Mitchell Cohen is an author, essayist and critic, He is professor of political science at Baruch College of the City University of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center.
He defines himself as a "social democratic" humanist or a "liberal socialist" and coined the term “rooted cosmopolitanism” to describe how a citizen can be linked to his or her own society while also being a universalist.
His articles and essays have appeared in numerous publications and languages including the Times Literary Supplement, Les Temps Modernes, Musik & Aesthetik, Nexus, and the New York Times Book Review.
His book The Wager of Lucien Goldmann is a sympathetic study of the thought of a Romanian-French Marxist humanist intellectual.
It was named one of the best books of the year in the London Evening Standard and Cohen also received for it the Presidential Achievement Award for Excellence in Scholarship of Baruch College of the City University of New York.