Program on Global Justice
Encina Hall West, Room 404
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305

jcohen57@stanford.edu
(650) 723-0256 (voice)

Research Interests
issues of global justice, including the foundations of human rights, distributive fairness, and supra-national democratic governance

Joshua Cohen is a professor of law, political science, and philosophy at Stanford University, and director of the Program on Global Justice at FSI. He is a political theorist, trained in philosophy, with a special interest in issues that lie at the intersection of democratic norms and institutions.

Cohen has written extensively on issues of democratic theory, particularly deliberative democracy and the implications for personal liberty, freedom of expression, and campaign finance. Currently, Professor Cohen is concentrating his scholarship on issues of global justice, including the foundations of human rights, distributive fairness, and supranational democratic governance. Cohen's many publications on political philosophy include several written with University of Michigan law professor Joel Rogers: On Democracy (1983); Inequity and Intervention: The Federal Budget and Central America (1986); Rules of the Game (1986); and Associations and Democracy (1995). A first volume of his selected papers, Philosophy, Politics, Democracy is being published by Harvard University Press (fall 2009), and A Free Community of Equals: Rousseau on Democracy is forthcoming from Oxford University Press (spring 2010). He is also editor of Boston Review, a bi-monthly magazine of political, cultural, and literary ideas; and has edited 18 books that grew out of forums that initially appeared in Boston Review.

Professor Cohen comes to Stanford University from Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he served as professor of philosophy and political science, and as chair of both departments. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and among his many honors are the Harold E. Edgerton Award, the highest honor given to young faculty at M.I.T, the James and Ruth Levitan Prize in the Humanities, multiple teaching awards from M.I.T., and the Carlyle Professorship at Oxford University in 1999.