Forum Network

Alexander Kronemer is a writer, lecturer and documentary producer focusing on religious diversity, Islam, and cross-cultural understanding. He has a Master's Degree in Theological Studies from Harvard University, where his research concentrated on the philosophy of religion and comparative religion. In 1996, he was awarded a Joseph J. Malone Fellowship for Middle East and Islamic Studies. He is the co-founder of Unity Productions Foundation, a non-profit corporation whose mission is to help bring peace through the media by creating better understanding of Islam and the world's other faiths and spiritual traditions. He was creator and co-producer of the popular PBS documentary *Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet*.

Michael Wolfe is a poet, author, and the President and Executive Producer of Unity Productions Foundation. He is also a frequent lecturer on Islamic issues at universities across the United States including Harvard, Georgetown, Stanford, SUNY Buffalo, and Princeton. He holds a degree in Classics from Wesleyan University.

Although Bayard Rustin was one of the most important leaders of the American civil rights movement from the advent of its modern period in the 1950s until well into the 1980s, his name was seldom mentioned; he received comparatively little press or media attention, and others' names were usually much more readily associated with the movement than his was. His was a behind-the-scenes role that, for all its importance, never garnered Rustin the public acclaim he may have deserved. Rustin's homosexuality and early communist affiliation probably meant that the importance of his contribution to the civil rights and peace movements would never be acknowledged. However, fairness demands that the extent of Rustin's work receive a fair public reception. Bayard Taylor Rustin was born on March 17, 1912, to Florence Rustin, one of eight children of Julia and Janifer Rustin of West Chester, Pennsylvania. Florence's child had been born out of wedlock; the father was Archie Hopkins. Julia and Janifer decided to raise young Bayard as their son, the youngest of the large Rustin family. Julia Rustin had been raised a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers), and even though she attended the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the denomination of her husband, she impressed on the children she raised certain Quaker principles: the equality of all human beings before God, the vital need for nonviolence, the importance of dealing with everyone with love and respect.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 9, 1934, Sonia Sanchez is best known as a poet and playwright. Starting her legacy in the 1960s, Sanchez gained recognition for her controversial poetry which expresses her feelings on the treatment of African Americans in the United States. She has taught at various universities, recently retiring from Temple University, where she was a Laura H. Carnell Professor of English. Best known for her poetry collections, including *Homegirls & Handgrenades*, Sanchez has received numerous awards over her career and inspired many with her genuine love of teaching and writing. She currently lives and writes in Philadelphia.

Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco was educated in public schools in Latin America and at the University of California, Berkeley where he received his AB (Psychology, 1980), MA (Anthropology, 1981) and Ph D. (Anthropology, 1986). His basic research is on conceptual and empirical problems in the areas of cultural psychology and psychological anthropology with a focus on the study of immigration and globalization. He is author of numerous scholarly essays, books, and edited volumes and over 100 scholarly papers appearing in international journals. He became a tenured professor of Human Development and Psychology at Harvard (in 1995) where he was appointed the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education (in 2001). In 1997 along with his wife Carola Suarez-Orozco, he co-founded the Harvard Immigration Projects and began to co-direct the largest study ever funded in the history of the National Science Foundation's Cultural Anthropology division a study of Asian, Afro-Caribbean, and Latino immigrant youth in American society. He is winner of multiple honors and awards and was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2004. In September 2004, he was appointed the first Courtney Sale Ross University Professor of Globalization and Education at The Steinhardt School of Education, New York University where he also holds the title of University Professor. The Suarez-Orozco's are Co-Directors of Immigration Studies at NYU.

Juan Flores is Professor in the Department of Black and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College (CUNY) and in the Sociology Program at the City University of new York Graduate Center. In recent years he has also been visiting professor at Rutgers, Princeton, Columbia, New York University and Harvard. From 1994 to 1997 he served as Director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter, and is currently Director of Hunter's Mellon Minority Fellowship Program. He is the author of *Poetry in East Germany* (Choicemagazine award), *The Insular Vision* (winner Casa de las Americas award), *Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity*, and *From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity*. He also is the translator of *Memoirs of Bernardo Vega* and of *Cortijo's Wake* by Edgardo Rodriguez Julio. His work has appeared in numerous journals and newspapers in the U.S. and Latin America. He is co-editor of two book series, one on "Cultural Studies of the Americas" for University of Minnesota Press, the other on "Puerto Rican Studies" with Temple University Press.

Robert B. Reich is professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He last served in government as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. His articles have appeared in *The New Yorker*, *The Atlantic Monthly*, *The New York Times*, *The Washington Post*, and *The Wall Street Journal*. He contributes weekly commentaries to *Marketplace* on public radio, appears regularly on television, and is a cofounding editor of *The American Prospect*. In 2003 Reich was awarded the prestigious Vaclav Havel Foundation Prize for pioneering work in economic and social thought. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Patricia Gndara is a professor of education at the University of California-Davis. In addition to being associate director for the University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute, she is also a co-director for Policy Analysis in California Education, a University of California/Stanford University policy research consortium. Gndara's research interests include equity and access in education and the education of linguistic and ethnic minority groups. Her most recent publication is *Over the Ivy Walls: The Educational Mobility of Low-income Chicanos*. Gndara is currently conducting a study of classroom teachers and their perceptions of the challenges they face in teaching English learners. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from UCLA. Gndara has directed education research for the California State Assembly, and served as Commissioner for Postsecondary Education for California.

