David L. Cohen ’77 served as the ambassador to Canada under the Biden administration from 2021 to 2025. Upon returning to the U.S., Cohen has been involved in an array of projects in Philadelphia, where he has been living for decades. Currently, Cohen is working to bring the 2028 Democratic National Convention to the city. In June, The Phoenix met with Cohen over Zoom to discuss his education, his experience in Canada, and his thoughts on the U.S.-Canada relationship. Below is a transcript of this conversation, edited for clarity and concision.
Xinto Xu: You graduated from Swarthmore in 1977 with a triple major in political science, history, and economics, before deciding to study law at UPenn. I want to talk about how your education has informed your career choices. Did you already imagine yourself going into politics at that point of your life?
DC: I’m a big believer in the value and structure of a liberal arts education. I don’t think liberal arts education is about vocational training and what you’re going to do with your job. At the time, I didn’t think that either. I may have thought there was more value for things I was interested in, like politics and government, and the way markets work, by taking economics, political science, and history courses, but I didn’t think then, and I don’t think now, that your major and what you study in college is necessarily going to have all that much value substantively to what you do in the rest of your career.
Easy for me to say now, but when I talk to a lot of young people about their careers, when you’re picking a major, pick something that you’re interested in; pick something where you like the faculty, in a particular subject matter where you think you can relate to the faculty and they can relate to you. Don’t pick something because you think that if you can concentrate in political science that that will further a career in government or in politics. I think that would be a mistake.
XX: At the early stage of your career, you were the chief of staff to the then Philadelphia Mayor Edward Rendell from 1992 to 1997, and you led the fiscal recovery plan that addressed the city’s bankruptcy. Looking back at this after more than 30 years, which part of the experience stayed with you the most?
DC: When I went into the government after Ed was elected and took office, I was 37 years old. Taking that position came with a lot of responsibility for a 37-year-old. The chance to work at Ed Rendell’s side — to be his partner in every sense of the word, and be a part of what continues to be viewed today as one of the most impressive municipal turnarounds in the history of the United States — is something I continue to marvel at, and something I’m very proud of. Even today, when I appear at events in Philadelphia, I often get introduced as a person who played an instrumental role in the turnaround of the City of Philadelphia. That is pretty nice and neat and cool, and makes me very happy and proud of the work that Ed Rendell and our whole team did at that time.
So that’s what makes me feel good. On a substantive basis, the most abiding lesson that I took for my service in city government was dealing with the real-life problems of real people.
That was really my first experience in dealing with the people of Philadelphia, the people who live in the neighborhoods who were scared about the whether the city is going to go bankrupt; city employees who were worried whether they were going to lose their pensions or their health care as a result of the city’s financial difficulties; the kids who would come running up to me on the streets with pieces of paper that were either resumes or notes about their father’s or mother’s qualifications, asking me for help getting their father or their mother a job because they’ve been out of a job for almost a year, and it’s tearing our family apart.
XX: That’s quite an experience to have at a young age. Throughout your career, you have worked in the public sector — with Mayor Rendell, at SEPTA, and more recently in diplomacy — but you have also worked in the private sector. Do you think moving between the public and private sectors changed the way you understood diplomacy or governance?
DC: I think my ability to move between the public sector and the private sector made me more effective in both, because I could speak the language of the public sector in the private sector, and I can speak the language of the private sector in the public sector. So I think it was extremely beneficial for me to have both of those backgrounds, and you know, to this day I get asked advice based upon my experience in the public sector and/or the private sector, and so there was huge value to that, and huge benefit to that.
In terms of diplomacy, it’s interesting because I am not someone who grew up always wanting to be an ambassador. It wasn’t really on my bucket list of things I was interested in doing, and becoming an ambassador really came about because of my relationship with Joe Biden. I was a friend of his and his wife’s and his son Beau’s for 40 years, and worked very closely with him in politics; with Beau, I helped to advise him on his overall career as well as his political career. As a result of that relationship, as Joe Biden was running for president in 2019 and got elected, he talked to me about whether I would come into the administration in some capacity, and that’s really the first time I thought about that. I was still very happily employed at Comcast.
