Class of 2008 Commencement Speaker
Randy Cohen
When it comes to dishing up a healthy dose of advice, Randy Cohen is a natural. The speaker on May 25 at the 144th Commencement, Cohen is best known for his weekly New York Times magazine column, The Ethicist, where he tackles reader-submitted questions on everything from the ethics of a professor raising a failing grade to telling a friend about his spouse's infidelity. According to Booklist, "[Cohen] answers these ethical questions with intelligence, sensibility, and a healthy dose of wit."
Cohen began writing the column in 1999, and it has since been widely syndicated as Everyday Ethics in newspapers across the country and in Canada. Cohen is also the ethics columnist for the Times of London and a regular contributor to the weekend edition of National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Though the New York Times discourages politically charged ethical questions, he has sounded off on this topic in the Nation, writing that "the difference between ethics and politics seems to me artificial....Sometimes the distinction is a matter of scale. If one guy robs you, it's ethics, but when 435 people rob you, it's politics – or the House of Representatives is in session."
In 2002, he released the book The Good, the Bad and the Difference: How to Tell Right from Wrong in Everyday Situations based on his columns and used the new platform to take a fresh look at past questions. In his book, Cohen refers to himself as an "accidental ethicist" because, in college, the majority of his courses were in music composition. During his career as a writer and humorist, he worked as a writer for Late Night with David Letterman for seven years and won three Emmy awards. He also won an Emmy for his work on TV Nation and was the original head writer on the Rosie O'Donnell Show. He is the author of Diary of a Flying Man (a collection of short stories) and Modest Proposals (a collection of letters). His work has appeared in the New Yorker, Slate magazine, the Washington Post, Harper's, and the Atlantic Monthly.
"On a good day.... I hope I've helped the readers reach their own conclusions," said Cohen in a 2002 interview with Bookreporter.com. "My job is to make the discussion illuminating, the analysis thoughtful, and the prose lively. At least, that's what I try to do, and if I can present the questions in a way that lets the reader see them fresh, I'm pleased."