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  • Matt Morrison grew up with Martin McGuinness as well as several other, nonpublic and top‐level leaders of the IRA. The eldest of seven children, Mr. Morrison was born in Derry, Northern Ireland’s second‐largest city, in 1955. He grew up in a two‐bedroom house with his aunt, grandmother, parents and siblings. As was the case in the rest of Northern Ireland, only one adult per house had the right to vote. Mr. Morrison attended St. Columb’s College, a prestigious boys’ school that has produced several Nobel Prize winners, including the 1998 Peace Prize co‐winner John Hume (whom Mr. Morrison personally knows) and the poet Seamus Heany. Just 16 years old, Mr. Morrison attended a civil rights march with his father. After 13 unarmed protesters were shot and killed by British paratroopers, it came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.” After the march, with dozens like him who had witnessed firsthand the protest and shootings, he joined the IRA. As a university student in 1975, Mr. Morrison was arrested and sentenced on political charges by a “diplock” (non‐jury) court. He was subjected to interrogation methods which left him with permanent hearing‐loss in one ear. Despite his young age, while in prison, Mr. Morrison was appointed one of the highest‐ranking IRA officers, and he conducted countless meetings with British and Irish officials ‐ at their request ‐ as well as with infamous, top‐level Loyalist paramilitaries. Upon his release in 1985, Mr. Morrison came to the U.S. and married an American citizen. In the mid‐1990s, CBS Television produced a documentary featuring the legal struggles he faced living openly as a former IRA member. The Immigration and Naturalization Service categorized him, and all other former IRA members living in the U.S., as deportable. Mr. Morrison led meetings with Gerry Adams, former IRA leader and president of its political wing, Sinn F´ein, during negotiations leading up to the Good Friday Agreement. That Agreement conferred a unique political/legal status on former IRA members living in the U.S., one which guarded against their deportation and conferred a host of rights upon them. Now a nurse and part‐time Gaelic language teacher, Mr. Morrison lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He often speaks on the conflict and peace process in Northern Ireland, on immigrant civil rights issues at universities, including a 2008 issue at Case Western Reserve, and for non‐profit organizations, such as Children for Peace in Ireland.
  • Kevin Downey was born and grew up in Derry, Northern Ireland. He attended St Columb’s College Derry (1967‐1974). Mr. Downey obtained his B.A. in Legal Science and his M.A. from Trinity College, Dublin (1975‐1979). He interned at the offices of U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy in the summer of 1978 and worked on Sen. Kennedy’s challenge to President Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980. Mr. Downey qualified as a solicitor in 1980 and began working as a solicitor in 1981. In 1983, Mr. Downey started his own firm in Derry. In 1973, Kevin Downey joined the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), Northern Ireland. He worked as a volunteer in general party activities and election campaigns for many years. In addition, from 1993 to 1995, he was a member of the SDLP Central Executive. Mr. Downey acted as secretary to Pennyburn Branch Derry. In addition, he acted as joint election director for Foyle Constituency in the Local Government elections of 1993.
  • Roy Garland was born and reared in an evangelical home on Belfast's Loyalist Shankill Road. He left school at 14, but spent two years in full‐time training at the evangelical interdenominational All Nations Christian College near London, returning to Belfast when his father died in 1962. There, Mr. Garland began to attend Ian Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church and participated in various protests and rallies in Belfast. He was actively involved in Ulster Unionist Party politics, demanding that Unionist politicians reject Westminster interference in areas legitimately within local jurisdiction. By 1970, however Mr. Garland began questioning his former views. In 1973 he was an undergraduate at Queen's University Belfast (QUB) reading Social Science. He completed a Certificate in Ecumenics through Ulster University and the Irish School of Ecumenics during the mid 1980s. By 1991 Mr. Garland had completed a Masters Dissertation on the "new thinking" within the leadership of the modern Ulster Volunteer Force, which was turned into a booklet by the Progressive Unionist Party for distribution among Loyalists and others wishing to understand Loyalism. By the mid‐1990s Mr. Garland became involved in the "Shankill Think Tank," discussing a way forward for the Protestant working class. During 1995 he began, and continues, a weekly Monday Column with the nationalist Irish News. That same year he became a founder member and co‐chair of the cross‐border/cross‐community Guild of Uriel based near Dundalk and promoting