​DR. DANNY M. COHEN
FOUNDER &
​INTERIM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

​Dr. Danny M. Cohen is the Founder and Interim Executive Director of Unsilence. He is a learning scientist, fiction writer, and Holocaust scholar with a passion for innovative design.

​A Charles Deering McCormick Distinguished Professor of Instruction at Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy and The Crown Family Center for Jewish & Israel Studies, Danny teaches about collective memories of atrocity, the design of Holocaust education, and marginalized narratives of human rights and social justice.

Danny is an author of human rights fiction for young adults. His published works include the choose-your-own-pathway mystery THE 19TH WINDOW, the short story DEAD ENDS, which was featured in the collection IN THE SHADOWS OF MEMORY, and the historical novel TRAIN, a teacher fellows selected text of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

A Holocaust scholar, Danny is co-chair of the Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Commission and the author of OVERLAPPING TRIANGLES, MASKS OF HOLOCAUST MEMORY, TEACHING ABOUT T4, and other academic articles. He was the editor of PRESENT PAST by Ava Kadishson Schieber and helped to republish the seminal Holocaust memoir I WAS A DOCTOR IN AUSCHWITZ by Gisela Perl. Danny was a member of the editorial advisory board of the journal The Holocaust in History and Memory, he was a faculty fellow of the Auschwitz Jewish Center, and he designed the pedagogical track of the inaugural docent training program of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.

​Originally from London, Danny is also a singer in the Chicago-based folk-rock band They Won't Win.

Photograph courtesy of Northwestern University