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  • Darrel J. Vandeveld is a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army Reserve, who served tours of active duty in Bosnia, Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan in the years following the 9-11 attacks on the U.S. In 2002, Mr. Vandeveld participated in the rendition of the so-called “Algerian Six” from Bosnia to Guantanamo; in 2008, a federal district court ordered five of the six released, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s seminal decision in Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723, which granted Guantanamo detainees (the Algerian Six were the plaintiffs in the case) the right to habeas corpus. In 2007, the Army called Mr. Vandeveld, an experienced prosecutor in civilian life, to serve as a prosecutor in the Guantanamo Military Commissions. In the course of gathering the evidence against Mohammed Jawad, accused of wounding two U.S. soldiers in a hand grenade attack when he was 15-years old, Mr. Vandeveld – who by this time had been convinced by his opposing counsel, Professor David Frakt, of the moral and legal bankruptcy of the Military Commissions – discovered a confession obtained through torture, two suicide attempts by the accused, abusive interrogations, and the withholding of exculpatory evidence from the defense. These experiences led Mr. Vandeveld to a crisis of conscience. After he announced his resignation, his commander ordered a psychiatric evaluation. Professor Frakt later obtained a dismissal of Jawad’s case, in part because of Mr. Vandeveld’s own testimony. He is now Erie County, Pennsylvania's chief public defender. Mr. Vandeveld received both his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of California.
  • Steve Reisner, Ph.D. is an international consultant on trauma and its treatment and an activist in the effort to stop torture. He is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the New York University Medical School, and is on the faculty at The Psychoanalytic Institute at NYU. Dr. Reisner is a founding member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, a group dedicated to upholding international standards of human rights in psychological practice and research and supporting psychologists' who work to combat the effects of political violence and oppression internationally. Dr. Reisner is advisor on psychological ethics for Physicians for Human Rights, which won the Nobel Peace prize in 1999. With PHR and the Coalition, Dr. Reisner has been working to change the policy of the American Psychological Association supporting psychologists’ participation in coercive or abusive military/intelligence interrogations at places like Guantánamo, Bagram, and CIA ‘black sites.’ Dr. Reisner’s publications have appeared in the *Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association*, *Studies in Gender and Psychoanalysis*, in the Web-Journal, the *Scholar and Feminist Online* (), and elsewhere. He was profiled in *Newsweek* magazine for his work to stop health professionals from complicity in government-sponsored torture. Because of this work, Dr. Reisner was the recipient of the New York State Psychological Association’s “Beacon” Award. Dr. Reisner is a practicing psychoanalyst and couple’s therapist in New York City.
  • John Forristal is an attorney and a veteran. John graduated with a BA in Economics from Fordham University in New York City and he earned a law degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Forristal has a solo practice and he advocates for veterans before the Veterans Administration and for criminal defendants throughout Northeast Ohio. Mr. Forristal was a non-commissioned officer (NCO) in the Army and led a Military Intelligence team during Operation Enduring Freedom. He and his team were responsible for obtaining actionable intelligence from High Value Detainee that led to the capture and disruption of terrorist cells throughout the world.
  • Henry Birnbrey escaped Nazi Germany as part of the Thousand Children effort (America's Kindertransport) went to school and had his first jobs in Atlanta before returning to Europe as an American soldier. Back there, he came upon a trainload of Jews being transported from one concentration camp to another.
