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Elizabeth Alexander is a poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher. Alexander has degrees from Yale University and Boston University and completed her PhD in English at the University of Pennsylvania. Most recently, she composed and delivered "Praise Song for the Day" for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. The poem has recently been published as a small book from Graywolf Press. In addition, she has published five books of poems: *The Venus Hottentot* (1990), *Body of Life* (1996), *Antebellum Dream Book* (2001), *American Sublime* (2005), which was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and was one of the American Library Associations Notable Books of the Year; and her first young adult collection (co-authored with Marilyn Nelson), *Miss Crandalls School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color* (2008 Connecticut Book Award). Her two collections of essays are *The Black Interior* (2004) and *Power and Possibility *(2007), and her play, *Diva Studies*, was produced at the Yale School of Drama.

Leonard Peikoff is an American Objectivist philosopher. He is a former professor of philosophy and a former radio talk show host. He is the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute and the legal heir to Ayn Rand's estate.

Bob Schieffer is the former anchor and moderator of *Face the Nation*, CBS News' Sunday public affairs broadcast. He has also served as CBS News' chief Washington correspondent. Schieffer has covered Washington for CBS News for more than 40 years and is one of the few broadcast or print journalists to have covered all four major beats in the nation's capital - the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and Capitol Hill. He was chief Washington correspondent beginning in 1982, congressional correspondent in 1989, has covered every presidential campaign and has been a floor reporter at all of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions since 1972. In 2004, he was chosen as moderator for the third presidential debate. A member of the Broadcasting/Cable Hall of Fame, Schieffer was named the 2003 recipient of the Paul White Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Association. Schieffer joined CBS News in 1969 and, after a brief stint as a general assignment reporter, was named Pentagon correspondent, a post he held for four years. Before joining CBS News, he was a reporter at *the Fort Worth Star-Telegram* and, in 1965, became the first reporter from a Texas newspaper to report from Vietnam. Schieffer later became news anchor at WBAP-TV Dallas/Fort Worth, a post that eventually led to his joining CBS News. The author of three books, Schieffer's most recent book is *Face the Nation: My Favorite Stories from the First 50 Years of the Award Winning News Broadcast*. He is also author of the 2003 *New York Times* bestseller, *This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You On TV, and Acting President*, published in 1989. Shieffer's latest book is [\_Overload: Finding the Truth in Today’s Deluge of News\_](https://www.amazon.com/Overload-Finding-Truth-Todays-Deluge/dp/153810721X "") (2017).

Gerald Holton is Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus at Harvard University. Holton obtained his PhD at Harvard as a student of PW Bridgman. His chief interests are in the history and philosophy of science, in the physics of matter at high pressure, and in the study of career paths of young scientists.

Timothy Knowles is the Lewis-Sebring Director of the Urban Education Institute. The mission of the Urban Education Institute is to create new knowledge and educational models to address one of the nation's most significant and enduring questions: how do we produce reliably excellent schooling for children growing up in urban America? Prior to his current position, Knowles served as the Lewis-Sebring Executive Director and Senior Research Associate of the Center for Urban School Improvement at the University. He was deputy superintendent for teaching and learning at the Boston Public Schools from 1998 to 2002. At the Boston Public Schools, he has been responsible for school improvement and professional development, developing and sustaining community partnerships, and supervising principals and district staff. He was co-director of the Boston Annenberg Challenge, a $30 million effort to improve literacy instruction, and has served in a number of other administrative positions, including founding director of a full-service, kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York City.

professor, economics, Harvard