Daniel Cohn-Bendit - Our Visitors

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Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Picture by philipperouget under CC License

May 10, 2011

Daniel Cohn-Bendit will visit Washington, DC from May 23-26, 2011. During his visit to the United States, he will meet with representatives from think tanks and the media.

Biography

Daniel Cohn-Bendit was born on the 4th of April, 1945 in Monatuban, France. He attended schools both in France and in Germany, receiving the German citizenship at the age of 14. During his time at the University of Nanterre, where he began studying sociology in 1966, Cohn-Bendit became a key-figure in the student protests both in France and Germany and was named “Dany the Red” (Dany le Rouge). After having been expelled from France in 1968 he moved to Frankfurt and worked as a publicist. During this time, Cohn-Bendit was still involved in the libertarian leftist-scene of the early 1970s in Germany.

In 1984, Cohn-Bendit joined the German Green Party and was appointed honorary city councilor for the newly established office for multi-cultural affairs in Hesse. Despite an ongoing argument over questions of intervention in support of Bosnian Muslims with pacifist parts of the Green Party, Cohn-Bendit was elected Member of the European Parliament in 1994. He served as a German member until 1999 and made his return to French politics in the same year as leading candidate for the French Green Party. In 2004, he was again re-elected to the EP on the German list, and in 2009 he was able to seize a stunning 16.28% of the vote in France with his newly-founded Europe Écologie (Ecological Europe) and was appointed co-president of the group European Greens–European Free Alliance in the European Parliament. He is also a member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, a member of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs and a substitute in the Subcommittee on Security and Defense.

Cohn-Bendit holds an honorary degree of doctor of the Catholic University Tilburg, The Netherlands (1997), and the "Révélation politique" (honorary degree for social political achievements, awarded by Trombinoscope) (1998). He lives in Frankfurt, Germany with his wife. Cohn-Bendit has two sons. He has published numerous books and also hosted a tv-show. Publications (among others) include:

•   "If you were President" (Quand tu seras président, 2004 with Bernard Kouchner)
•   "Xenophobias" (Xénophobies, 1998 with Thomas Schmid)
•   "We Loved It So Much, The Revolution" (Nous l'avons tant aimée, la revolution, 1987, 2nd edition 1998)

Please click here for further publications by Daniel Cohn-Bendit