Geoffrey Cowan
Encyclopedia
Geoffrey Cowan is an American lawyer, professor, author, and playwright. He is currently the president of The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands and a University Professor at the University of Southern California where he holds the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership and directs the Annenberg School's Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. Cowan was appointed to his position at Sunnylands in 2010 to turn the 200-acre estate of Ambassador Walter Annenberg and his wife Leonore into "a venue for important retreats for top government officials and leaders in the fields of law, education, philanthropy, the arts, culture, science and medicine." The estate is located in Rancho Mirage, CA.

USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism

From 1996-2007, he served as dean of the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. At USC Annenberg, he launched academic programs in public diplomacy, specialized journalism, strategic public relations, global communication and online communities. Under his leadership, USC Annenberg's endowment rose from $6.5 million to $183.5 million. During that time, the number of full-time faculty nearly doubled to 61, and the Annenberg building was expanded and redecorated to promote and unify the school behind its brand. Cowan launched and remains involved with major USC Annenberg centers and projects, including the USC Center on Public Diplomacy
USC Center on Public Diplomacy
The University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy is a joint academic research, teaching and training center created and run jointly by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences' School of International Relations.Center leadership is...

, Norman Lear Center
Norman Lear Center
Based at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, the Norman Lear Center is a multi-disciplinary research and public policy center exploring implications of the convergence of entertainment, commerce, and society...

, Charles Annenberg Weingarten Program on Online Communities, Knight Digital Media Center and the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future.

When he stepped down as dean in 2007, he was named a University Professor, the inaugural holder of the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership and director of USC Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. He holds a joint appointment in the USC Gould School of Law and teaches courses in communication and journalism.

Background

Geoffrey Cowan was born on May 8, 1942, the son of Louis G. Cowan, former president of the CBS television network and professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, and Polly Spiegel Cowan, a TV and radio producer and a civil rights activist. Cowan graduated from Harvard College
Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...

 in 1964. That summer, he went to rural Mississippi to register black voters and start a farmers co-op during the Freedom Summer. His letters home were included in the book Letters from Mississippi. The following summer, Cowan returned to Mississippi to co-found the Southern Courier, the first civil rights newspaper in the region.

Cowan graduated from Yale Law School
Yale Law School
Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...

 in 1968. While working for Senator Eugene McCarthy in the campaign for president that year, Cowan was outraged by the control of delegates by “bosses" and thus helped to found and run “The Commission on the Democratic Selection of Democratic Nominees.”} Chaired by Governor and later Senator Harold Hughes of Iowa, Cowan started the commission to determine how the delegates were chosen and then made a report to the 1968 Democratic National Convention
1968 Democratic National Convention
The 1968 Democratic National Convention of the U.S. Democratic Party was held at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, from August 26 to August 29, 1968. Because Democratic President Lyndon Johnson had announced he would not seek a second term, the purpose of the convention was to...

. Cowan and his team discovered that nearly half of the delegates needed to nominate a presidential candidate were chosen by party bosses. This led to dramatic reform in the selection of delegates. Cowan later said, "The campaigns of 1968 were part of a broader movement to change institutions in a substantial way, whether it be an incumbent President or a corporate hierarchy for the American Medical Association." Cowan went on to practice law in Washington, D.C., where he co-founded the Center for Law and Social Policy and wrote a weekly column for The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...

.

Professor

In 1972, Cowan moved to Los Angeles and became the director of UCLA's Communications Law program. In 1975, he was a legal consultant to Norman Lear
Norman Lear
Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude...

 and the Writer's Guild of America in their challenge to CBS' Family Viewing Hour
Family Viewing Hour
The Family Viewing Hour was a policy established by the United States Federal Communications Commission in 1975. Under the policy, each television network in the U.S. had a responsibility to air "family-friendly" programming in the first hour of the prime time lineup...

, which affected Lear's program All in the Family
All in the Family
All in the Family is an American sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS television network from January 12, 1971, to April 8, 1979. In September 1979, a new show, Archie Bunker's Place, picked up where All in the Family had ended...

.

Cowan spent twenty years as a professor of communication law and policy at UCLA
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...

, where he received numerous teaching awards and founded the Center for Communication Policy.

Television Producer

Concurrently with his teaching at UCLA, Cowan was a television producer. In 1992, he won an Emmy as executive producer of the television movie Mark Twain & Me, which was voted Outstanding Prime Time Program for Children by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He also produced The Quiz Kids, a program that had been created by his father, and he hosted a public affairs show created by Walter Cronkite called Why in the World?

