Cynthia Cohen
Cynthia Cohen is executive director of the Slifka Program in Intercommunal Coexistence. Cohen provides intellectual and administrative leadership for the components of the Slifka Program and manages the development of research and action partnerships with coexistence organizations around the world as well as projects on the Brandeis campus. She also oversees the work of Coexistence International and is principal investigator in an ongoing inquiry into Creative Approaches to Coexistence and Reconciliation.
Cohen previously directed the international fellowship program Recasting Reconciliation through Culture and the Arts. She teaches at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Cohen was the founding director of the Oral History Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has facilitated coexistence efforts involving participants from the Middle East, the United States, Central America, and Sri Lanka.
She holds a Ph.D. in education from the University of New Hampshire and a master's degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cohen is the author of "Working with Integrity: A Guidebook for Peacebuilders Asking Ethical Questions." She writes on the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of reconciliation and has published related chapters and articles in conflict resolution, women's studies, and education (for a complete list of her publications, click here); and manages the virtual resource center Creative Resources for Coexistence and Reconciliation, where working papers, portfolios, and other publications emerging from Brandeis programs can be accessed.