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  • Arline Isaacson is co-chair of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus. She is a political and legislative strategist with high success rate. Lobbyist with extensive marketing, public relations and media expertise. Advocacy and organizing background with emphasis on message development. Isaacson has worked with African leaders and International Ethical Leadership program. Extensive experience with labor, environmental and energy issues. Lead strategist on legislative issues for GLBT community in MA.
  • Aleksandr Ilitchev received an MA in International Relations and Journalism from the Moscow State Institute for International Relations in 1974.He wasa career diplomat, with the United Nations Secretariat since 1992. The areas of responsibility include Northeast Asia, as well as the ASEAN Regional Forum and regional security issues. Aleksandr accompanied the current Secretary-General and his predecessor on many trips to Asia, and was advisor to the Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General for the Korean Peninsula (2003-2005). Prior to joining the United Nations, he served continuously in the Russian Foreign Ministry from 1974 with the assignments at the Permanent Mission to the United Nations (Alternate Representative to the Security Council and Senior Counsellor) (1990-1992); Personal Assistant to Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze (1986-90); USA Department of the Foreign Ministry (global and regional security issues) (1985-86); Embassy in Washington, DC (1979-1985) and the US Department of the Foreign Ministry (1978-1979), as well as in Syria (1974-77).
  • Donald P. Gregg is chairman of the Board of The Korea Society in New York City. Following graduation from Williams College in 1951, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and over the next quarter century was assigned to Japan, Burma, Vietnam and Korea. Gregg was seconded to the National Security Council staff in 1979, where he was in charge of intelligence activities and Asian policy affairs. In 1982, he was asked by the then Vice President George H. W. Bush to become his national security advisor. He then retired from the CIA, and was awarded its highest decoration, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal. During his six years with Vice President Bush, Gregg traveled to 65 countries, and also was a professorial lecturer at Georgetown University, where he taught a graduate level workshop entitled Force and Diplomacy. From September 1989, Gregg served as ambassador to Korea. Prior to his departure from Korea in 1993, Mr. Gregg received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, an honorary degree from Sogang University, and a decoration from the Prime Minister of Korea.
  • Ambassador Han is a graduate (1979) of the Economic Faculty of Kim Il Sung University and he began his career with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1980-1992). From 1993 through 1997, he was minister counselor of the DPRK UN Mission. Then, he became deputy director general of American Affairs Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1998-2002). Since 2003, he has been ambassador and deputy permanent representative of DPRK UN Mission.
  • Ezra F. Vogel is a student of both modern Japan and China. He received his B.A. at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1950 and his Ph.D. in sociology at Harvard in 1958. He then spent two years in Japan conducting research. In 1960-61, he was assistant professor at Yale University and from 1961-62 through 1963-64 a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard, studying Chinese language and history. He remained at Harvard, becoming lecturer in 1964 and professor in 1967. Professor Vogel succeeded John Fairbank as second Director (1972-1977) of Harvard's East Asian Research Center and second Chairman of the Council for East Asian Studies (1977-1980). He was Director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at the Center for International Affairs (1980-1987) and, since 1987, Honorary Director. He was director of the Undergraduate Concentration in East Asian Studies from its inception in 1972 until 1989. In 1993 he took a two-year leave of absence, serving as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council. He returned to Harvard in September 1995 to direct the Fairbank Center until 1999 and was head of the Asia Center from 1997 to 1999. He taught courses on communist Chinese society, Japanese society, and industrial East Asia. The Japanese edition of Professor Vogel's book *Japan as Number One: Lessons for America *(1979) remains the all-time best-seller in Japan of non-fiction by a Western author. He officially retired in 2000 but remains active in research and East Asia related activities.
  • Historian Stanley I. Kutler has been a part of the Law School faculty since 1987, and specializes in American legal and political institutions. He has published extensively in a wide range of fields within American history, concentrating on American constitutional history and the 20th century. Most recently he is probably best known as the author of *Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes*. Professor Kutler's other books include *The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon*; *The American Inquisition*, winner of the Silver Gavel Award, American Bar Association, 1983; *Privilege and Creative Destruction: The Charles River Bridge Case*; and *Judicial Power and Reconstruction Politics*. In addition, Professor Kutler has authored or edited a half-dozen textbooks in various fields of American history. His scholarly articles have appeared in leading history and legal periodicals. Most recently, he has edited the four-volume work, *Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century America*, winner of the prize for the best reference work by the Association of Book Publishers, and *The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War*.
  • Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American political activist and university professor who was associated with the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Davis was also a notable activist during the Civil Rights Movement and a prominent member and political candidate of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Since leaving the CPUSA, she continues to identify herself as a democratic socialist and is currently a member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. She first achieved nationwide notoriety when a weapon registered in her name was linked to the murder of Judge Harold Haley during an effort to free a black convict. The convict was being tried for the attempted retaliatory murder of a white prison guard who killed three unarmed black inmates. Davis fled underground and was the subject of an intense manhunt. She was eventually captured, arrested, tried, and acquitted in one of the most famous trials in recent U.S. history. Davis is a graduate studies professor emeritus of history of consciousness at the University of California and presidential chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She retired in the spring of 2008 and now works for racial, gender equality, gay rights, and prison abolition. Davis is a public speaker, nationally and internationally, and the founder of the grassroots prison-industrial complex-abolition organization Critical Resistance.
  • On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullets as his motorcade wound through Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected President; he was the youngest to die. Of Irish descent, he was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. Graduating from Harvard in 1940, he entered the Navy. In 1943, when his PT boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer, Kennedy, despite grave injuries, led the survivors through perilous waters to safety. Back from the war, he became a Democratic Congressman from the Boston area, advancing in 1953 to the Senate. He married Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953. In 1955, while recuperating from a back operation, he wrote *Profiles in Courage*, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history. In 1956 Kennedy almost gained the Democratic nomination for Vice President, and four years later was a first-ballot nominee for President. Millions watched his television debates with the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon. Winning by a narrow margin in the popular vote, Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic President. Responding to ever more urgent demands, he took vigorous action in the cause of equal rights, calling for new civil rights legislation. His vision of America extended to the quality of the national culture and the central role of the arts in a vital society. He wished America to resume its old mission as the first nation dedicated to the revolution of human rights. With the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps, he brought American idealism to the aid of developing nations. But the hard reality of the Communist challenge remained. Kennedy contended that both sides had a vital interest in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and slowing the arms race--a contention which led to the test ban treaty of 1963. The months after the Cuban crisis showed significant progress toward his goal of "a world of law and free choice, banishing the world of war and coercion." His administration thus saw the beginning of new hope for both the equal rights of Americans and the peace of the world.