Richard M. Cohen, a 1970 graduate of Simpson College and author of Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness, a 2004 New York Times bestseller, will deliver Simpson College’s 2005 Commencement address titled “In Search of Self,” on Saturday, May 21 at 10 a.m. in Cowles Field House.

The publication of Cohen’s book followed a 25-year career as a network television news producer.

Cohen began his career at the ABC News Washington Bureau in 1971 as the assistant producer of Issues and Answers and associate producer of Watergate coverage. He later joined The MacNeil/Lehrer Report on public television. Cohen was a producer on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, serving as Dan Rather’s producer when Rather assumed the anchor chair in 1981.

At CBS News, he covered the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland and wars in the Middle East and Central America and went on to assume the position of senior producer of politics, managing CBS News coverage of the 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns. Cohen traveled to China with President Reagan in 1984.

He went back to PBS in 1989, joining Bill Moyers to produce and direct Illusions of News, an award-winning documentary about the press. Cohen joined CNN in 1992, covering the election of Bill Clinton and producing the award-winning documentary, Bill Clinton of Arkansas.

In 1970, Cohen earned his BA from Simpson College and in 1976, an MS in journalism from Columbia University. In 1985, Cohen was honored as a Fellow of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University.

Cohen has won numerous awards in journalism, including three Emmys and a John Foster Peabody.