dialogue, mutual understanding and accommodation. He again became active in the Ulster Unionist Party by the early 1990s and was the first, and virtually only,Unionist to address the Dublin based Forum for Peace and Reconciliation. For this he was disciplined by the UUP but managed to remain a member. The Union Group later sought an inclusive agenda fostering healing and reconciliation within Northern Ireland, between North and South and between Ireland and other parts of the United Kingdom. Mr. Garland organised meetings of the Union Group with senior Irish and British Government Ministers. He was part of an organising committee drawn from the Union Group for "East Belfast Speaks Out," believed to be the first such panel discussion organised by Unionists. The panel consisting of Gerry Kelly (Sinn Fein MLA), Jeffrey Donaldson (DUP MP, MLA), Patrick Corrigan (Amnesty International) and Laurence Robertson MP (Ulster Conservative and Unionist Shadow Minister for NI). It was chaired by Belfast's Lord Mayor Naomi Long (Alliance Party MLA). Mr. Garland is author of a biography of former loyalist leader Gusty Spence (2001) and has contributed articles to various publications on politics, history and religion. He is currently working with a project involving IRA Veterans of the 1956‐62 Operation Harvest Border Campaign entitled, “Then and now, a future without political violence?” Mr. Garland has worked with former UDA and UVF prisoners and activists for decades and is a commentator on radio and television. He is also a regular speaker at meetings involving people from all backgrounds in Ireland north and south.
  • Bonnie Weir is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign. She studies the dynamics of violence employed by nonstate, politically‐motivated groups, with a particular interest in their potential decision to adopt peaceful strategies. Along with her substantive interests, Bonnie has focused on methodological shortcomings in the study of civil conflict, insurgency, and terrorism in the social sciences. Her concerns about several approaches that are typically used to test predominant theories on non‐state political violence lead her to conduct an extensive, interview‐based study of the case of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland. She combines individual narratives with local‐level, “spatial” information to enhance our understanding of the often complex and personal nature of conflict and peacemaking among divided communities. Bonnie has worked with Children for Peace in Ireland and other groups in Northern Ireland and the United States whose goal is to help fully implement the institutions stipulated by the Good Friday Agreement and which tend to be lead by ex‐combatants.
  • Byron Bland is associate director of the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation. An ordained Presbyterian minister and former Stanford campus chaplain, he has served as an ombudsman and conflict resolution consultant for various community and church groups. His more recent work concerns the politics of reconciliation in divided societies. After serving the Stanford campus for 18 years as a chaplain, Bland left that post in 1994 to concentrate on peacemaking efforts in Northern Ireland. He is currently involved in a research project exploring the social and political dynamics of reconciliation with Community Dialogue, a grassroots dialogue organization in Northern Ireland. He is also working with community groups and civil leaders in Israel and the West Bank. Before coming to Stanford University in 1976, Bland was the pastor of a multiracial, urban church in San Francisco. While at Stanford, he was appointed an associate fellow at the Program for Interdisciplinary Studies during 1993‐1994. He is a founding member of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion. For the past 20 years, he has taught an interdisciplinary course on peace at Stanford. He has also served as a lecturer in the Stanford Law School, the School of Education, and the International Relations program. He received an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech, an MA in social ethics and a master of divinity degree from the San Francisco Theological Seminary.
  • Ambassador Rozanne "Roz" L. Ridgway was a career diplomat for 32 years, serving as the U.S. Ambassador to the German Democratic Republic from 1982 to 1985 and as the U.S. Ambassador to Finland from 1977 to 1980. She capped her career as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs from 1985 to 1989. From 1989 to 1996, she was President and then Co-Chairman of the Atlantic Council of the U.S., a non-partisan network promoting constructive U.S. leadership and engagement in international affairs. In 1998, she was elected to the National Women's Hall of Fame. Ridgway is currently a member of the Board of Directors for 3M, The Boeing Company, Sara Lee Corporation, Emerson Electric Co. and the New Perspective Fund. She is also a Trustee for the Brookings Institution, the George C. Marshall Foundation, the National Geographic Society and Hamline University, her alma mater in St. Paul, Minnesota.
