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Ambassador Reda Mansour holds a masters degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and is a PH.D candidate in Haifa University's Middle Eastern History department, with his research focusing on Syria. Ambassador Reda Mansour was appointed in August 2006 to serve as the Consul General of Israel to the Southeastern United States. Prior to this post he served as the Ambassador of Israel to Ecuador, Deputy Ambassador in the Israeli Embassy to Portugal, and Deputy Consul General of Israel to the U.S Pacific Northwest based in San Francisco. In addition to his position as a diplomat, Ambassador Mansour is an accomplished author. He has published three books of poetry, as well as a number of short stories and poems published in literary articles. He has received the Ha'retz Annual Short Story Award, as well as the Haifa University Miller Award. Ambassador Mansour is a long time activist in the promotion of dialogue between Arabs and Jews in Israel. In this realm, he served on the board of several NGO's, taking part in many projects aimed at the promotion of co-existence through cultural and religious dialogue.

Research interests include: modern propaganda, history and tactics of advertising, American film, and media ownership. Books include Boxed In: The Culture of TV; Seeing Through Movies, ed.; Mad Scientists: The Secret History of Modern Propaganda; Spectacle: Operation Desert Storm and the Triumph of Illusion; and The Bush Dyslexicon. His newest book is Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order.

Dominic Pulera is an author, commentator, and inspirational speaker who focuses on issues related to race, culture, and diversity. Pulera is an internationally recognized expert on matters involving race, culture, and diversity. The author of three works of serious nonfiction, Visible Differences, Sharing the Dream, and Green, White, and Red.

Laurie Shepard is an Associate Professor of Italian at Boston College. Her specialty is Medieval and Renaissance Italian literature, with a particular focus on lyric poetry, rhetoric, and historical linguistics. An English major at Wesleyan University, she pursued graduate studies in Medieval Romance Literature at Boston College and La Sapienza in Rome. She has edited troubadour lyrics in Bruckner, M., Shepard, L., and White, S.,* Songs of the Women Troubadours* (1995), and published a book on Medieval Latin political rhetoric, entitled, *Courting Power: Persuasion and Politics in the Early Thirteenth Century*. (1999). She is currently working on a book about the family as it is protrayed in Renaissance comedy. In February 2000, she began a public reading of the *Divine Comedy* at Boston College, which is now at the midpoint of the *Comedy*. Laurie Shepard lives with her husband, two sons, and a dog in Newton, Massachusetts. She enjoys the Italian language, cooking and eating with family and friends, discussing politics, reading, music, gardening, and hiking.

Paul F. Knitter is a leading theologian of religious pluralism. He holds a licentiate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome (1966) and a doctorate from the University of Marburg, Germany (1972).

David Lyle Jeffrey has worked and taught at Baylor since 2000. He holds a B.A. degree from Wheaton College and a Ph.D. from Princeton. He served Baylor as Provost, Senior Vice Provost and as Distinguished Professor of Literature and Humanities. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1996. Named Inaugural Professor of the Year at the University of Ottawa in 1995, he has also been Guest Professor at Peking University (Beijing) since 1996. He served as Department Chair of English both at the University of Victoria and the University of Ottawa, and has taught also at the Universities of Rochester, Hull (UK) and Regent College. Jeffrey is General Editor and co-author of *A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature* (1992). Among his other books are *The Early English Lyric and Franciscan Spirituality* (1975); *By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought* (1979); *Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition* (1984); *English Spirituality in the Age of Wesley* (1987; 2001); *English Spirituality in the Age of Wyclif* (1988; 2001); *People of the Book: Christian Identity and Literary Culture* (1996); with Brian J. Levy he has edited *The Anglo-Norman Lyric *(1990); and with Dominic Manganiello he has edited and co-authored *Rethinking the Future of the University* (1999). A book relating to literature, entitled *Houses of the Interpreter*, is forthcoming from the Baylor University Press in 2003. Also in 2003, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Conference on Christianity and Literature/Modern Language Association. David Jeffrey's current research interests involve the relationship of biblical humanities to literary and artistic expression.

John Diamond is a sociologist of education who focuses on how race, ethnicity, and social class intersect with school leadership, practices, and policies to shape the educational opportunities and outcomes of children. His recent research includes a four-year study of urban school leadership (The Distributed Leadership Study); an examination of the implications of social class for African-American parents' educational participation; a study of race, social class, and student achievement in suburban schools; and a study of the development and diffusion of teachers' expectations of students. For the last study, Diamond was the recipient of a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship. In addition to the NAE/Spencer Fellowship, he has received research awards from the National Science Foundation and the American Educational Research Association/Institute for Education Sciences. Diamond has a BA in sociology and political science from the University of Michigan and a PhD in sociology from Northwestern University.

Professor Bloom has published over 200 articles and books in the fields of economics and demography. He has been honored with a number of distinctions, including fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and the Galbraith Award for quality teaching in economics. He was also a Fulbright Scholar in India, and a scholar in residence at the Russell Sage Foundation during the academic year 1989-1990. Professor Bloom has served as a consultant to the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the International Labor Organization, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Asian Development Bank. In addition, he is a member of the American Arbitration Association's Labor Arbitration Panel, a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, and a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he participates in the programs on labor studies, health economics, and aging. Bloom has been a contributing editor of *American Demographics* and an associate editor of *the Review of Economics and Statistics*. He has served as a referee for over sixty journals and publishing houses, and has been a member of *the Book Review Board of Science magazine* since January 2000.