William Cohen
American politician (born 1940)
William Sebastian Cohen (born August 28, 1940) is an American attorney, author, and politician. A member of the Republican Party, Cohen also served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 1979, United States Senate from 1979 to 1997, and as secretary of defense from 1997 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton.2
From Wikipedia’s article on William Cohen (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Born Aug 28, 1940.1
About
Described as "a Republican moderate from Maine" and "something of a maverick centrist" by David Halberstam, Cohen had very good working relations with President Clinton and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and an "almost ideal" collaboration with the Joint Chiefs of Staff; however, he often clashed with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, whom he saw as "a grandstander, too outspoken on policy matters, and too eager to use military force."
From Wikipedia’s article on William Cohen, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2
Companies
- The Cohen GroupChair 2001 to now15
Early life and education
- 1962Bowdoin College3 4
- 1965Boston University School of Law3 4
- Date not recordedprimary school3 4
- Date not recordedBangor High School3
- Date not recordedBoston University3
Cohen was born in Bangor, Maine. His mother, Clara (née Hartley), was of Protestant Irish ancestry. His father, Reuben Cohen, was born in New York and was the son of a Russian Jewish immigrant. His parents owned the Bangor Rye Bread Co.
Pursuant to his father's wishes, Cohen was raised Jewish, attended a synagogue, and also attended Hebrew School in preparation for his bar mitzvah, but he decided not to follow through with his bar mitzvah when he was informed that he would have to convert formally to Judaism. He then began to practice Christianity, and he identifies as a Unitarian Universalist.
After his 1958 graduation from Bangor High School, Cohen attended Bowdoin College. In 1962, he was awarded a bachelor of arts degree cum laude in Latin. While a student at Bowdoin, Cohen was initiated as a brother of the Kappa chapter of the Psi Upsilon fraternity. Cohen attended law school at the Boston University School of Law, and received a bachelor of laws degree cum laude in 1965.
While in high school and college, Cohen was a basketball player and was named to the Maine all-state high school and college basketball team, and at Bowdoin he was inducted into the New England All-Star Hall of Fame.
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Legal, academic, and early political career
He became an assistant county attorney for Penobscot County (1968–1970). In 1968, he became an instructor at Husson College in Bangor. Later, he was an instructor in business administration at the University of Maine (1968–1972).
Cohen served as the vice president of the Maine Trial Lawyers Association (1970–1972) and as a member of the Bangor School Board (1971–1972). He became a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School in 1972. In 1975, he was named as one of "ten outstanding young men" by the United States Junior Chamber
Cohen was elected to the Bangor City Council (1969–1972) and served as Bangor Mayor in 1971–1972.
From Wikipedia’s article on William Cohen (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Career
Occupation: writer, entrepreneur, politician, lawyer, university teacher, assistant.4 10
- Since 2001Board member, Center for Strategic and International Studies6
- Since 2001Chair, The Cohen Group9
- 1997 to 2001United States Secretary of Defense7
- 1995 to 1997United States senator7
- 1993 to 1995United States senator7
- 1991 to 1993United States senator7
- 1989 to 1991United States senator7
- 1987 to 1989United States senator7
- 1985 to 1987United States senator7
- 1983 to 1985United States senator7
- 1981 to 1983United States senator7
- 1979 to 1981United States senator7
Personal life
In 1987, Cohen filed for divorce from his first wife, Diana Dunn, with whom he has two sons, Kevin and Christopher. On February 14, 1996, Cohen and Janet Langhart were married. Langhart is a former model, Boston television personality, and BET correspondent. She was known as the "First Lady of the Pentagon" during Cohen's tenure as secretary.
Cohen served as best man in then-Senate Naval Liaison John McCain's second wedding (Gary Hart was a groomsman). McCain later became his Senate colleague.
According to The New York Times, Cohen was considered a loner in Congress.
He is a Unitarian Universalist. At one point in 2007, he considered reconciling with Judaism and agreed to once again attend a synagogue.
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Attack at Holocaust Museum
On the afternoon of June 10, 2009, Cohen was at the U.S. Holocaust Museum waiting for his wife Janet Langhart who was to perform in the world premiere of her one-act play Anne and Emmett. The play imagines a conversation between Anne Frank and Emmett Till. While Cohen waited, an elderly man with a slide-action rifle attacked the facility, fatally shooting a security guard—Museum Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns—before the attacker himself was wounded by the other guards. Cohen and Langhart were not injured, and appeared on CNN that afternoon to tell what they had seen and respond to the shooter's racist beliefs. The man was James W. von Brunn, 88, of Annapolis, a longtime "hard-core" white supremacist whose Internet writings contain extensive criticism against Jews and African Americans. He was charged in federal court with first-degree murder and was indicted by a federal grand jury on seven counts, including hate-crime charges. Langhart's play had been promoted in The Washington Post the week before, and was being presented in honor of the eightieth anniversary of Anne Frank's birth.
From Wikipedia’s article on William Cohen (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Awards
- 2001Theodore Roosevelt Award14
Links
Sources
The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.
- 1WikidataWilliam Cohen on Wikidata
- 2WikipediaWilliam Cohen on Wikipedia
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- 15WikidataThe Cohen Group, Chair
- 16Wikimedia CommonsWilliam Cohen photo by SCOTT DAVIS, Public domain