Leadership
The Renewing American Democracy project is led by the award-winning writer and thinker, Ellis Cose. Cose is the author of a dozen books on issues of national and international concern, including the best-selling The Rage of a Privileged Class; Color Blind; Democracy, If we Can Keep It; The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America, and the forthcoming Race and Reckoning: From Founding Fathers to Today’s Disruptors.
A Chicago native, Cose began his career with the Chicago Sun-Times, where he was a columnist, editor and national correspondent. He has been a contributor and press critic for TIME magazine, chief executive officer of the Institute for Journalism Education, chief writer on management and workplace issues for USA Today and a member of the editorial board of the Detroit Free Press. He has held fellowships at the Gannett Center for Media Studies at Columbia University, the University of California, the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, and other national institutions.
For 17 years, Cose was a columnist and contributing editor for Newsweek magazine. He is a former chairman of the editorial board and editorial page editor of the New York Daily News as well as an independent radio documentary producer. Cose was the inaugural writer-in-residence for the ACLU. He has appeared on a range of national and international news programs, including Dateline, ABC News, and Good Morning America. Cose holds a master’s degree in science, technology and public policy from George Washington University, and lives in New York City.
Advisors
Elijah Anderson, Sterling Professor of Sociology and African American studies at Yale University
Bobby Austin, President of Neighborhood Associates Corporation, former head of the National Task Force on African-American Men and Boys and James MacGregor Burns Fellow at the Moller Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge University
Harvey A Brody, Clinical Professor Emeritus, University of California, San Francisco, Regent Emeritus, University of California
Carlos Cortes, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside, and Communications Scholar
Geoffrey Cowan, Director of the University of Southern California Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy
Everette Dennis, former Dean of Northwestern University in Quatar
Martin Garbus, First Amendment lawyer
Elizabeth Green, Co-founder and CEO of Chalkbeat
Henry McGee, former President of HBO Home Entertainment and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School
Steve Montiel, founding director of USC Annenberg's Institute for Justice and Journalism, co-founder and former president of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, and former press secretary for the University of California system
Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU
Calvin Sims, Executive Vice President for News and Standards at CNN
Nadine Strossen, past ACLU president and John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita at New York Law School
