Jelani Cobb is a staff writer at The New Yorker and professor in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He received the 2015 Sidney Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism for his New Yorker columns, which include “The Anger in Ferguson,” “Murders in Charleston,” and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Reparations.” For his PBS “Frontline” series “Policing the Police,” the Writer’s Guild of America awarded him the 2017 Walter Bernstein Award. Cobb previously taught history and directed the Africana Studies Institute at University of Connecticut. A recipient of Fulbright and Ford Foundation fellowships, his books include The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress.
