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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.

Dr. Jim Walsh is an expert in international security and a Research Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Walsh's research and writings focus on international security, and in particular, topics involving weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. Dr. Walsh has testified before the United States Senate on the issue of nuclear terrorism and chaired the Harvard University International Working Group on Radiological Terrorism. Since 2001, Dr. Walsh has given some 700 media interviews, including more than 300 appearances on CNN. His comments and analysis have appeared in *the New York Times*, *the Washington Post*, *the Los Angeles Times*, *the Times of London*, *the Christian Science Monitor* and numerous other publications. He has appeared on the CBS *Evening News*, NPR, PBS, Fox, MSNBC, the Discovery Channel, MTV, Al Jazeera, and outlets in more than a dozen countries. His film credits include *Testament* (2004), *Meltdown *(2004), and *Fortress Australia* (2002). Before coming to MIT, Dr. Walsh was Executive Director of the Managing the Atom Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He was also a visiting scholar at the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the country's three nuclear weapons labs. Previously, he was named a Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar by the United States Institute for Peace and won the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship from the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Dr. Walsh received his Ph.D from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kim Marshall began his career in 1969 teaching sixth graders in a Boston middle school. He used "learning stations" with some success, wrote curriculum materials for his students, gave workshops for teachers in the Boston area, and began to write articles on classroom and school innovation. In 1987, Kim was made a principal. As leader of the Mather Elementary School for the next 15 years, Kim and his colleagues brought about significant improvements in student achievement, teacher effectiveness, and the quality of the curriculum. Kim now works for New Leaders for New Schools, a non-profit that recruits, trains, and supports urban principals. Kim coaches new principals in New York City, with a special focus on the effective implementation of interim assessments

Timothy Knowles is the Lewis-Sebring Director of the Urban Education Institute. The mission of the Urban Education Institute is to create new knowledge and educational models to address one of the nation's most significant and enduring questions: how do we produce reliably excellent schooling for children growing up in urban America? Prior to his current position, Knowles served as the Lewis-Sebring Executive Director and Senior Research Associate of the Center for Urban School Improvement at the University. He was deputy superintendent for teaching and learning at the Boston Public Schools from 1998 to 2002. At the Boston Public Schools, he has been responsible for school improvement and professional development, developing and sustaining community partnerships, and supervising principals and district staff. He was co-director of the Boston Annenberg Challenge, a $30 million effort to improve literacy instruction, and has served in a number of other administrative positions, including founding director of a full-service, kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York City.

Iris Chang is one of the nation's leading young historians. Her many accolades include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Program on Peace and International Cooperation Award, the Woman of the Year award from the Organization of Chinese Americans, and two honorary doctorates (from the College of Wooster in Ohio, and California State University at Hayward). Chang has written for numerous publications, such as The New York Times, Newsweek and The Los Angeles Times, and has been featured by countless radio, television and print media, including Nightline, The Jim Lehrer News Hour, Charlie Rose, Good Morning America, C-Span's Booknotes, and the front cover of Reader's Digest. Chang also lectures frequently before business, university and other groups interested in human rights, World War II history, Cold War history, the Asian-American experience, Sino-American relations, and the future of American civil liberties. She worked briefly as a reporter for The Associated Press and The Chicago Tribune before completing a graduate degree in writing from the Johns Hopkins University and launching her career as a full-time author and lecturer.

Don Oberdorfer is a Distinguished Journalist in Residence and Adjunct Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. As of September 2006, he was named Chairman of the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS. Oberdorfer was a journalist for 38 years, 25 of them for *The Washington Post*. His areas of expertise included the White House and Northeast Asia, and he spent 17 years as a diplomatic correspondent based in Tokyo. He has also reported for *The Charlotte Observer*, *The Saturday Evening Post*, and *Knight Newspapers*. His work has won numerous awards for journalistic excellence, including the National Press Club's Edwin M. Hood Award for diplomatic correspondence (1981, 1988) and Georgetown University's annual Edward Weintal Prize for diplomatic reporting (1982, 1993). He retired from journalism in 1993. From 1994-96, Oberdorfer served as President of Overseas Writers, a professional association of American and foreign journalists who focus on U.S. diplomacy in Washington. He is a member of the Asia Society and the Council on Foreign Relations, and currently is Program Chair of the Washington Institute on Foreign Affairs, an organization of retired senior U.S. diplomats, military officers, and journalists. Oberdorfer is a native of Atlanta, Ga. He graduated from Princeton University in 1952 and returned as a Visiting Professor in 1977, 1982 and 1986. In 1996, Princeton bestowed on him its Woodrow Wilson Award, given annually to an alumnus for exemplary service to the nation.