My decision to accept the offer came about as a result of a somewhat reasoned analysis of what I could do in the Biden administration, where I could have the most impact, and what would be the most interesting to me. I had no experience as an ambassador. I had no training in diplomatic affairs or even in foreign policy. My focus had been much more domestically centered. But my whole background as a lawyer, as a business person, as a government employee, in the end helped make me a very effective ambassador, because I could talk a lot of different people’s language; I understood a lot of different perspectives as a result of that, and I got asked a lot of advice based upon that varied and diverse experience in the public sector, the private sector, and even diverse places within those two sectors.
XX: After the appointment, you stayed in Canada from 2021 to 2025; what was that experience like? And President Biden appointed you to help reset the relationship between the two countries. So, I was wondering, what’s something you found unexpected or unforgettable during your time in Canada?
DC: I obviously get asked a lot how much and whether I enjoy being an ambassador, and the answer I give is that anyone who serves as a U.S. ambassador anywhere in the world who says that they didn’t have a good time is not telling you the truth. I mean, it’s a terrific job, because Canada is a big and complicated country, and it’s a country that’s extremely important to the United States. As a result, being the personal representative of the president in the country where you’re serving — and that’s the shorthand description of what an ambassador is — being the personal representative of Joe Biden in Canada was an exhilarating opportunity, and it’s a never-a-dull-moment job. Even though relations were very strong during that time, it doesn’t mean that there were never any tensions, and doesn’t mean there was never anything for me to do. You’re on one of the largest stages you can be on, and the way Joe Biden managed me as an ambassador allowed me to have a tremendous amount of free rein to interact with Canadians, and to make decisions — or certainly to recommend decisions — in the way that I thought Joe Biden would like to see implemented and recommended, and so the discretion that I had as the U.S. Ambassador to Canada was really terrific and gave me an opportunity to put my fingerprints on US-Canadian policy in a way that you know I can still see to this day.
XX: Were there any particularly unforgettable moments that are still in your mind?
DC: There were a lot. I will tell you that one of the most emotional moments for my entire stay in Canada, maybe for my entire life, was my visit to Gander on the 21st anniversary of 9/11. It was to be in the presence of that community and to visit the Gander Airport, where hundreds of people still work there. There are dozens of people who were working in the airport on 9/11, and to hear them talk about their experience, the courage that they demonstrated, and the calming influence that they had on the country of the United States gave my visit an incredible emotional punch, and I’ll never forget how they elevated the relationship between the United States and Canada in a way that it’s easy to talk about but not easy to convey.
That’ll be my number one memory, and there’s so many fantastic memories. I had the privilege of paying a visit to Haida Gwaii, an island off of the coast of British Columbia. It is sovereign British Columbia and Canadian territory, but it is the ancestral homeland of the Haida Gwaii nation, and while I was ambassador, the Canadian Parliament passed legislation recognizing Haida Gwaii as a sovereign nation.
I was the first foreign dignitary and the first United States official representative to visit Haida Gwaii as a sovereign nation. The president of the nation made a big deal of the fact that, you know, “you’re our first official visitor as a nation, and we’ll never forget you for that reason,” and I never had a talking point on that. Nobody knew that was going to happen. I said, “Trust me, Mr. President, I’m never going to forget you or this visit for the same reason.” So that’s something that you just can’t count on happening, but to be the first official visitor of a new Indigenous nation, as the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, as an official representative of Joe Biden, is something I’ll never forget.
XX: Recent polling by Pew Research Center has shown a sharp decline in Canadian trust towards the United States. From your perspective, as someone who served as the ambassador, what do you think has driven that shift? And having worked on these issues firsthand, how concerned are you about its long-term trajectory?
DC: That’s an important question. By the way, it’s more than Pew that has reached that conclusion. Every poll that I’ve seen has reached the same conclusion: U.S. pollster, Canadian pollster. It’s pretty disturbing when you look at the movement downwards in the trust or relationship between Canada and the United States. I will also say that those same numbers exist globally, not just Canada.
I don’t think it’s healthy for the United States — United States has an incredibly important role to play as a beacon of democracy in a global sense, and when you lose your credibility and your respect, it makes it harder for you to discharge that function in an appropriate way, and I think that’s what we’re at risk of losing. And again, it’s more than in Canada. It is with the EU, it is with Europe, it is with Asia; in all those places, the United States is at historically low trust numbers and absolutely does not have the same relationships that it has had historically with allies around the world.
