Blanche Wiesen Cook

Blanche WiesenCook is Distinguished Professor of History and Women’s Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of two bestselling books about Eleanor Roosevelt: Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One and Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume Two. She is currently working on the third and final volume of Eleanor Roosevelt in which the former first lady is seen as the most important woman in American political history. A frequent contributor of reviews and columns in many newspapers and periodicals, her book The Declassified Eisenhower was listed by The New York Times Book Review as one of the notable books of 1981. For more than twenty years she produced and hosted her own program for Radio Pacifica, originally called Activists and Agitators, later renamed Women and the World in the 1980s. Professor Cook appears frequently on such television programs as The Today Show, Good Morning America, C-Span’s Booknotes, and MacNeil/Lehre­­r­ NewsHour, where she participated in the joint PBS-NBC coverage of the 1992 Democratic National Convention. A provocative and engaging speaker on history, politics and women’s issues; Professor Cook is deeply committed to the principle of greater dignity and security for all women and men. She is the former Vice-President for Research of the American Historical Associa­tion, and was Vice-President and Chair of the Fund for Open Information and Accountability (FOIA, Inc.) She was also Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the Freedom of Information and Access Committee of the Organization of American Historians, which was actively committed to maintaining the integrity of the Freedom of Information Act.