Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Forward 50 2014

Oscar Cohen

After a dozen years of fighting, the East Ramapo tide is turning in Oscar Cohen’s direction.

A retired superintendent of a school for the deaf in Queens, Cohen, 73, has dedicated more than a decade to the fight for justice in a troubled New York school district. Working as an activist with a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Cohen has been among the most effective voices pushing against the Orthodox-majority board that has overseen the decline of the East Ramapo public school district in Rockland County, New York.

This past April, Cohen launched a new campaign to draw attention to the struggle, recruiting clergy members to lobby Albany. In June, following New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s recommendation, the state’s education department assigned a fiscal monitor to oversee the district.

That monitor has yet to make any recommendations, but national attention has changed the mood of the district. In September, the public radio program “This American Life” dedicated an entire hour to the issue.

Other local activists attribute much of this change to Cohen’s work. Steven White, an East Ramapo parent and activist who has run unsuccessfully for a seat on the school board, told the Forward in April: “The local schmuck like me just knows I’m pissed off about something… I explain to Oscar, and Oscar hears me and understands on a deeper level about exactly in what way is this something that is not just another parent complaint; it… represents a pattern of discrimination.”

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.