Jean Louise Cohen is Nell and Herbert M. Singer Professor of Political Thought and Contemporary Civilization at Columbia University. Professor Cohen’s fields of expertise include critical theory, sovereignty, human rights, religion and democratic constitutionalism, gender and the law. Professor Cohen is the author of Class and Civil Society: The Limits of Marxian Critical Theory (1982), coauthor (with Andrew Arato) of Civil Society and Political Theory (1992), and author of Regulating Intimacy: A New Legal Paradigm (2002), Globalization and Sovereignty: Rethinking Legality, Legitimacy, and Constitutionalism (2012). Professor Cohen recently coedited Religion, Secularism, and Constitutional Democracy (2016) with Cécile Laborde. She is currently the co-editor of Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory.
Professor Cohen has been appointed Spring 2016 Senior Fellow at the Jean Monnet Center – New York University School of Law. She has also taught abroad at many institutions including the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitat in Germany and, in France, over the years several times as a visiting professor at Sciences Po, and at the EHESS; as an Alliance Professor La Sorbonne, Paris 1 ; and as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Collège de France.