Jean Cohen (Ph.D., The New School for Social Research, 1979) is the Nell and Herbert M. Singer Professor of Political Thought.  She specializes in contemporary political and legal theory, continental political thought, contemporary civilization, critical theory, and international political theory. She works on civil society, sovereignty, human rights, gender, and the law.  She is the author of numerous books and articles including Class and Civil Society: The Limits of Marxian Critical Theory (University of Massachusetts Press: 1982); Civil Society and Political Theory (co-authored with Andrew Arato) (MIT Press 1992); Regulating Intimacy: a New Legal Paradigm (Princeton University Press: 2002); and Globalization and Sovereignty: Rethinking Legitimacy and Legality (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2012).  She has published over 50 articles in journals such as Constellations, Ethics and International Affairs, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Social Research, Political Theory, Telos, Thesis 11, and in numerous law reviews in addition to chapters in edited books.  Her work is translated into many languages including Chinese, French, German, Italian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, and Swedish.

Professor Cohen lectures widely abroad. In Spring of 2008 she held a month-long distinguished lecture series at the College de France. She has been awarded numerous fellowships and honors including the Fulbright Hays Research Fellowship, the Alfred Schutz Memorial Award, NEH summer fellowships, ACLS Travel Grants. She was a Fellow at The Max Planck Institute in Germany and at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York. She has held distinguished Professor posts in Canada (University of Toronto School of Law), France (College de France, Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Sciences Po), Germany (Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitat), and Sweden (Lund University). She was co-Director for 17 years of the Seminar on Philosophy and the Social Sciences, held yearly at the Inter-University Center of Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, and since 1993 in Prague, The Czech Republic.

Professor Cohen is Associate Editor of Constellations, and Global Constitutionalism. She has served on the board of many journals including  Ethics and International Affairs, the Journal of Civil Society, Critical Horizons, The European Journal of Politics, Political Theory, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Thesis 11, Dissent, and Telos.

Before coming to Columbia in 1984 she taught at Bennington College and at The University of California, Berkeley. 

Research Interests: International political and legal theory, global constitutionalism, sovereignty, human rights, critical theory, continental political theory, democratic theory, theory of civil society, and feminist theory

Professor Cohen is teaching in Paris as Alliance Visiting Professor in Spring 2012.