Gil Press of Forbes magazine cited Geoffrey Cowan as one of the organizers of the 1994 Superhighway Summit, the “first public conference bringing together all of the major industry, government and academic leaders in the field [and] also began the national dialogue about the Information Superhighway and its implications.”

“The keynote speaker was Vice President Al Gore who said: ‘We have a dream for…an information superhighway that can save lives, create jobs and give every American, young and old, the chance for the best education available to anyone, anywhere.'”

Read More

Geoffrey Cowan penned an op-ed column in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times entitled “How Theodore Roosevelt helped prove that a knock-down, drag-out primary is a good way to choose a candidate.”

“Watching the presidential primary campaign unfold with the use of tawdry comments and language that sometimes seem unworthy of the greatest nation in the world, it may be useful to remember that there was an equally explosive contest featuring Theodore Roosevelt 104 years ago, when the presidential primary process began. There were those in 1912, as there are those today, who worried about the failings of a selection system built on popular democracy. Yet the presidential primary process has served America well in the past, and it almost certainly will serve us well this year too.”

Read More

(Photo: Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

This new profile of Geoffrey Cowan in the Desert Sun highlights his time as president of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands and his decision to return full-time to the University of Southern California, where he will continue as a University Professor, holder of the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership and director of the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. The Desert Sun profile also includes an overview of his new book, Let the People Rule: Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of the Presidential Primary, and some of the backstory on how it came to be.

“…. Cowan’s career spans six decades, and the globe — from civil rights campaigns in Mississippi to retreats with world leaders — touching the realms of media, law and academia.

In June 2016, Cowan, shortly after turning 74, will step down as head of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands. For almost six years, he’s championed the family’s mission of making the estate in Rancho Mirage ‘the Camp David of the West’ with much success: President Barack Obama has visited five times.”

Read More

The USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy has launched the Project on Presidential Primaries: Roadmap to Nomination 2016, a crowd-sourced Google Spreadsheet detailing the delegate selection rules for the 2016 primaries and caucuses by state, party, type, voter participation, election dates, and more.

Most Americans — even candidates and party insiders — have little knowledge about how delegates are chosen in presidential caucuses and primaries. The rules vary dramatically by state and party and change from election to election.

The Project on Presidential Primaries is a crowd-sourced resource to help illuminate the system of presidential primaries in the United States. It is an initiative of the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy, which is directed by Geoffrey Cowan….

This project is inspired by Cowan who, as a young Yale Law student in 1968, asked what ABC news anchor Howard K. Smith called a “novel question”: “How are the delegates for the Democratic National Convention chosen?” Watch the video here.

Read More

In a review of Let the People Rule: Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of the Presidential Primary, Kirkus Reviews said Geoffrey Cowan’s use of material from dozens of previously unknown and unused manuscript collections “adds depth to his portrait of Roosevelt and the social and cultural environments from which the presidential primary emerged.”

“Political junkies will delight in this rollicking history containing lessons applicable to our contemporary political landscape.”

Read More

Geoffrey Cowan was interviewed for a BBC profile on Seymour Hersh. Cowan served as Hersh’s source for his My Lai massacre story during the Vietnam War.

Watch Video