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  • Alan Keyes was one of the U.S. representatives to the United Nations during the Ronald Reagan administration. In the 1990's he became one of the more well-known conservative African-Americans, thanks to his radio talk program, *The Alan Keyes Show*. His career as a political pundit on the TV and lecture circuit included a 2002 program on MSNBC, *Alan Keyes Making Sense*, but has been periodically interrupted by campaigns for elected positions. A Republican, Keyes ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in Maryland in 1988 and 1992, for the Senate in Illinois in 2004 (against Barack Obama), and for U.S. president in 1996 and 2000.
  • Formerly a professor of government at Harvard University and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Hugh Heclo is a recognized expert on American democratic institutions as well as the international development of modern welfare states. He has received national awards for his books including *Comparative Public Policy*, *A Government of Strangers*, and *Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden*. Professor Heclo is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Hugh Heclo is senior editor and contributor to the 2003 volume, *Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America* and a member of the Scholar's Council advising the Librarian of Congress. In 2002 he received the American Political Science Association's John Gaus lifetime achievement award honoring exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration.
  • Dr. Philip A. Cunningham is professor of Catholic-Jewish Relations and director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations of Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, PA. He also serves as a member of the Advisory Committee on Catholic-Jewish Relations for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, secretary-treasurer of the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations, and a vice-president of the International Council of Christians and Jews. Interested in biblical studies, religious education, and theologies of Christian-Jewish relations, he is the author of numerous book and articles on these subjects. Dr. Cunningham is also the North American coordinator of the Christ and the Jewish People consultation, an international collaboration among five Catholic universities to explore a key theological question concerning the church's relationship to Judaism.
  • Naomi Shihab Nye was born on March 12, 1952, in St. Louis, to a Palestinian father and an American mother. During her high school years, she lived in Ramallah in Jordan, the Old City in Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas, where she later received her BA in English and world religions from Trinity University. Nye gives voice to her experience as an Arab-American through poems about heritage and peace that overflow with a humanitarian spirit. Her poems and short stories have appeared in various journals and reviews throughout North America, Europe, and the Middle and Far East. She has traveled to the Middle East and Asia for the United States Information Agency three times, promoting international goodwill through the arts. Nye has received awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Carity Randall Prize, the International Poetry Forum, as well as four Pushcart Prizes. She has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Wittner Bynner Fellow. In 1988 she received The Academy of American Poets' Lavan Award, selected by W. S. Merwin. She currently lives in San Antonio, Texas.
  • Alan L. Berger occupies the Raddock Family Eminent Scholar Chair for Holocaust Studies, the first Holocaust chair established in the state of Florida, and is Professor of Judaic Studies at Florida Atlantic University where he also directs the Center for the Study of Values and Violence after Auschwitz. Berger founded and directed the Holocaust and Judaic Studies B.A. Program at FAU (1998-2005). Prior to this, he was a professor in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University where he founded and directed the Jewish Studies Program. While at Syracuse, Berger served as Acting Chair of the Religion Department and Interim Chair of the Fine Arts Department. He also was the Visiting Gumenick Professor of Judaica at the College of William and Mary. Berger chaired the Annual Scholars Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches in 1989 and in 1990, and was guest chair of the Lessons and Legacies of the Holocaust Conference in 1998. He was series editor of *Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust*, Syracuse University Press.
  • Former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith has been a chief architect of Bush's domestic policy agenda, focusing on downsized government and faith-based institutions as a way to rebuild communities. Goldsmith has lectured at Harvard and Columbia and coordinates the campaign's positions on issues from social security to the environment.
  • Marc Landy has a BA from Oberlin College and a PhD in government from Harvard University. His literary works include: *Presidential Greatness (Kansas U. Press, 2000)*,*Environmental Protection Agency From Nixon to Clinton: Asking the Wrong Questions*, *Seeking the Center:Politics and Policymaking at the New Century (2001)* and T*he New Politics of Public Policy*, and *American Government: Balancing Liberty and Democracy (co-authored with Sid Milkis)*. In addition to teaching undergraduates and graduate students, he regularly teaches public officials from Ireland and Northern Ireland about American politics through a series of executive programs run by the Irish Institute. His recent articles include: *The Bush Presidency after 9/11: Shifting the Kaleidoscope in the inaugural issue of the E Journal Forum, Local Government and Environmental Policy, in Martha Derthick ed., Dilemmas of Scale in American Federal Democracy (Cambridge U. Press 1999)* and T*he Politics of Risk Reform, co-authored with Kyle Dell, Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum, Fall 1999*.
  • **Scott Simon **is the host of NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon. He has reported stories from all fifty states and every continent, and has won every major award in broadcasting, including the Peabody, the Emmy, the Columbia-DuPont, the Ohio State Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the Sidney Hillman Award. He also hosts shows for PBS and appears on BBC TV. He is the author of the novels Pretty Birds and Windy City, the memoir Home and Away, and the history Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball. Image courtesy of Will O'Leary.
  • As Communications Director of Clinton's 1992 campaign, George Stephanopoulos helped set up the War Room that responded aggressively to attacks. He then became an advisor at the White House, but left after Clinton's first term. He wrote a 1999 book on his experiences in the Clinton campaign and presidency, *All Too Human: A Political Education*.