Gary B. Cohen was educated at the University of Southern California and Princeton University. He was a member of the University of Oklahoma history faculty from 1976-2001, where he taught a range of courses on modern European social and political history and East-Central Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In August 2001, he became director of the Center of Austrian Studies, executive editor for The Austrian History Yearbook, and professor of history at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.