Bernard S. Cohn (May 13, 1928 – November 23, 2003) was an American anthropologist and scholar of British colonialism in India, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago.
In addition to Chicago, he also taught at the University of Rochester and was a research assistant for the US Army at Fort Benning.
Cohn's contributions included work on India's caste system, by which he established that caste was solidified as a concept by the British codification of it, as well as the establishment of historical anthropology as a means to link the disciplines of anthropology and history.
Cohn's works include Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge (1996), An Anthropologist Among the Historians (1987) and India: The Social Anthropology of a Civilization (1971).
His students, including Nicholas Dirks, Ronald Inden, Vinay Lal, Antoinette Burton, and Ritty Lukose, have continued in the vein of his work.