Early Life and Education

Mitchell Cohen was born in New York City. He pursued undergraduate studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He earned his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.

Academic Career

• Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Baruch College of the City University of New York (CUNY)
• Professor of Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center
• Guest lecturer at numerous European and American universities
• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
• Visiting professor at Stanford University
• City University of New York Writing Fellow at the Levy Biography Center
• American 'Correspondent' of Raisons politiques
• Member of the editorial boards of Jewish Social Studies and Israel Studies Review

Editorial Roles

• Co-editor of Dissent magazine (1991-2009)
• Editor Emeritus of Dissent

Publications

Books:

• The Politics of Opera: A History from Monteverdi to Mozart (Princeton University Press, 2017)
• The Wager of Lucien Goldmann (Princeton University Press)
• Zion and State: Nation, Class and Shaping of Modern Israel (Blackwell/Columbia University Press)

Edited Collections:

• Princeton Readings in Political Thought: 2nd Edition (Princeton University Press, 2018)
• Rebels and Reactionaries: An Anthology of Great Political Stories (Dell Books)
• Class Struggle and the Jewish Nation: Selected Essays by Ber Borochov (Transaction Books, 1984)

He has published numerous essays in Dissent, Jewish Social Studies, Israel Studies Review, Times Literary Supplement, and others. Notable essays include 'Rooted Cosmopolitanism' (Dissent, Fall 1990), where he coined the term, and 'Why Lenin's Critics were Right' (Dissent, Fall 2017).

Political Views

Cohen describes himself as a social democratic humanist or liberal socialist. He has written extensively on socialism, Zionism, anti-Semitism on the left, and political theory.