Author

Cowan’s books include: See No Evil: The Backstage Battle Over Sex and Violence on Television (Simon & Schuster, 1980), which tells the story of the Family Hour case, and the best-selling The People v. Clarence Darrow: The Bribery Trial of America's Greatest Lawyer (Random House, 1993). In a front page review in the Washington Post, Alan Dershowitz called The People v. Clarence Darrow “eye-popping and icon-shattering.” In 2009, the Wall Street Journal called it best book ever written about a trial lawyer. Cowan is currently working on a book about Theodore Roosevelt and the 1912 Presidential campaign.

Playwright

With the late Leroy Aarons, Cowan co-wrote the award-winning play Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, which explores the delicate balance between the press, public's right to know and the government's need to protect some vital national secrets. It was first produced in 1991, at the end of the Persian Gulf War by LA Theatre Works. Writing in Vogue, Graydon Carter called it "quite magnificent" and it won the CPB's Gold Award for Excellence. It was revived in a national tour in 2007-2008, playing in 25 cities, and as an Off-Broadway in 2010 at the [nytw.org/ New York Theatre Workshop]. It will be performed in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Beijing in China in November and December 2011.

Los Angeles City Ethics Commission

In 1989, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley
Tom Bradley (politician)
Thomas J. "Tom" Bradley was the 38th Mayor of Los Angeles, California, serving in that office from 1973 to 1993. He was the first and to date only African American mayor of Los Angeles...

 appointed Cowan to chair an independent commission to create an ethics code for the city. Cowan was named "Leader of the Year" by the Council of Government Ethics Leaders for his work.

Government Official

President Clinton appointed Cowan to serve the nation as the director of the Voice of America
Voice of America
Voice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...

 in 1994. He was the 19th director of the VOA, the international broadcasting service of the United States Information Agency
United States Information Agency
The United States Information Agency , which existed from 1953 to 1999, was a United States agency devoted to "public diplomacy". In 1999, USIA's broadcasting functions were moved to the newly created Broadcasting Board of Governors, and its exchange and non-broadcasting information functions were...

, which had more than 100 million listeners each week and broadcast in more than 46 languages. His father, Louis Cowan, had been the 2nd director of VOA from 1943-1945. The younger Cowan also served as associate director of the USIA and as director of the International Broadcasting Bureau
International Broadcasting Bureau
The International Broadcasting Bureau is an entity within the Broadcasting Board of Governors , which is a U.S. independent agency. The IBB supports the day-to-day operations of Voice of America and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting...

, with responsibility for WORLDNET TV and Radio & TV Marti as well as VOA.

From 1979-84, he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a non-profit corporation created by an act of the United States Congress, funded by the United States’ federal government to promote public broadcasting...

 and played a key role in the development of National Public Radio.

Miscellaneous

Cowan serves on the boards of the California HealthCare Foundation
California HealthCare Foundation
Based in Oakland, California, the California HealthCare Foundation is a philanthropy that works “as a catalyst to fulfill the promise of better health care for all Californians” by supporting “ideas and innovations that improve quality, increase efficiency, and lower the costs of care.”The...

, Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media , commonly known as CSM, is a San Francisco-based non-profit organization which serves as a guide for parents that has reviews for most media types, including books, movies, video games, music, and websites, and rates them in terms of violence, sex, and profanity. The website...

, the Pacific Council on International Policy
Pacific Council on International Policy
The Pacific Council on International Policy is a non-partisan organization headquartered in Los Angeles with members and activities throughout the West Coast of the United States and internationally....

 and the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation
Buffett Foundation
The Buffett Foundation is a charitable organization formed by Omaha, Nebraska investor and industrialist Warren Buffett as a vehicle to manage his charitable giving...

. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...

 and the Pacific Council on International Policy
Pacific Council on International Policy
The Pacific Council on International Policy is a non-partisan organization headquartered in Los Angeles with members and activities throughout the West Coast of the United States and internationally....

.

He chaired the California Bipartisan Commission on Internet Political Practices and served as a member and chair of the White House Fellows regional selection committee during the Clinton and Bush administrations.

In 2008, he became the Walter Lippmann Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and in 2009 he was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science.

Personal Life

Cowan is married to Aileen Adams, deputy mayor of Los Angeles and former Secretary of State and Consumer Affairs for the State of California. They have two children, Gabriel Cowan
Gabriel Cowan
Gabriel Cowan is a filmmaker and composer best known for his work on horror films Scream 2, Scream 3, Breathing Room, and Growth. He has also made documentaries, dramas, and comedies.-Early life:...

, a filmmaker, and Mandy Wolf, a grade school teacher.

External links

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