In a wide-ranging conversation that covered everything from the civil rights movement to the upcoming presidential election, USC Gould School of Law Dean Franita Tolson welcomed former USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism Dean Geoffrey Cowan for the Conversation with the Dean series.
Cowan, who is currently University Professor of Communication and Law, Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership, and has a joint appointment at USC Gould, shared his journey as an activist, journalist, lawyer and leader in the political reform and civil rights movements.
“I grew up in a family that was very committed to civil rights,” he said, citing his mother’s work as a civil rights activist that played a role in his spending the summer of 1964 in rural Mississippi to register Black voters. From there, the Harvard graduate attended Yale Law School and continued working in the public interest sector, as well as in politics and journalism. His work as an anti-war activist led him to found the Commission on the Democratic Selection of Democratic Nominees, which issued a report that led to reforms of the presidential primary system.
“To me, in a way, the whole thing was an extension of the Civil Rights Act,” Cowan said. “Because the right to vote — to me — should extend to the right to pick the major party nominees.”
Cowan also spoke with Tolson about his role as a journalist, an educator and his work on the board of directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, where he was part of the creation of National Public Radio and the “Morning Edition” program.
“I was a high school journalist, I was a college journalist, I spent summers as a journalist, journalism was my passion,” he said. “I always saw the two things (journalism and social justice) as connected. … The skills of being a lawyer are relevant to being a good journalist.”
The Conversations with the Dean series continues on Nov. 7, with Tolson talking to New York Times journalist Jamelle Bouie about the Presidential Election.
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