39 Facts About Roger Cohen

Roger Cohen is a correspondent and former foreign editor and Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times.

Roger Cohen has worked as a foreign correspondent in more than 60 countries and was named Paris bureau chief in October 2020.

Roger Cohen won a scholarship and would have entered College, the scholars' House, but was told that a Jew could not attend College or hold his particular scholarship.

In 1973, Roger Cohen travelled with friends throughout the Middle East, including Iran and Afghanistan.

Roger Cohen drove a Volkswagen Kombi named 'Pigpen' after the late keyboard-playing frontman of the Grateful Dead.

Roger Cohen studied History and French at Balliol College, Oxford, and graduated in 1977.

Roger Cohen left that year for Paris to teach English and to write for Paris Metro.

Roger Cohen died there in 1999 and was buried in Johannesburg.

In 1983, Roger Cohen joined The Wall Street Journal in Rome to cover the Italian economy.

Roger Cohen joined The New York Times in January 1990.

Roger Cohen worked for The New York Times as its European economic correspondent, based in Paris, from January 1992 to April 1994.

Roger Cohen then became the paper's Balkan bureau chief, based in Zagreb, from April 1994 to June 1995.

Roger Cohen covered the Bosnian War, mainly from Sarajevo, and the related Bosnian Genocide.

Roger Cohen's expose of a Serb-run Bosnian concentration camp won the Burger Human Rights Award from the Overseas Press Club of America.

Roger Cohen wrote a retrospective book about his Balkan experiences called Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo in 1998.

Roger Cohen wrote in Hearts Grown Brutal that his coverage of the war changed him as a person, and that he considers himself lucky to still be alive.

Roger Cohen later called this period a pivotal moment of his journalistic career, as it was for many reporters of his generation covering a war in Europe.

Roger Cohen returned to the paper's Paris bureau from June 1995 to August 1998.

Roger Cohen served as chief of the Berlin bureau after September 1998.

Roger Cohen's acting role was made formal on 14 March 2022.

Roger Cohen was named a Times columnist in 2009 and wrote an opinion column for more than a decade.

Roger Cohen criticised the Bush administration's handling of the occupation while still supporting the cause given the brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Roger Cohen wrote a series of articles for The New York Times in February 2009 about a trip to Iran.

Roger Cohen was later criticised by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett in the New York Review of Books for trumpeting what they said were baseless accusations of electoral fraud in the 2009 Presidential election.

Roger Cohen, who was one of the last international journalists on the ground covering the violence, replied that the pair were guilty of, amongst other things, "a cavalier disregard for the Islamic Republic's intermittent brutality", and were "apologists without a conscience".

Roger Cohen has opposed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, saying its "hidden agenda" is the "end of Israel as a Jewish state" and he has written:.

Roger Cohen wrote in January 2009 that the Israel-Palestinian conflict should not be seen by the United States as just another part of the War on Terrorism.

Roger Cohen called for the ending of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and the ending of the blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Roger Cohen supported the reconciling of Hamas with Fatah after their violent split.

Roger Cohen has accused Israelis of the "slaying of hundreds of Palestinian children" in the campaign.

Roger Cohen has won numerous awards and honours, among them a 2023 Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk award as a member of Times teams covering the war in Ukraine.

Roger Cohen won a second George Polk award in 2024 for work on the Israel-Gaza conflict, and an Overseas Press Club award for an essay on Russia.

Roger Cohen won the same award in 2018 for a piece about the Rohingya crisis in Burma.

Roger Cohen has taught at Princeton and Indiana University Bloomington, was a Fisher Family Fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center, and was awarded the Joe Alex Morris lectureship for distinguished foreign correspondence by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Roger Cohen received an Overseas Press Club award for his coverage of third world debt in 1987, the Inter-American Press Association "Tom Wallace" Award for feature writing in 1989 and in 2012, Cohen won the Lifetime Achievement award at the 8th annual International Media Awards in London.

Roger Cohen was first married to Katherine Lund and had two children.

Roger Cohen subsequently married the sculptor Frida Baranek and had two more children.

Roger Cohen has written five books, including a family memoir entitled The Girl from Human Street: A Jewish Family Odyssey and a collection of essays and columns entitled An Affirming Flame: Meditations on Life and Politics.

Roger Cohen is the author of Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis' Final Gamble and Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo, an account of the wars of Yugoslavia's destruction.