What do I think the cause of that is? I’m a person who’s very careful. I don’t believe in bashing Donald Trump. He’s our president, and whether I agree with him or I don’t agree with him, I have too much respect for the office of the president to publicly criticize any person who is in that office, so I say this only on the basis of factual reality, which is that obviously the cause of the deteriorated trust numbers and respect numbers in Canada and elsewhere and around the world is because of the way Donald Trump treats other countries, and some of this is substantive policy, but some of it is just rhetoric. I mean, [saying that] Canada is the 51st state, is not, is not a meaningful substantive policy; it’s just disrespectful rhetoric, and if you do that enough, you will, as a leader in one country, you will cause your constituent parts in another country to lose trust and to lose respect for you, and I think that is indisputably what has happened. I don’t think it’s good for Canada. I don’t think it’s good for the United States.
The good news is that I don’t think it’s permanent either. The US-Canada relationship, which has been a close relationship in trade, defense, security for 150 years, has had its ups and downs; it’s had its bumpy roads, including during the first Trump administration, and the hallmark of this relationship has always been that it is sufficiently durable that it’s come back, and look at the way it came back after Trump one; I think it’ll come back again the same way it came back from Trump one to Trump two, but again, this is not always been a perfect relationship. There’s a famous story involving a U.S. president and a Canadian prime minister who just didn’t like each other. In the early 1960s, President Kennedy insisted on mispronouncing Prime Minister Diefenbaker’s name repeatedly, and it was an attempt to be disrespectful and to put him on the defensive, and things got so bad between the two of them that they refused to talk to each other. People said, “Oh my God, we have this important ally, this important friend. Are we ever going to put the relationship back together again?” And yet once that president left office, the relationship came back.
Story two: dial forward in the next administration with President Johnson, who absolutely detested Prime Minister Pearson. They couldn’t stand each other, and the Prime Minister, Pearson, fundamentally disagreed with the United States’ and President Johnson’s war policy on Vietnam, thought the United States should stay out of Vietnam and was publicly critical of the positions that the United States was taking in Vietnam. President Johnson didn’t like this very much, as you can imagine. And during a meeting in Camp David, the two men were in a room alone and yelling at each other, and story told by the Canadian ambassador to the U.S., who was standing in the room next to the room where they were meeting, is that he saw President Johnson stand up and sort of towering over Prime Minister Pearson, obviously yelling at him, and then he sees President Johnson reached it out, — President Johnson was not a small man — and grabbed Prime Minister Pearson by the collar and lifted him out of the chair. So, again, I don’t remember President Trump ever putting his hands on Prime Minister Trudeau or Prime Minister Corny; my question about this story is, where was the Secret Service? I mean, you would think the Secret Service or Canadian security might have popped into the room and said, “What’s going on here?”
My third story is the oldest, and maybe the best, which is, if you go back to the early 19th century, there was something called the War of 1812. Canada wasn’t a country then. The United States was a new country. In the War of 1812, Canada was decidedly on the British side, and in fact, at one point in 1813, the U.S. Army invaded the City of York, which is now the City of Toronto, and burned down government buildings. In retaliation for that, the Canadians asked the British to invade Washington, D.C., which they did, and they set the White House and the Capitol on fire. And yet after the War ended, the United States and Canada went on to build the strongest and closest, most durable friendship and allyship in the world, even though we burned down what has become their largest city, and they burned our White House and Capitol as well.
So these relationships can come back. It may take different personalities in the leadership roles, but they can come back, and I believe that the close relationship between Canada and the United States will be rebuilt and will come back. My closing line on this pitch is to resort to American pop music to make the point, to quote that well-known international affairs expert Kelly Clarkson: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” And that’s the story of the U.S.-Canada relationship. These issues we’ve had have not killed us; they’ve made us stronger when they come back, and I do think that will happen in the future once Donald Trump isn’t in office anymore.
XX: Since returning to the U.S. in 2025, what have you been thinking about in terms of your next steps, either in your career or more broadly?
DC: So, when I came back from Canada, I had the unique opportunity to have a complete clean slate. Given the ethics rules in government, I had to resign from everything when I became U.S. Ambassador, so I belonged to no boards, I was not employed by anyone. I didn’t like that when I was going into the government. When I was coming out of the government, it was nice. I really had a chance to take my time and decide what I wanted to do. I created some rules for myself — I decided I wouldn’t say yes to anything for six months; I would just take meetings and listen. In six months, I had over 100 meetings, listened to all sorts of ideas, was offered numerous jobs, but more interesting was offered lots of opportunities to engage with important nonprofits and to engage on behalf of the city and its brand and its reputation on a global basis.
