Center for the literary arts in New York State
THIS MOMENT IN HISTORY
Jelani Cobb
7:30 p.m. Monday, March 2, 2026
Page Hall - University at Albany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue
Albany NY 12203 See map.
Jelani Cobb, eminent American journalist and influential commentator, is the author of Three or More Is a Riot: Notes on How We Got Here: 2012-2025, an anthology of his recent work in The New Yorker, and a real-time portrait of our chaotic historical moment.
The New York Times said, “In this collection of cultural criticism and reportage… Cobb offers a clear-eyed look at a turbulent decade of grass-roots social movements and the eventual right-wing backlash they inspired.”
Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, Cobb received the 2020 Peabody Award for the Frontline documentary, "Whose Vote Counts?", and was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.
Cosponsored by the Program in Journalism, Department of Communication at UAlbany, and the The Justice & Multiculturalism in the 21st Century Project of the School of Criminal Justice.
From the publisher
What just happened?
From the moment that Trayvon Martin’s senseless murder initiated the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014, America has been convulsed by new social movements — around guns, gender violence, sexual harassment, race, policing, and on and on — and an equally powerful backlash that abetted the rise of the MAGA movement. In this punchy, powerful collection of dispatches, mostly published in The New Yorker, Jelani Cobb pulls the signal from the noise of this chaotic era.
Cobb’s work as a reporter takes readers to the front lines of sometimes violent conflict, and he uses his gifts as a critic and historian to crack open the meaning of it all. Through a stunning mélange of narrative journalism, criticism, and penetrating profiles, Cobb’s writing captures the crises, characters, movements, and art of an era — and helps readers understand what might be coming next.
Cobb has added new material to this collection — retrospective pieces that bring these stories up-to-date and tie them together, shaping these powerful short dispatches into a cohesive, epic narrative of one of the most consequential periods in recent American history.
More about Jelani Cobb
Jelani Cobb joined the Columbia Journalism School faculty in 2016 and became Dean in 2022. He is the author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress and To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic and the editor or co-editor of several volumes including The Matter of Black Lives, a collection of The New Yorker’s writings on race and The Essential Kerner Commission Report. He is producer or co-producer on a number of documentaries including "Lincoln’s Dilemma," "Obama: A More Perfect Union," "Policing the Police" and "The Riot Report."
Dr. Cobb was educated at Jamaica High School in Queens, Howard University, where he earned a B.A. in English, and Rutgers University, where he completed his MA and doctorate in American History in 2003. He is also a recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation and the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the American Journalism Project and the Board of Trustees of the New York Public Library. He received an Honorary Doctorate for the Advancement of Science and Art from Cooper Union in 2022, and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Rutgers University in 2024. York College / CUNY and Teachers College have honored Dr. Cobb with medals.
Dr. Cobb was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2023.