Geoffrey Cowan | |
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Born | May 8, 1942 Chicago, Illinois |
Occupation | President, The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership, USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism University Professor, University of Southern California Director, Center on Communication Leadership & Policy |
Spouse | Aileen Adams |
Children | Gabriel Cowan, Mandy Wolf |
Geoffrey Cowan is an American lawyer, professor, author, and playwright. He is currently the president of The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands and a University Professor at the University of Southern California where he holds the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership and directs the Annenberg School's Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. Cowan was appointed to his position at Sunnylands in 2010 to turn the 200-acre estate of Ambassador Walter Annenberg and his wife Leonore into "a venue for important retreats for top government officials and leaders in the fields of law, education, philanthropy, the arts, culture, science and medicine."[1] The estate is located in Rancho Mirage, CA.
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From 1996-2007, he served as dean of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. At USC Annenberg, he launched academic programs in public diplomacy, specialized journalism, strategic public relations, global communication and online communities. Under his leadership, USC Annenberg's endowment rose from $6.5 million to $183.5 million.[2] During that time, the number of full-time faculty nearly doubled to 61, and the Annenberg building was expanded and redecorated to promote and unify the school behind its brand.[3] Cowan launched and remains involved with major USC Annenberg centers and projects, including the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, Norman Lear Center, Charles Annenberg Weingarten Program on Online Communities, Knight Digital Media Center and the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future.
When he stepped down as dean in 2007, he was named a University Professor, the inaugural holder of the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership and director of USC Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. He holds a joint appointment in the USC Gould School of Law and teaches courses in communication and journalism.
Geoffrey Cowan was born on May 8, 1942, the son of Louis G. Cowan, former president of the CBS television network and professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, and Polly Spiegel Cowan, a TV and radio producer and a civil rights activist. Cowan graduated from Harvard College in 1964. That summer, he went to rural Mississippi to register black voters and start a farmers co-op during the Freedom Summer. His letters home were included in the book Letters from Mississippi. The following summer, Cowan returned to Mississippi to co-found the Southern Courier, the first civil rights newspaper in the region.
Cowan graduated from Yale Law School in 1968. While working for Senator Eugene McCarthy in the campaign for president that year, Cowan was outraged by the control of delegates by “bosses" and thus helped to found and run “The Commission on the Democratic Selection of Democratic Nominees.”[4]} Chaired by Governor and later Senator Harold Hughes of Iowa, Cowan started the commission to determine how the delegates were chosen and then made a report to the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Cowan and his team discovered that nearly half of the delegates needed to nominate a presidential candidate were chosen by party bosses.[5] This led to dramatic reform in the selection of delegates.Connell, Rich (20 April 1989). "Head of New Ethics Panel Believes in the Cause". Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles). Cowan later said, "The campaigns of 1968 were part of a broader movement to change institutions in a substantial way, whether it be an incumbent President or a corporate hierarchy for the American Medical Association."[6] Cowan went on to practice law in Washington, D.C., where he co-founded the Center for Law and Social Policy[7] and wrote a weekly column for The Village Voice.[8]
In 1972, Cowan moved to Los Angeles and became the director of UCLA's Communications Law program. In 1975, he was a legal consultant to Norman Lear and the Writer's Guild of America in their challenge to CBS' Family Viewing Hour, which affected Lear's program All in the Family.[9]
Cowan spent twenty years as a professor of communication law and policy at UCLA, where he received numerous teaching awards and founded the Center for Communication Policy.
Concurrently with his teaching at UCLA, Cowan was a television producer. In 1992, he won an Emmy as executive producer of the television movie Mark Twain & Me, which was voted Outstanding Prime Time Program for Children by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.[10] He also produced The Quiz Kids, a program that had been created by his father, and he hosted a public affairs show created by Walter Cronkite called Why in the World?
Cowan’s books include: See No Evil: The Backstage Battle Over Sex and Violence on Television (Simon & Schuster, 1980), which tells the story of the Family Hour case, and the best-selling The People v. Clarence Darrow: The Bribery Trial of America's Greatest Lawyer (Random House, 1993). In a front page review in the Washington Post, Alan Dershowitz called The People v. Clarence Darrow “eye-popping and icon-shattering.”[11] In 2009, the Wall Street Journal called it best book ever written about a trial lawyer.[12] Cowan is currently working on a book about Theodore Roosevelt and the 1912 Presidential campaign.
With the late Leroy Aarons, Cowan co-wrote the award-winning play Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, which explores the delicate balance between the press, public's right to know and the government's need to protect some vital national secrets. It was first produced in 1991, at the end of the Persian Gulf War by LA Theatre Works.[13] Writing in Vogue, Graydon Carter called it "quite magnificent" and it won the CPB's Gold Award for Excellence.[14] It was revived in a national tour in 2007-2008, playing in 25 cities, and as an Off-Broadway in 2010 at the [nytw.org/ New York Theatre Workshop]. It will be performed in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Beijing in China in November and December 2011.
In 1989, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley appointed Cowan to chair an independent commission to create an ethics code for the city. Cowan was named "Leader of the Year" by the Council of Government Ethics Leaders for his work.
President Clinton appointed Cowan to serve the nation as the director of the Voice of America in 1994. He was the 19th director of the VOA, the international broadcasting service of the United States Information Agency, which had more than 100 million listeners each week and broadcast in more than 46 languages. His father, Louis Cowan, had been the 2nd director of VOA from 1943-1945. The younger Cowan also served as associate director of the USIA and as director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, with responsibility for WORLDNET TV and Radio & TV Marti as well as VOA.
From 1979-84, he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and played a key role in the development of National Public Radio.
Cowan serves on the boards of the California HealthCare Foundation, Common Sense Media, the Pacific Council on International Policy and the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy.
He chaired the California Bipartisan Commission on Internet Political Practices[15] and served as a member and chair of the White House Fellows regional selection committee during the Clinton and Bush administrations.[16]
In 2008, he became the Walter Lippmann Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science[17] and in 2009 he was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science.[18]
Cowan is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.
Cowan is married to Aileen Adams, deputy mayor of Los Angeles and former Secretary of State and Consumer Affairs for the State of California. They have two children, Gabriel Cowan, a filmmaker, and Mandy Wolf, a grade school teacher.