Warren I. Cohen was born on June 20, 1934 in Brooklyn, NY, the son of a New York City taxi driver and a homemaker. He received his BA from Columbia University and his MA from The Fletcher School at Tufts University. After the completion of his MA, he served in the United States Navy. He was discharged at the rank of lieutenant, after which he earned his PhD from the University of Washington. He taught at the University of California, Riverside and Michigan State University before arriving at UMBC in 1993.
Professor Cohen taught American diplomatic history at UMBC. His principal research interests were in American-East Asian relations. He was the author of twelve monographs, seven edited volumes, and two textbooks. His work included East Asia at the Center (2000), America’s Failing Empire: U.S. Foreign Relations Since the Cold War (2005), The Challenge to American Primacy, 1945 to the Present (2013), and A Nation Like All Others: A Brief History of American Foreign Relations (2018). He published the sixth edition of his popular textbook America’s Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations in 2019.
Professor Cohen served his profession in a variety of roles. He served as President of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 1984. He played a role in founding the Journal of American-East Asian Relations. He was also guided by a strong sense of ethics. Cohen was an active member and chair of the Department of State’s Historical Advisory Committee, but he resigned in 1990 to protest historical distortions and omissions from the State Department’s publications. He was particularly outraged that the agency failed to acknowledge the CIA’s role in the 1953 Iranian coup which ousted Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and restored the shah to power.
Professor Cohen won numerous prestigious awards and distinctions. He was honored as a UMBC Presidential Research Professor in 2001. He also received the University System of Maryland Board of Regents’ Award for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity in 2004-2005. He was the 9th person to win the prestigious Laura and Norman Graebner Prize for career excellence from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 2004. From 2009 to 2016, Cohen served as a Senior Scholar with the Asia Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He retired from UMBC in 2008.
Warren I. Cohen was the first member of his family to receive a college education. His father, Murray Cohen, never completed high school, but he believed strongly in the value of education and encouraged Professor Cohen’s studies. In his honor, Warren I. Cohen and his sister, Susan Didia Bailey, established the Murray Cohen Scholarship at UMBC to support BA or MA students in any field whose family income is at or below the poverty level.
In a career filled with accolades, it is notable that one of the things Professor Cohen will be remembered best for was his kindness, particularly in supporting students and junior scholars. At UMBC, he was quick to appreciate the strengths of his colleagues and the university. He was a highly valued member of the History Department quite apart from his extraordinary achievements as a scholar. He excelled in both undergraduate and graduate teaching, helped redesign and taught an undergraduate course on world history, mentored graduate students writing MA theses, and could always be counted on to add his good suggestions to department meetings. His quick wit delighted his colleagues and put nervous students at ease. Even in retirement, he “adopted” several graduate students and early career faculty in the field of U.S.-China relations, helping them integrate into the field. As a scholar, teacher, and mentor, he will be sorely missed.