  • Fisherman-turned-filmmaker Andrew Buckley is the foremost authority on the Columbia Expedition. He has been on the trail of the first American voyage around the world and its commander, John Kendrick, since 1995 beginning with research for his novel The Bostoner. In 2008, Buckley turned to documentary film to tell the story, creating Hit and Run History. Since then, Buckley and HRH have been awarded 13 Massachusetts Cultural Council Grants, and the first-ever Social Media Outreach Grant by the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. Because of the epic sweep of the Columbia Expedition, HRH developed an episodic approach, mixing the best elements of history, travel and reality television. Their method is to get out to the locations where microhistory occurred. HRH visits the places where historical figures lived and talk to local historians who give their personal insights. The film crew also gets involved in the telling of the story, with a focus on the “making of” the documentary. Buckley studied Political Science at American University and the University of Massachusetts at Boston, graduating with a B.A. He was Selectman for the Town of Chatham, and now writes op-ed for the independent Cape Cod Chronicle and online on Cape Cod Today. He is a USCG-licensed Master Mariner, NAUI diver, and Massachusetts commercial fishermen. Buckley lives on his native Cape Cod with his daughter, Sofie.
  • Daniel K. Williams is an assistant professor of History at the University of West Georgia and the author of *God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right*. He blogs at Politico. He was also an adjunct professor at Rhode Island College and University of Rhode Island, College of Continuing Education, both in Providence, RI. He was a summer school instructor and teaching assistant at Brown.
  • Jonathan Schneer is a specialist in modern British history. His current book project, a history of the Balfour Declaration, which in 1917 committed Britain to support the establishment of a national home in Palestine for the Jewish people, will be published in the US, UK, and Canada in the spring of 2010. A fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies in 1985-86, he has also held research fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the UK, as well as at the Erich Remarque Center of New York University. He was a founding editor of Radical History Review and is a member of the editorial board of 20th Century British History and the London Journal.ives in Atlanta.
  • Jonathan Schneer is a specialist in modern British history. His current book project, a history of the Balfour Declaration, which in 1917 committed Britain to support the establishment of a national home in Palestine for the Jewish people, will be published in the US, UK, and Canada in the spring of 2010. A fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies in 1985-86, he has also held research fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the UK, as well as at the Erich Remarque Center of New York University. He was a founding editor of Radical History Review and is a member of the editorial board of 20th Century British History and the London Journal.ives in Atlanta.
  • Michael R. Taylor is the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His most recent exhibitions at the museum include *Thomas Chimes: Adventures in ‘Pataphysics *(2007); *Salvador Dalí:The Centennial Retrospective* (2005), which he co-curated with Dawn Ades; and *Giorgio de Chirico and the Myth of Ariadne* (2002). Taylor studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where he wrote a master’s thesis on Richard Hamilton and a doctoral dissertation on Marcel Duchamp’s readymades. He has published widely on Duchamp, Dada, and Surrealism. Future projects include a tightly focused exhibition on Duchamp’s Étant donnés (2009) and a major traveling retrospective on Arshile Gorky (2009–10), which will situate his work within the context of Surrealism.
  • Ellen F. Brown is a bibliophile. After a childhood spent with her nose in a book, Brown went to law school on the theory that she would be paid to read dusty old tomes with fancy leather bindings. After a decade of practicing environmental law, a field in which few of the case books are leatherbound, she decided to follow her dream via another route. In 2007, she opened an antiquarian bookselling business and became a freelance writer with a bent for all things bookish. Today, Brown focuses her energies on the writing side of her career. She writes a regular column for Fine Books & Collections magazine and her first book, Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood will be published by Taylor Trade in 2011. She is now working on her second book. Ellen lives in Richmond, Virginia's historic Fan District with her husband, their two sons, and a bassett hound named Leo. She is a member of Virginia Press Women and sits on the boards of the Library of Virginia Foundation and James River Writers.
  • Evelyn Coleman's books include *To Be a Drum*, *White Socks Only*, *The Riches of Oseola McCarty*, a Smithsonian Notable Book and a Carter G. Woodson Honor Book, and Born in Sin. Ms. Coleman lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where she received the Atlanta Mayor's fellowship for achievement in children's literature.
  • Tarick Sanchez is the founder and President of Make a Change (MAC) a Mentoring Organization, which strives to reach adolescents and teens from ages 12 through 17 helping them achieve excellence in all areas of life. MAC's programs provide leadership skills, tutoring, life coaching, job coaching and preparation for higher education.