Professor de la Garza combines interests in political behavior and public policy throughout his career. Currently he is directing studies on immigrant incorporation, Latinos and U. S. foreign policy and Latino voting patterns. He has also chaired a series of seminars on Latinos and foreign policy that have emphasized increasing Hispanic involvement in international affairs. He served as Vice-President of the American Political Science Association and received the Life-time Achievement Award of the Committee on the Status of Latinos in the Profession of the American Political Science Association in 1993. Professor de la Garza has edited, co-edited and co-authored numerous books including: *The Future of the Voting Rights Act*; *Muted Voices: Latinos and the 2000 Election*; *Sending Money Home: Hispanic Remittances and Community Development*; *Latinos and U. S. Foreign Policy: Lobbying for the Homeland?*; *Bridging the Border: Transforming Mexico-U. S. Relations*; *At the Crossroads: Mexican and U. S. Immigration Policy*; *Awash in the Mainstream: Latinos and the 1996 Elections*; *Ethnic Ironies: Latinos and the 1992 Elections*; *Latino Voices: Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban Perspectives on American Politics*; *Barrio Ballots: Latinos and the 1990 Elections and The Chicano Political Experience*. Professor de la Garza has also published in leading professional journals such as *the American Journal of Political Science*, *Latin American Research Review*, *Social Science Quarterly*, and *International Migration Review*.

Daniel Taylor-Ide travels widely in the U.S., India, and Nepal, working for the United Nations, the Dalai Lama of Tibet, and the government of Nepal. He was knighted by the king of Nepal for his efforts. He founded the Woodlands Mountain Institute, an organization dedicated to sustainable development planning for mountain regions and peoples; is the president of Future Generations Inc.; and leads a research group at Johns Hopkins University in the School of Public Hygiene and Public Health. Daniel lives on Spruce Knob Mountain in West Virginia with his wife, Jennifer, and three children, Jesse, Tara, and Luke.

John Edgar Wideman is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His articles on Malcolm X, Spike Lee, Denzel Washington, Michael Jordan, Emmett Till, Thelonius Monk, and women's professional basketball have appeared in* The New Yorker*, *Vogue*, *Esquire*, *Emerge*, and *the New York Times Magazine*. He was awarded a Benjamin Franklin scholarship by the University of Pennsylvania, where he not only won a creative writing prize but also earned membership in Phi Beta Kappa. Matching his scholastic achievements with his athletic ones, he won All-Ivy League status as a forward on the basketball team and successfully competed on the track team. In 1963, he graduated with a B.A. in English, and won a Rhodes scholarship to study philosophy at Oxford University's New College. Returning to the United States in 1966, Wideman spent a year as a Kent Fellow at the University of lowa's Writers' Workshop, where he completed his first novel, *A Glance Away*, in 1967. His other novels include *Two Cities*,* Hurry Home*, *The Lynchers*, *Hiding Place*, *Sent for You Yesterday*, *Philadelphia Fire*, and *The Cattle Killing*. He is the author of a memoir, *Brothers and Keepers*. Wideman is the only writer to have been awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice-- once in 1984 for his novel *Sent for You Yesterday* and again in 1990 for *Philadelphia Fire*. In 1990, he also received the American Book Award for Fiction. He was awarded the Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction in 1991 and the MacArthur Award in 1993.

Rita Dove served as Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant to the Library of Congress from 1993 to 1995 and as Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. She has received numerous literary and academic honors, among them the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and, more recently, the 2003 Emily Couric Leadership Award, the 2001 Duke Ellington Lifetime Achievement Award, the 1997 Sara Lee Frontrunner Award, the 1997 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, the 1996 Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities and the 1996 National Humanities Medal. In 2006 she received the coveted Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service (together with Anderson Cooper, John Glenn, Mike Nichols and Queen Noor of Jordan see the press release, newspaper coverage and photos), and in 2008 she was honored with the Library of Virginia's Lifetime Achievement Award. Rita Dove has published the poetry collections The Yellow House on the Corner (1980), Museum (1983), Thomas and Beulah (1986), Grace Notes (1989), Selected Poems (1993), Mother Love (1995), On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), American Smooth (2004), a book of short stories, Fifth Sunday (1985), the novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992), essays under the title The Poet's World (1995), and the play The Darker Face of the Earth, which had its world premiere in 1996 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and was subsequently produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Royal National Theatre in London, and other theatres. Seven for Luck, a song cycle for soprano and orchestra with music by John Williams, was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in 1998.