Steve Cohen

Steve Cohen taught high school history for fifteen years and has been teaching at Tufts University since 1995.  He is a Senior Lecturer in Education and also teaches courses in the Peace and Justice and the American Studies programs as well as being Affiliated Faculty in the History Department.  He has worked on educational projects beyond the classroom, editing and writing anthologies to accompany the public television documentaries, Vietnam  A Television History  and Eyes On The Prize.  He has also been working with WGBH on the public television website:  pbslearningmedia.org.  Steve was a Program Associate with Facing History and Ourselves for two decades and has written articles about teaching controversial issues like the Vietnam War, the dropping of the Atomic Bomb, and the Holocaust.  He was the recipient of the Lerman-Neubauer Prize for Outstanding Teaching and Advising in 2003 at Tufts University.  He was voted Professor of the Year by the Tufts Student Senate in the spring of 2007.  He was voted Professor of the Year by the Tufts Democrats in the spring of 2010.  He has, quite obviously, been in a slump for over a decade.

Steve wrote the above, typical of his modesty and warmth. I first met Steve when I was looking for the Director of our nascent Inquiry High School Global Issues simulation Initiative. With Steve, we turned it into one of the premiere global affairs program for high school students and teachers, radically different from Model UN in its insistence that while students learn their roles, their objective was to break through the stasis and paralysis of typical diplomatic negotiations. Steve was so successful that we happily parted formal ways as he was hired as a lecturer and professor at Tufts School of Education, where he has mentored hundreds of Masters students, seeking to enter the teaching ranks as Social studies teachers. The informal part is much more fun and entertaining as his witticisms are renowned and his university office is plastered with New Yorker cartoons. He beat me regularly at tennis and we have enjoyed evenings watching the Red Sox at Fenway park. We had one significant outcome when we reached out to Steve to create the Educators for Social Responsibility, SECRECY AND DEMOCRACY.

Thinking of developing a curriculum for Paul Jay on his documentary on Dans Ellsberg, based on Dans book “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner” makes me smile broadly as I remember Heather being the prime contributor to a curriculum we developed as a part of the 1988 covert action and democracy year, led by Steve. Steve wrote in the acknowledgements, “Heather Barry, a student in the class served as the chief researcher and content consultant for this project. Her assistance, advise and humor were invaluable.” Steve has continued for decades as a mentor and advisor for the Inquiry program and its many national delegations.