David Cohen

David Cohen is Co-Director of the Advocacy Institute and one of its two founders.
Cohen also Co-Chairs the Advocacy Institute's Board of Directors.

At the Advocacy Institute, David Cohen pioneered the Institute's work in its international capacity building programs where he continues to facilitate and lead workshop and strategy sessions. His expertise is used to counsel social justice movement groups in the U.S. and abroad to gain support for their public agenda. His work extends to countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Southern Africa, The Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans
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In addition, Cohen is an active participant in the Institute's work in its Leadership for a Changing World Program. Cohen directs the Learning Initiatives aspect of the program. The Learning Initiatives provides funds for the learning of awardees and their colleagues to strengthen the overall purpose of an organization's program.

Advocacy practitioners around the world have translated his writings on advocacy, civil society and lobbying into many different languages. His writings have appeared as essays in college text books and in major U.S. publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times and
Other newspapers. A recent publication is a chapter in the Non-Profit Lobbying Guide (by Bob Smucker) entitled: Being A Public Interest Lobbyist Is Something To Write Home About. It is widely used in graduate courses in Non-Profit Management.

In the fall of 2001, Kumarian Press published Advocacy for Social Justice: A Global Action and Reflection Guide. Cohen is one of three co-authors.

Cohen has been an advocate and strategist on many of the major social justice and political reform issues in the United States since the early 1960s. These issues include civil rights, anti-poverty and reforming US political processes by eliminating abuses of power and the corrupting influence of money on American politics.

Cohen played a leading role in the fight for Congress to end its support for the Vietnam War. From 1984-92 he led the Professionals' Coalition for Nuclear Arms Control-- physicians, scientists, lawyers, and social workers-- to stop the United States nuclear arms build-up by supporting arms control agreements and reducing the military budget. From 1975-81 he served as president of Common Cause, the largest voluntary membership organization in the United States working on government accountability issues.

Cohen's contributions are recognized in biographies and histories of the period. He has been referred to as "a savvy activist" by journalist-historian John Jacob in A Rage for Justice. Aaron Wildavsky in Moses: The Nursing Father called Cohen a "student of leadership and a leader."

The Encyclopedia of Political Parties and Elections in the United States wrote that he is "widely regarded as his generation's leading public interest congressional lobbyist and mentor of lobbyists." He has an established "reputation for balanced judgment, scrupulous dealing, unrelenting patience and a gift for forming legislative coalitions."

He has worked "to improve the effectiveness of democratic institutions…He never, in consequence, cuts corners in legislative combat, genuinely respecting and winning respect from those who disagree with him."