Carl Cohen (April 30, 1931 – August 26, 2023) was an American philosopher. He was Professor of Philosophy at the Residential College of the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.

Cohen was co-author of The Animal Rights Debate (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), a point-counterpoint volume with Tom Regan; he is also the author of Democracy (Macmillan, 1972); the author of Four Systems (Random House, 1982); the editor of Communism, Fascism, and Democracy (McGraw Hill, 1997); the co-author (with J. Sterba) of Affirmative Action and Racial Preference (Oxford, 2003), co-author (with I. M. Copi) of Introduction to Logic, 13th edition (Prentice-Hall, 2008), and author of A Conflict of Principles: The Battle over Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan (University Press of Kansas, 2014).

Cohen published many essays in moral and political philosophy in philosophical, medical, and legal journals. He served as a member of the Medical School faculty of the University of Michigan, and as Chairman of the University of Michigan faculty, where he was an active member of the philosophy faculty from 1955. In 2006 the University held a celebration honoring his 50 years on the faculty.

From 1964 to 1967, Cohen, then an Associate Prof. of Philosophy, was an active member of the small planning committee for the Residential College of the University of Michigan. He became the principal author of the "Blue Book" which laid the intellectual foundations for the Residential College. When the Residential College opened in 1967 Cohen became a full-time member of its faculty, and his appointment was shifted from the Department of Philosophy to the Residential College, where he remains the only one of that founding group serving as an active member of the Michigan faculty.

In 1998 anonymous donations totaling some $13,000 were made to the university to name a reading room in the Residential College in Cohen's honor. This was done; a plaque honoring him was placed. It was removed shortly afterwards, however, the reason given being "procedural violations." Many in the University believed that Cohen was being discriminated against because of his outspoken and unpopular opposition to the race-conscious admissions system of the University. Senior members of the Law School faculty, and other faculties, who did not agree with Cohen's views on the admissions matter, nevertheless wrote angrily to the President, Lee Bollinger, in the conviction that technical violations of procedure were being arbitrarily invoked against him, and that the reputation of the University had been besmirched. The President agreed to replace the plaque and to reaffirm the name of the Reading Room; Cohen agreed that his own donation of $10,000 to the University for the room be made public.

In 1996, Cohen made public information he had gathered using the State of Michigan's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) about the substantial weight of racial factors in the University of Michigan undergraduate admissions office use of a "grid system". Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher sued the University based on this data. Barbara Grutter, in a separate proceeding, sued the Law School of the University of Michigan relying on additional data also revealed by Cohen's FOIA inquiry. While the U-M changed its "grid system" to a "point system" the following year, it argued that both mechanical systems were identical in outcome and that the point system, which became more famous, was designed merely to be easier to understand. The system that Cohen made public was ruled unconstitutional by the U. S. Supreme Court in Gratz v. Bollinger, as a "mechanical system," although in a separate ruling, Grutter v. Bollinger, concerning the U-M Law School, the limited use of non-mechanical preferences was allowed.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings on June 23, 2003, Cohen, Gratz, Grutter, and others were among those who invited Ward Connerly to Michigan, where he appeared in a July 8, 2003, speech on the Michigan campus announcing the formation of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), to forbid preference by race or nationality in the state. This became Proposition 2 (06-2) in Michigan, appearing on the November 8, 2006, ballot. Cohen was a leading spokesperson for Proposition 2 in a heated electoral campaign. Proposition 2 passed by a 58%–42% margin. As a result of Cohen's involvement in the issue, he has appeared on numerous panels and in media reports on racial preferences since the mid-1990s.

Cohen was a lifetime activist for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), serving as Chair of the Michigan affiliate of the ACLU, and for years as a member of the National Board of Directors of the ACLU.