Louisville author, history scholar named to global affairs post

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Louisville author and European and global history scholar Deborah Cohen has been named executive director of the Roberta Buffett Institute of Global Affairs at Northwestern University.

Cohen, a graduate of Louisville’s Saint Frances High School, has served as interim director of the Buffett Institute since January, according to Northwestern Now. Cohen will manage the Buffett Institute’s mission to foster interdisciplinary teaching and research about the world beyond the United States. The institute brings academic expertise to the challenges facing people around the globe.

Cohen, the Richard W. Leopold professor of history in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, told Northwestern Now of the honor, ” Our students and faculty at Northwestern strive to engage with the world in its entirety from pioneering climate science to cutting-edge social scientific work to investigations of humanity through deep time, they are shaping public understanding of complex international issues. It’s an honor to have the chance to contribute to an institute with a mission that’s utterly essential to current and future generations.”

Cohen has written four books including her most recent, and critically acclaimed, “Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War.”

The book received rave reviews from multiple outlets including the Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker. Cohen brought her book tour home to Louisville in 2022, with a stop at Carmichael’s Bookstore on Frankfort Avenue.

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