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Sheila Jackson Lee is the U.S. Representative for Texas's 18th congressional district, serving since 1995. The district includes most of inner-city Houston. She is a member of the Democratic Party. ackson Lee graduated from Jamaica High School in Queens. She earned a B.A. in political science from Yale University in 1972, followed by a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1975.

**Khalil G. Muhammad** is a professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and author of ["The Condemnation of Blackness"](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5378/indimagahist.107.1.0074?seq=1). Muhammad also served at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a Harlem-based branch of the New York Public Library system and one of the world’s leading research facilities dedicated to the history of the African diaspora. Prior to joining the Schomburg Center in 2011, Muhammad was an associate professor of history at Indiana University. Crain's New York Business chose Muhammad as one of its 40 under Forty class of 2011 honorees. In 2012, he was also listed as #49 on the Root 100. Follow him on Twitter: [@khalilgmuhammad](https://twitter.com/khalilgmuhammad "")

Padraig O'Malley is a peacemaker, noted author and professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston who specializes in the problems of divided societies, such as South Africa and Northern Ireland. He has written extensively on these subjects and has been actively involved in promoting dialogue among representatives of differing factions. O'Malley spent 20 years involved with the conflict in Northern Ireland. Working with all the political parties to the conflict, he convened the Amherst Conference on Northern Ireland (Massachusetts, 1975), the Airlie House Conference (Virginia, 1985), and co–convened the Arniston Conference with the government of South Africa (Western Cape, 1997). In 1992, he participated in bringing some of the South African figures to Boston, Massachusetts for a meeting with representatives of the factions in Northern Ireland. In 1996, helped arrange a second such meeting, in Belfast, attended by South Africans Cyril Ramaphosa of the African National Congress and Roelf Meyer of the white National Party. ([more...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padraig\_O%27Malley "wikipedia"))

Ari Berman is a political correspondent for \_The Nation\_ and an investigative journalism Fellow at the Nation Institute. His writing has also appeared in \_The New York Times\_ and\_ Rolling Stone\_, and he is a frequent commentator on MSNBC and NPR. Follow in on Twitter: [@ariberman](https://twitter.com/AriBerman "") Berman is the author of [Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics](http://us.macmillan.com/herdingdonkeys/ariberman "").

Dr. Magee is the executive director of The National Public Housing Museum and Center for the Study of Housing and Society, Chicago, IL. He took the appointment after serving as a senior advisor, religious affairs, with the Obama Campaign and as a senior director at the Museum of African American History-Boston and Nantucket.

Leonard Cassuto is a professor of English at Fordham University, teaching and writing about American literature and culture. Cassuto writes a monthly column for the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “The Graduate Adviser” and has authored or edited eight books. Cassuto is also an award-winning journalist, covering subjects ranging from science to sports in publications from the New York Times to Salon.

**Scott J. Kenyon**, Ph.D., Senior Astrophysicist, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Scott Kenyon's research covers several of the key interests in contemporary astrophysics: the formation of stars and planetary systems; hyper-velocity and runaway stars in the Milky Way; and the characteristics of binary star systems. He is a major authority on the development of proto-planetary disks around young stars.

Kamal Bawa, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Biology, University of Massachusetts at Boston, and President of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bangalore

**Andrea Wulf** was born in India, moved to Germany as a child, and now lives in Britain. She is the author of several acclaimed books. ‘The Brother Gardeners’ won the American Horticultural Society 2010 Book Award and was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2008. Her book ‘Founding Gardeners’ was on the New York Times Best Seller List. Andrea has written for many newspapers including the Guardian, LA Times and New York Times. She was the Eccles British Library Writer in Residence 2013 and a three-time fellow of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. In 2014 she co-presented a four-part BBC TV garden series and she appears regularly on radio.

Daniel Geary is the Mark Pigott Assistant Professor of U.S. History at Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of Radical Ambition: C. Wright Mills, the Left, and American Social Thought. Geary's book is titled [Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Report and Its Legacy](http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15361.html "") Study Geary's [annotated version of the Moynihan Report](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-moynihan-report-an-annotated-edition/404632/ "") in \_The Atlantic\_.