COHEN, NATHAN

COHEN, NATHAN (1923–1971), Canadian critic and journalist. Cohen was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, and graduated in English from Mt. Allison University. Attracted to the left, Cohen entered journalism as a reporter for the labor press in Cape Breton. Moving to Toronto, he wrote for a number of newspapers and journals including the English-language pages of the leftist Vokhnblat and Canadian Jewish Weekly. By the late 1940s, Cohen's interests shifted from political journalism to arts review, particularly theater criticism. Increasingly respected for his uncompromising pursuit of artistic excellence, he became Canada's foremost arts and theater critic, eventually gaining an international reputation for the quality of his comments. Regarded by many as irascible and iconoclastic, his theater reviews and criticism were seldom shy about what lay behind the theater's facade. No elitist when it came to the arts, Cohen's voice became familiar across Canada as a broadcast critic for CBC and for ten years as radio and television moderator of Fighting Words, a freewheeling program of social and political debate. With a well-earned reputation as broadcaster and print journalist who helped chart the course of Canadian theater, in 1959 Cohen became drama critic and entertainment editor for the Toronto Star, the largest circulation newspaper in Canada, an association he maintained until his death. Cohen was also a fluent Yiddishist who was known in Jewish circles for his translations of Yiddish poetry and prose. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: W.E. Edmonstone, Nathan Cohen: The Making of a Critic (1977). (Harold Troper (2nd ed.) COHEN, NATHAN EDWARD COHEN, NATHAN EDWARD (1909–2001), U.S. social work educator. Born in Derry, New Hampshire, Cohen took his doctorate at Harvard. He worked as executive director of the Roxbury Y.M.H.A., Boston, with the Jewish Community Welfare Fund in Springfield, Massachusetts, and as the director of various divisions of the National Jewish Welfare Board. He became a professor at Columbia University's New York School of Social Work in 1954 and served as associate dean from 1955 to 1958. He co-founded the National Council on Social Work Education, helping to shape curricula across the country. He was then appointed dean of the School of Applied Social Sciences at Western Reserve University, Cleveland, of which he became vice president in 1963. In 1958, as a professor at Western (now part of Case Western Reserve), Cohen led a group of students to Selma, Alabama, to march with Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1964 he was appointed professor of social welfare at the University of California at Los Angeles. Cohen formed a   team of researchers to investigate the social causes underlying the Watts riot of 1965, writing "The Los Angeles Riot Study." He served as dean of UCLA's School of Social Welfare from 1964 to 1979. Cohen stressed that professional social work must contribute to changes in society by leadership and action and that social services are an enduring function of the social economy. Cohen was chairman of the National Conference of Social Welfare and was the co-founder and president of the National Association of Social Workers. At Berkeley, he and his wife, Sylvia, founded the Association for Lifelong Learning. Practicing what he preached, Cohen continued to lead current events discussions until 2000 at age 90. His writings include Social Work in the American Tradition (1958); The Citizen Volunteer, which he edited (1960); Social Work and Social Problems (1964); and The Los Angeles Riots: A Socio-Psychological Study (1970) as well as many articles in professional journals and collections such as Social Work and The Social Welfare Forum. At UCLA a foundation for the Nathan E. Cohen Doctoral Student Award in Social Welfare has been established. (Jacob Neusner / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)