William Jelani Cobb is an American writer, author, educator, and dean of the Columbia Journalism School. Before joining Columbia University as the Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism in 2016, Cobb was an associate professor of history and director of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Connecticut from 2012 to 2016. Since 2015, he has been a staff writer at The New Yorker.