Who Is Ari Kohen? Profile of the Nebraska Human Rights Scholar

Ari Kohen is a political science professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and the director of the Forsythe Family Program on Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. Over the last several years he has become one of the more visible academic voices commenting publicly on antisemitism, Jewish identity, and campus discourse — a role that puts him in regular conversation with the same institutional network that includes the JCPA and figures like Amy Spitalnick.

Academic background

Kohen earned his Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and joined the University of Nebraska–Lincoln faculty in 2007. His research and teaching sit at the intersection of political theory, human rights, and moral philosophy, with a particular focus on how ordinary people become moral actors in the face of atrocity. He is the author of In Defense of Human Rights: A Non-Religious Grounding in a Pluralistic World, a book that argues human rights can be defended without appealing to a specific theological tradition.

The Forsythe Family Program

As director of the Forsythe Family Program on Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Kohen oversees one of the flagship human-rights programs at a Big Ten public university. The program brings speakers, fellowships, and student research funding to Lincoln, and it has become a platform through which Kohen contributes to national conversations about genocide, antisemitism, and the ethics of witness.

Public voice on antisemitism and Jewish identity

Kohen is unusually active for a tenured professor on Twitter/X, Bluesky, and podcasts, where he discusses antisemitism, Israel, campus politics, and Jewish communal life. He has argued that antisemitism cuts across the political spectrum and that Jewish communal institutions have to be prepared to name it on the left as well as the right — a framing that overlaps with the Spitalnick-era JCPA position that antisemitism is fueled by the same authoritarian and conspiratorial politics that threaten American democracy more broadly.

Nebraska and the broader Jewish institutional landscape

Being based in Nebraska rather than New York, Washington, or the Bay Area gives Kohen a different vantage point on the American Jewish debate than the coastal federation network we have covered elsewhere. But the questions he engages — how Jewish organizations should respond to antisemitism, how universities should handle Israel/Palestine on campus, how progressives and Jews talk past each other — are the same ones that occupy the JCRC, JCPA, and federation-affiliated advocacy groups.

His willingness to argue in public, from a named academic post, is part of why his profile has grown well beyond Lincoln. For readers who want to understand how the fight over antisemitism looks from inside the academy rather than from inside the communal-relations bureaucracy, Kohen is one of the useful voices to follow.

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• Who Is Amy Spitalnick? Profile of the JCPA CEO
• What Is the JCPA? The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Explained
• Who Is Tye Gregory? Profile of the JCRC Bay Area CEO