CW 394: Educating Elites with William D. Cohan Columnist for Bloomberg & Vanity Fair - Author of 'House of Cards' & 'The Last Tycoon'

William D. Cohan is a columnist for Bloomberg View and Vanity Fair and author of the new book, "The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities." He previously authored, "The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co." and "House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street."

Cohan characterizes the state of the American university system and talks about the elitist bad-boy attitude that plagues many campuses across the nation. So many people who fit the stereotype he describes end up on Wall Street.

William D. Cohan is the New York Times bestselling author of three non-fiction narratives about Wall Street: Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World; House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street; and The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co., which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and writes a weekly column for Bloomberg View.

Mr. Cohan also writes for the Financial Times, Bloomberg Business Week, The Atlantic, Art News, the Irish Times, the Washington Post and the New York Times Magazine. He appears regularly on MSNBC, Bloomberg TV, CNN, Current TV, and the BBC. He has also been a guest on the Charlie Rose Show and the News Hour.

Over the course of 17 years Mr. Cohan was a senior Wall Street Mergers & Acquisitions investment banker at Lazard Freres & Co., Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan Chase. He is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University School of Journalism, and the Columbia Graduate School of Business.

Read William D. Cohan's work on Bloomberg View at www.bloombergview.com.

Visit his work on Vanity Fair at www.vanityfair.com.