Jelani Cobb, the renowned journalist, scholar, speaker, and current dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, will be the guest of honor at Westport’s 20th annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration.

The annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration is a partnership between the Library, TEAM Westport, the Westport Country Playhouse, Westport Museum for History and Culture, and the Westport/Weston Clergy Association.

Why You Should Come

Cobb is a clear voice in the fight for a better America. The dean of the Columbia Journalism School and PBS Frontline correspondent for two critically acclaimed documentaries, Cobb explores the enormous complexities of our history, politics, and culture, while offering guidance and hope for the future.  

A longtime writer for The New Yorker, the editor of its anthology collection The Matter of Black Lives, and the author of Three or More Is a Riot (one of Kirkus‘s best books of the year), Cobb “combines the rigor and depth of a professional historian with the alertness of a reporter, the liberal passion of an engaged public intellectual, and the literary flair of a fine writer,” said Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker. 

About Westport’s Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration is an annual event commemorating the life and values of Dr. King, held the weekend before the observed Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

 Past Martin Luther King Jr. celebration keynote speakers include National Book Award winner and MacArthur Fellow Ibram X. Kendi; Pulitzer Prize winner James Forman Jr.; New York Times best-selling authors Heather McGhee and Layla Saad; Guggenheim Scholar Carol Anderson; American Book Award winner Tricia Rose; Quinnipiac Law School founder Marilyn Ford; author/artist/ filmmaker/multi-dimensional performance artist Junauda Petrus, former King speechwriter and advisor Dr. Clarence B. Jones; and last year’s guest, award-winning writer, producer, and Shondaland visionary Shonda Rhimes.

 About Jelani Cobb

Renowned for his thoughtful and incisive exploration of the complexities of our history, politics, and culture, Cobb received a Peabody Award for his 2020 PBS Frontline film Whose Vote Counts? and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary in 2018. He joined the Columbia Journalism School faculty in 2016 and became dean in 2022.

 Cobb has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2015 and a political analyst for MS Now since 2019. He is the author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress and To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic, and the editor or co-editor of several volumes, including The Matter of Black Lives, a collection of The New Yorker’s writings on race, and The Essential Kerner Commission Report. He also is producer or co-producer on a number of documentaries, including Lincoln’s Dilemma, Obama: A More Perfect Union, Policing the Police and THE RIOT REPORT.

Cobb’s most recent work is Three or More Is a Riot, a collection of both published and original writing from his frontline reporting over the last decade. Three or More Is a Riot was named one of Kirkus’ best books of the year.

 “Three or More Is a Riot is an archive of a writer at the height of his powers — and his powers are many,” said Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of The Message and Between the World and Me. “Insight, historical memory, reportage, pith, and, not least of all, wit. All these gifts Jelani Cobb deploys here without missing a beat, effortlessly weaving them into his own distinctive style.”

 A graduate of Jamaica High School in Queens, New York, Cobb earned his BA from Howard University and received both is MA and doctorate (in American History) from Rutgers University.

 In addition to his work at Columbia, The New Yorker, and MS Now, Cobb serves on the board of directors of the American Journalism Project and the board of trustees of the New York Public Library. He received an honorary doctorate for the Advancement of Science and Art from Cooper Union in 2022, and an honorary doctorate of letters from Rutgers University in 2024. York College / CUNY and Teachers College have honored him with medals.

He was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2023 and is a recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Click here to see a clip of Cobb’s conversation, “The Most Valuable Tool in the Search for Equality”

About Trey Ellis

 Ellis is an American Book Award-winning novelist, two-time Emmy- and Peabody-winning filmmaker, NAACP Image award-winning playwright and essayist, and professor of professional practice at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. His lauded first novel, Platitudes, was reissued by Northeastern University Press along with his influential essay, “The New Black Aesthetic.” He also served as executive producer of King in the Wilderness, the 2018 Emmy Award-winning HBO documentary (Outstanding Historical Documentary) on the last three days of Dr. King’s life.