I’ve now said yes to a few things. I’ve agreed to go on the board of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts, which is a place where I think there’s an opportunity for me to help promote the arts and culture scene in the Philadelphia region and in Pennsylvania, which I think is an underappreciated sector of the economy — enormous financial impact and benefit, but the real opportunity to be able to promote Philadelphia and Pennsylvania abroad in a very compelling way.
I also agreed to chair the board of something called the Philadelphia Citizen, which is a digital civic journalism publication. We actually bought Philadelphia magazine this year and married the newest form of journalism — civic digital journalism — with the oldest form of journalism, a print magazine with classified ads and lots of advertising about restaurants and the restaurant scene in Philadelphia. I’m the chair of that board, and very much enjoying that side of journalism and really enjoying the task and taking the obligation seriously of making Philadelphians better citizens, which is ultimately what our mission is.
I did want to keep my toe in the water of foreign affairs and diplomacy, so I joined a nonprofit called Meridian Financial, which is, I think, the best of the Washington-based nonprofits that are practicing in the foreign affairs and diplomatic contexts. And I promised both the mayor and the governor that I would leave time for special projects that they might have from time to time, and each of them has come up with a special project that I’m working on now. The mayor wants to attract the Democratic National Convention to Philadelphia in 2028 or 2032, and I’m leading that effort on her behalf, getting us organized to try and attract what would be my third national political convention, because I helped to lead the effort to attract the Republicans in 2000 and the Democrats in 2016. And then for the governor, we have a bit of a mess in Philadelphia involving the Academy of Natural Sciences, which is basically bankrupt, and Drexel University, which entered into an affiliation agreement in 2011 to help support the Academy going forward; they’re not in agreement as to what that means. I’ll cast it in a somewhat positive way, but I’m working with the Academy and Drexel, trying to see whether there’s a solution beyond going to war to preserve the Academy in some form, and most importantly, preserve the Academy’s mission. I also do a lot of speaking in Canada. I do media appearances on the Canada-U.S. relationship.
XX: My last question today — young people are facing quite a different world from the one you entered when you graduated from Swarthmore. We have the higher education system that’s experiencing a lot of challenges, both from outside forces and from within, and there’s AI emerging as such an unpredictable force. Many of us feel uncertain about what lies ahead. What do you see as the biggest challenge for young people today? And, as an alum, what advice would you give current Swatties?
DC: Part of my answer is going to lead to my conclusion that I shouldn’t give any advice, but I think the frame of the question is right. Times are very uncertain, and if you’re a young person, you’re right to be worried. Another poll that I think is interesting is, for the first time in the history of this poll, a majority of the American public doesn’t necessarily think that their kids are going to grow up to have a better life than they did, and that was not age-stratified. Parents don’t think that about their kids, and kids don’t think that about themselves. That shows an underlying issue. There are disruptive forces, and some of them do have to do with Donald Trump, but a lot of them don’t. AI is not Donald Trump’s fault, and the challenges that young people face these days in technology and in global affairs are profound. So my advice is not to overreact, to associate with people your age and older who share values with you, and it’s okay to talk about what you think the world should look like when you grow up, and you’re in charge of it.
I’m accused of being a relentless optimist about the future of America, the future of our society, and the future of our democracy. The reason why is because I think our young people are going to be in charge of the world shortly, and I’m convinced they’re going to do a better job than we did.
When I say that, sometimes people say, “Well, we don’t know what we’re doing; we don’t have the experience,” and I said, “That’s what we need; we need people who are not set in their ways.” And don’t be afraid to trust your instincts. Your instincts overall are likely to be pretty good, and we need a new set of instincts guiding the future of the of the country, which is where I take us when I say I don’t even think I should answer the question, because my answer is going to fall prey to my view of the world, which I think in retrospect is likely to prove not to be the case.
I think you and your peers are going to be more likely to be able to shape the future, not by waving a magic wand and just executing it, but by your exposure to the problems of the day and your willingness to react to them with a new sense of sensibilities that brings a new perspective to the job.
XX: I hope for that too. Thank you again for this conversation. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.
