Jelani Cobb to Deliver 2023 Bradlee Lecture October 25

The 2023 Benjamin Bradlee Distinguished Lecture in Journalism will be delivered on October 25 by Jelani Cobb.

A PBS Frontline correspondent for two critically acclaimed documentaries—Policing the Police and Whose Vote Counts—Jelani Cobb explores the enormous complexities of race and inequality, while offering guidance and hope for the future. A long-time writer for The New Yorker, and editor of its recent anthology collection The Matter of Black Lives, Cobb’s work is described as having the “rigor and depth of a professional historian with the alertness of a reporter, the liberal passion of an engaged public intellectual, and the literary flair of a fine writer.”

Cobb is the recipient of the  Hillman Prize for opinion and analysis journalism, as well as the Walter Bernstein Award from the Writer’s Guild of America for his investigative work on Policing the Police. He is the author of Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress, and To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic. 

Jelani Cobb is a staff writer at The New Yorker, writing on race, history, justice, politics, and democracy, as well as Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism and was appointed Dean of the Columbia Journalism School in 2022.