Graduation Week with Columbia Journalism Dean Jelani Cobb
Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Lemonada Media
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2025
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Even before Jelani Cobb became Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, he was an educator. His reportage at The New Yorker (where he’s been writing about race and politics since 2012), steeped in history. And yet not even Cobb could’ve been prepared for what he’s described as a “harrowing” year in academia.
On the heels of graduation week at Columbia, Cobb joins us for a wide-ranging discussion about the climate on campuses across the country (5:17), the Trump administration’s sustained attacks on higher education (9:07), and the “potentially unlawful” detainment of student activist Mahmoud Khalil (15:57). Then, Cobb speaks to the challenges of public trust in journalism (30:35), “the beneficial workplace” he hopes to cultivate in newsrooms (39:39), and why young journalists continue to inspire him (45:45).
On the back-half, Jelani reflects on the five years since the murder of George Floyd (55:55), the fleeting corporate activism of 2020 (1:01:05), the importance of understanding Civil Rights history (1:06:13), and why he’s determined to continue telling stories in “dangerous times” (1:10:30).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Lemonada |
| 0:02.0 | Lemonada |
| 0:04.0 | This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Forgo, so welcome to the show. |
| 0:41.9 | Today, journalist and professor Jelani Cobb. |
| 0:48.1 | He's a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he's covered race, politics, and history for over a decade. |
| 0:57.6 | Cobb also presides as the dean of the Columbia Journalism School, which is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious programs in the country. |
| 1:08.7 | But since the beginning of the war in Gaza on October 7, 2023, the school has been in the headlines over pro-Palestinian protests organized on campus. |
| 1:13.3 | These protests, which began with demands for the university to divest from companies profiting from Israel's military actions, quickly spawned an encampment movement |
| 1:18.5 | that spread to over 100 campuses. Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia grad who was often on the |
| 1:25.7 | front lines of those protests, was detained earlier this |
| 1:28.9 | spring by ICE. The Trump administration justified his detention, citing a little-used statute |
| 1:35.0 | regarding national security interests. At the time of recording, Khalil remains in a Louisiana |
| 1:41.2 | holding cell. The backdrop to this detainment was a letter from House Republicans, demanding federal |
| 1:48.5 | investigations into what they call a crisis of anti-Semitism on college campuses. |
| 1:55.2 | Even as recent as this week, the Trump administration has continued to target Colombia, |
| 2:02.6 | claiming the school has violated federal civil rights law by acting with, quote, deliberate indifference toward harassment of Jewish |
| 2:09.0 | students on campus. |
| 2:11.6 | Khalil's detention and Trump's subsequent demands of universities like Columbia and Harvard |
| 2:17.4 | have raised questions |
| 2:18.7 | not just about free speech, but campus surveillance, academic freedom, and who gets to |
| 2:25.4 | decide what is acceptable dissent? Speaking of dissent, I last spoke to Jolani in the summer |
| 2:32.8 | of 2020, just days after the murder of George Floyd |
... |
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