Danny M. Cohen, Ph.D. (Co-Chair)

Danny M. Cohen, Ph.D. is a learning scientist and writer specializing in marginalized narratives of atrocity. A Charles Deering McCormick Distinguished Professor of Instruction at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy and The Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, Cohen teaches about Holocaust education design, Holocaust memory, fiction, and film, pedagogies for history and injustice, and design for social change. The grandson of Holocaust survivor Maurice Ziekenoppasser, Cohen is an author of human rights fiction. His works include the choose-your-own-pathway mystery The 19th Window, the short story Dead Ends, and the historical novel Train, a teacher fellows selected text of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Danny is the founder of Unsilence, a national nonprofit that creates highly interactive learning experiences to support young people and communities to talk about historical and contemporary injustices. Cohen was an inaugural appointee to the Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Commission, he was a member of the editorial advisory board of the journal The Holocaust in History and Memory, he designed the pedagogical track of the inaugural docent training program of Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, and he was a faculty fellow of the Auschwitz Jewish Center.