Professor Emeritus, Philosophy
About
Carl Cohen, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy in the Residential College of the University of Michigan. His nine books, translated into many languages, include: Democracy (1972); Civil Disobedience: Conscience, Tactics and the Law (1971); Naked Racial Preference (1997); Four Systems (1982); Communism, Fascism and Democracy: The Theoretical Foundations (3rd ed., 1997), and most recently, A Conflict of Principles: The Battle over Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan (2014). He is coauthor of The Animal Rights Debate (with Tom Regan, 2001), Affirmative Action and Racial Preference (with James Sterba, 2003), and the most widely used textbook in logic around the globe, Introduction to Logic, (with Irving Copi) whose 15th edition, in progress, will be published in 2016. Cohen has published scores of essays on contemporary philosophical controversies, e.g.: abortion, freedom of speech, conscientious objection, human subject use, genetic engineering, organ transplantation, and the use of animals in biomedical research, in various periodicals including: The Nation, The Civil Liberties Review, The New York Times, The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Texas Law Review, The Yale Review, The Michigan Review, Ethics, and The New England Journal of Medicine. Professor Cohen was the founder, and for ten years the Director of the Program in Human Values in Medicine at the UM Medical School. He served as Chairman of the UM Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs (SACUA), on the Executive Committee of the College of LS&A, and was one of the planners and founding members of the UM Residential College in 1967. He served for years as a member of the National Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union, and as Chair of its Michigan affiliate. He is an active member of the labor panel of the American Arbitration Association. Having been appointed to the Philosophy Department in 1955, Carl Cohen is the senior member of the faculty of the University of Michigan.
