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  • Robin D. G. Kelley is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He is the author of the prize-winning books *Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression *(1990); *Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class* (1994); *Yo Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America* (1997), which was selected one of the top ten books of 1998 by *the Village Voice*; *Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor's Last Century*, written collaboratively with Dana Frank and Howard Zinn (2001); and *Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination* (2002). He also edited (with Earl Lewis), *To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans* (2000), a Choice Outstanding Academic Title and a History Book Club Selection. *To Make Our World Anew* was an outgrowth of an earlier collaboration with Lewis, the eleven volume Young Oxford History of African Americans (Oxford University Press, 1995-1998), of which he authored volume 10, titled *Into the Fire: African Americans Since 1970* (1996). Kelley also co-edited (with Sidney J. Lemelle) *Imagining Home: Class, Culture, and Nationalism in the African Diaspora* (1994). Kelley's essays have appeared in several anthologies and journals, including *The Nation*, *Monthly Review*, *The Voice Literary Supplement*, *New York Times*, *New York Times Magazine*, *Rolling Stone*, *Color Lines*, *Code Magazine*, *Utne Reader*, *Lenox Avenue*, and *African Studies Review*.
  • Weigel is Senior Fellow and John M. Olin Chair in Religion and American Democracy at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington D.C., and is consultant for Vatican affairs at NBC. He is the author of a biography of Pope John Paul II, entitled *Witness to Hope*, and has written or edited 14 other books. His most recent publication is *Courage to be Catholic*.
  • Dr. Rebecca M. Valette is Professor of Romance Languages at Boston College. An internationally known expert on language pedagogy and testing, she is the coauthor, with her husband, of several widely-used language programs, including *Discovering French* and *Spanish for Mastery*. Rebecca has recently concluded a three-year term as President of the American Association of Teachers of French, and is now serving as Co-Chair of that organization's (AATF) Student Standards Task Force which is writing the French version of the national student standards document.
  • Lander received his PhD in mathematics from Oxford in 1981, as a Rhodes Scholar. He joined Whitehead Institute in 1986 and founded the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research in 1990. Lander became the founding director of the newly created Broad Institute in 2003. The Broad is a collaboration of MIT, Harvard University and affiliated hospitals, and Whitehead Institute. It is aimed at creating comprehensive tools for genomic medicine and pioneering their application to propel the understanding and treatment of disease. Eric S. Lander is one of the driving forces behind today's revolution in genomics; the study of all of the genes in an organism and how they function together in health and disease. He is also a professor of biology at MIT and a professor of systems biology at Harvard Medical School. Lander's group recently launched a revolution in the study of human genetic variation, through its own research, and participation in larger projects devoted to the question. He has also led the efforts to develop many new analytical and laboratory techniques for studying complex genetic traits in human, animal and plant populations and for creating a molecular taxonomy of cancer. These techniques have been applied to a broad range of common diseases, including cancer, diabetes, inflammatory diseases and many other less common genetic illnesses.
  • Gregory S. Stone is Vice President for Global Marine Programs at the New England Aquarium. Dr. Stone became the driving force behind the effort to create the third largest sanctuary for marine wildlife on the planet. His vision became a reality as the Pacific Island nation of Kiribati declared its largely uninhabited Phoenix Islands a marine protected area. Physically, the preserve covers more than 184,000 square kilometers (73,800 square miles), or an area the equivalent of the Great Lakes of Superior, Michigan and Huron combined. A marine biologist, he is a specialist in undersea technology and exploration, using deep-sea submersibles, undersea habitats and SCUBA diving in all oceans of the world. He was the Senior Editor of *the International Marine Technology Society Journal* from 1997-2003, is a National Fellow of the Explorers Club and was awarded the National Science Foundation/U.S. Navy Antarctic Service medal for his research in Antarctica.
  • Robin Chandler has worked in the media of collage, photography, computerized imaging and creative writing for more than 20 years. Her work appears in numerous public and private collections in the US, the Middle East, India, Australia and Southern Africa. Chandler has been the Director of the Women's Studies Program at Northeastern University since 2004, and is a Fulbright scholar and a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient.