests about police brutality. The temptation is to see these as three distinct occurrences that overlapped in time, but each of them disproportionately impacted African Americans and thereby revealed something critical about inequality in United States and the ways that race functions to manufacture and maintain that inequality. We will explore the long-established dynamics that came to the fore in the upheaval of the spring of 2020.
In the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, the phrase “Black Lives Matter” gained new salience in the United States, appearing on city streets, the home pages of major corporations and being uttered by elected officials. But where did this movement come from? And what are its ultimate objectives? This conversation with Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, will examine the underpinnings of the movement, its origins and its impact on the present moment.
Special Guest: Alicia Garza, Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter, Author of "The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart"
Fifty-two years ago Illinois Governor Otto Kerner oversaw a bipartisan commission tasked with understanding why a series of riots and uprisings occurred in American cities in 1967. The report became a landmark study in race and urban policy. Half a century later the Kerner Commission report remains relevant to our conversations about policing, discrimination, inequality and their consequences. We will examine the historic importance of this document and its contemporary relevance.
Special Guest: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Assistant Professor in the Department of African-American Studies at Princeton University, Contributing Writer at The New Yorker, Author of "Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership" & "#BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation"
In 2013 the United States Supreme Court ruling in the Shelby v. Holder case gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a signature legislative achievement of the civil rights movement. Since then we have seen a tide of new laws that make it more difficult to vote with impacts that are disproportionately felt in communities of color. We will look at the new mechanisms for voter disenfranchisement, how they have come about and what is being done in response.
Special Guest: Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University, Author of "White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Nation's Divide"
The American criminal justice system has played a disproportionate role in the shaping and maintaining of racial and socio-economic hierarchy in the United States. With an eye toward history, we will examine the nuances and specific impacts of this system as well as the crucial policy decisions that prefaced the public murder of George Floyd in May 2020.
Special Guest: Khalil Muhammad, Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School & the Suzanne Young Murray Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies & Author of "The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America"
In the summer of 2015 a frequently-ridiculed fixture of New York City social life held a press conference announcing that he would run for President of the United States in part because the country was besieged by “Mexican rapists.” The following day a twenty-one year old white supremacist murdered nine people in a church in Charleston, South Carolina because, in his telling, the country was besieged by black rapists. These two incidents were predictive of the resurrection of a style of white nationalist demagoguery that has navigated its way to the center of American politics. This discussion will examine how and why this has happened as well as its impact upon contemporary progressive movements for social change.
Special Guest: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Distinguished Writer in Residence at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute & Author of "The Beautiful Struggle," "We Were Eight Years in Power," & "Between The World And Me"
We are witnessing the cross-currents of movements attempting to enact landmark change in the United States but where have these movements stemmed from? And what insights can the earlier movements for civil rights, labor rights, women’s rights and gay and lesbian rights offer the current moment?
Special Guest: Rev. William Barber, President & Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival