William Jelani Cobb brings an unrepentant curiosity about how the past influences the present to his role as a teacher and social commentator.
Cobb came to UConn from Rutgers University in January, as an associate professor of history and director of the Institute for African American Studies (IAAS). His appointment is part of UConn’s expansive hiring initiative designed to attract up to 500 professors in four years.
This semester, his first on campus, he is teaching a course in African American History to 1865. Yet Cobb’s inclination to ‘say what needs to be said’ about contemporary issues is never very far from the surface, and he is as much at home in front of the media as he is in the classroom or in his office in Wood Hall.
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