Jelani Cobb | The Half-Life of Freedom, Race and Justice in America Today

The Department of African and African American Studies at Stanford presents the 31st Annual St. Clair Drake Memorial Lecture featuring Jelani Cobb, PhD (Dean of Columbia Journalism School and Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism). Doors will open at 5:00 p.m. and, with some exceptions, seating is not reserved.

About the Speaker

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 Dean of Columbia Journalism School. He recently co-edited The Matter of Black Lives, a collection of The New Yorker’s most ground-breaking writing on Black history and culture in America, featuring the work of legendary writers like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. Jelani also edited and wrote a new introduction for The Kerner Commission—a historic study of American racism and police violence originally published in 1967—helping to contextualize it for a new generation. The condensed version of the report, called The Essential Kerner Commission Report, is described as an “essential resource for understanding what Jelani calls the ‘chronic national predicament’ of racial unrest” (Publishers Weekly).

During a historic election, Jelani investigated allegations of voter fraud and disenfranchisement as a PSB Frontline correspondent in the documentary Whose Vote Counts, revealing how these unfounded claims entered the political mainstream. He clearly presents how racial inequities, COVID-19, and voter suppression became interlinked crises, contributing to a long legacy of inequality. For tackling one of the key issues at the heart of modern U.S. politics and carefully elucidating what the fight for voting rights looks like in the 21st century, Whose Vote Counts received a Peabody Award. Jelani was also the correspondent for the Frontline documentary Policing the Police, where he examined whether police reform is a viable solution in the wake of mounting protests calling for racial justice, and explored how we can hold police departments accountable. Previously, Cobb was prominently featured in Ava Duvernay’s 13th, her Oscar-nominated documentary about the current mass incarceration of Black Americans, which traces the subject to its historical origins in the Thirteenth Amendment. Jelani 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. He is also a recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation and the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the American Journalism Project, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023. He was appointed the Dean of Columbia Journalism School in 2022.

About the Series

The St. Clair Drake Memorial Lectures are dedicated to the memory of Professor St.Clair Drake, renowned African American anthropologist and educator, and the founding Director of the Program in African and African American Studies.