Jelani Cobb
Jelani Cobb is on the faculty of the Columbia University School of Journalism. Previously, he was associate professor of history and director of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama & the Paradox of Progress (Bloomsbury, 2010) and To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic (NYU Press, 2007), which was a finalist for the National Award for Arts Writing. His collection, The Devil & Dave Chappelle and Other Essays (Thunder’s Mouth Press), was also published in 2007. He is editor of The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader. A staff writer for The New Yorker, Cobb received the 2015 Sidney Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism for his columns on race, the police, and injustice.
