Edward Cohn is a professor of Russian and Soviet history at Grinnell College, where he also directs the Rosenfield Program in Public Affairs, International Relations, and Human Rights. A specialist in the history of policing, surveillance, and the often-blurry line between public and private life in the Communist world, he is now completing a monograph entitled The Admonitory State; this book discusses the KGB’s efforts to fight dissent using a tactic known as “prophylaxis,” in which low-level offenders were not arrested or prosecuted, but “invited” to the offices of the secret police for supposedly informal “conversations” about their misdeeds. As a member of the AHA’s Program Committee and Working Group on Small Liberal Arts Colleges, Cohn has organized conference sessions on topics ranging from inclusive teaching to pedagogical engagement with video games to the use of “history labs” as a collaborative curricular model. He’s eager to help build conversations among the entire AHA membership on a range of pedagogical and curricular issues and to help the AHA strengthen feelings of community among teacher-historians around the country.
Edward Cohn
