Cathy J. Cohen is the D. Gale Johnson Distinguished Service Professor and the inaugural chair for the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. She formerly served as chair of the Department of Political Science, Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture and Deputy Provost for Graduate Education at the University of Chicago. Cohen is the Cohen is the author of two books, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics (University of Chicago Press) and Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics (Oxford University Press).  She is also co-editor of the anthology Women Transforming Politics: An Alternative Reader (NYU Press) with Kathleen Jones and Joan Tronto. Her articles have been published in numerous journals and edited volumes. Cohen is also co-editor with Frederick Harris of a book series at Oxford University Press.  She is also the founder and director of the GenForward Survey Project and the Black Youth Project.

Cohen is the recipient of numerous awards, including being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, being named a 2020 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, receiving the 2021 Hanes Walter Career Achievement Award from the American Political Science Association and being named a Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar in 2021.  She currently sits on the boards of the Russell Sage Foundation and the Field Foundation.

In addition to her academic work, Cohen has been and continues to be politically active.  She was a founding board member and co-chair of the board of the Audre Lorde Project in NY.  She also served on the boards of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS), the Arcus Foundation and currently the Field Foundation.  Cohen was a core organizer for two international conferences “Black Nations / Queer Nations?” and “Race, Sex, Power” and has also been an active member in numerous organizations such as the Black Radical Congress, ACT UP New York, and African American Women in Defense of Ourselves. Cohen is also a founding member  and on the executive committee of the group Scholars for Social Justice and member of the collective More Than Diversity at the University of Chicago.