Elizabeth F. Cohen is an American political scientist. She is the Maxwell Professor ofpolitical science atBoston University.^[1] She is a political theorist who studies citizenship, immigration, and value of time in politics.

Cohen attendedSwarthmore College, graduating with a B.A. degree in Philosophy and Sociology.^[2] She then attended graduate school atYale University, where she earned an M.A., an M.Phil., and a Ph.D. in political science in 2003.^[2]

In 2004, Cohen joined the political science faculty at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.^[2] In summer 2010 she was a visiting fellow at the Wagner School of Public Service atNew York University, and she was a 2014–2015 visiting scholar at theRussell Sage Foundation.^[2]

In 2009, Cohen published the bookSemi‐citizenship in Democratic Politics.^[3] InSemi‐citizenship in Democratic Politics, Cohen studies the idea that people can be only partially citizens, by being granted only some of the rights of citizens.^[4] She examines the different types of semi-citizens, splitting their rights into two major categories: autonomous rights, which are useful in any political context, and relative rights, such as the right to property, which are useful only in some political arrangements.^[4] Cohen uses this subtler picture of citizenship to challenge the narrative that modern liberal democracies contain one category of partial citizens and another category of full citizens, and that people who have previously been granted only partial citizenship can assemble a collection of rights that will ultimately make them complete citizens; rather, she argues that different citizens have always enjoyed complicated combinations of rights and that there is no one coherent category of total citizenship.^[5]

In 2018, Cohen published the bookThe Political Value of Time: Citizenship, Duration, and Democratic Justice.The Political Value of Time studies how time shapes and is incorporated into politics, like the relationship between space and politics that is studied in the field ofpolitical geography.^[6] Cohen shows that time is embedded into many of the most fundamental processes in democratic politics, such as the 18 years that it takes for a person to be able to vote in many countries, and the 3 to 5-year span that is a common waiting time fornaturalization of new citizens.^[6] She studies the difference between these circumstances and ones in which a political status is imposed which will never expire, such as the permanentdisfranchisement of some felons, and she compares and evaluates the timespans and deadlines that are attached to various political situations.^[6]The Political Value of Time won the Best Book Award for 2019 from the Migration and Citizenship section of theAmerican Political Science Association.^[7]

Cohen was also the coauthor of the 2019 bookCitizenship with Cyril A. Ghosh.^[2] In 2020, Cohen publishedIllegal: America's Lawless Immigration Regime and How it Threatens Us All. InIllegal Cohen studies United States immigration policy, how it's enforced by agencies likeU.S. Customs and Border Protection, theUnited States Department of Homeland Security, andU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and how treatment of immigrants interacts with trends likewhite nationalism in American politics and has implications for the possible treatment of everyone in the country.^[8]

In addition to her scholarly writing, Cohen has written op-eds for numerous American newspapers, magazines, and websites.^[9][10][11] Her work has been discussed in theNew York Times byCharles M. Blow,^[12] and inNew York Magazine.^[13] She has also spoken in university and civic settings throughout North America and Western Europe.^[14]

Cohen was an Associate Editor of theAmerican Journal of Political Science from 2019 to 2023.^[2]

• Elizabeth F. Cohen (2009).Semi-Citizenship in Democratic Politics. Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-1-1394-8288-2.

• Elizabeth F. Cohen (2018).The Political Value of Time: Citizenship, Duration, and Democratic Justice. Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-1-1083-2957-6.

• Elizabeth F. Cohen; Cyril Ghosh (2019).Citizenship. Polity Press.ISBN 978-1-5095-2229-3.

• Elizabeth F. Cohen (2020).Illegal: How America's Lawless Immigration Regime Threatens Us All. Basic Books.ISBN 978-1-5416-9985-4.

• 21st-century American women writers
• 1973 births
• Living people
• American women political scientists
• American political scientists
• Swarthmore College alumni
• Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
• Syracuse University faculty
• American women academics

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