  • Professor William M. Carter specializes in constitutional law, civil rights, critical race theory, and international human rights law. His articles have been published in respected journals such as the *Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review* and the *Berkeley Journal of International Law*. Professor Carter teaches courses in the areas of civil procedure and civil rights. Prior to joining the faculty of the Beasley School of Law at Temple University in 2007, Professor Carter was a Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. Upon graduation from law school, Professor Carter worked as a litigation associate in the Washington, D.C. offices of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey and Ropes & Gray.
  • Ken Follett is one of the world’s best-loved novelists. He has sold more than 100 million copies. His last book, World Without End, went straight to the No.1 position on bestseller lists in the USA, Spain, Italy, Germany and France. He burst into the book world in 1978 with Eye of the Needle, a taut and original thriller with a memorable woman character in the central role. The book won the Edgar award and became an outstanding film starring Kate Nelligan and Donald Sutherland. He went on to write four more best-selling thrillers: Triple; The Key to Rebecca; The Man from St Petersburg; and Lie Down with Lions. Cliff Robertson and David Soul starred in the miniseries of The Key to Rebecca. In 1994 Timothy Dalton, Omar Sharif and Marg Helgenberger starred in the miniseries of Lie Down with Lions. He also wrote On Wings of Eagles, the true story of how two employees of Ross Perot were rescued from Iran during the revolution of 1979. This book was made into a miniseries with Richard Crenna as Ross Perot and Burt Lancaster as Colonel 'Bull' Simons. He then surprised readers by radically changing course with The Pillars of the Earth, a novel about building a cathedral in the Middle Ages. Published in September 1989 to rave reviews, it was on the New York Times bestseller list for eighteen weeks. It also reached the No. 1 position on lists in Canada, Great Britain and Italy, and was on the German bestseller list for six years.
  • Brent Scowcroft has served as the National Security Advisor to both Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. From 1982 to 1989, he was Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm. In this capacity, he advised and assisted a wide range of U.S. and foreign corporate leaders on global joint venture opportunities, strategic planning, and risk assessment. His prior extraordinary twenty-nine-year military career began with graduation from West Point and concluded at the rank of Lieutenant General following service as the Deputy National Security Advisor. His Air Force service included Professor of Russian History at West Point; Assistant Air Attaché in Belgrade, Yugoslavia; Head of the Political Science Department at the Air Force Academy; Air Force Long Range Plans; Office of the Secretary of Defense International Security Assistance; Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Military Assistant to President Nixon. Out of uniform, he continued in a public policy capacity by serving on the President's Advisory Committee on Arms Control, the Commission on Strategic Forces, and the President's Special Review Board, also known as the Tower Commission. He currently serves on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards. He earned his masters and doctorate in international relations from Columbia University.
  • Chris Jordan is an internationally acclaimed artist and cultural activist whose work explores the frightening waste of our mass culture. His compelling, intricately detailed photographs reveal the staggering weight of statistics, inviting the viewer to see every detail as a metaphor for the role of the individual in our hypermodern society. Jordan’s work is exhibited widely in the US and Europe, and has been featured in print, online, and in film and television all over the globe. He has exhibited and spoken about his work to more than fifty audiences in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
  • Since 2005, Helene York has served as the director of the Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation. The Foundation’s mission is to educate chefs and consumers about how their food choices affect the global environment and to catalyze supply chain changes. This position allows Helene to blend her passions for great food, resource conservation, and scientific integrity, deploying them on a national scale through implementation of Bon Appétit’s various sustainability initiatives. In April 2007, Helene launched the company’s Low Carbon Diet program, whose purpose is to raise awareness of the connection between the food system and climate change. The goal of the initiative is to reduce emissions associated with Bon Appétit’s food service operations by 25% over five years. In three years, the program has achieved reductions by approximately five million pounds of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions each month. The foundation’s Low Carbon Diet Calculator, at www.eatlowcarbon.org, was developed by a team of independent scientists to educate consumers about the global warming potential of their food choices. Helene was also the driving force behind building the business case for serving sustainable seafood for Compass Group NA, Bon Appétit’s parent company. As a result, in February 2006, Compass announced a major policy to shift the company's purchases away from threatened fish species and toward sustainably sourced supplies. The new policy impacts approximately one million pounds of fish purchased annually by Compass Group. Helene is a member of the Pew Charitable Trust’s Global Aquaculture Project Initiative and the Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops, two technical advisory boards working to develop standards to improve the way food is grown. Helene is also a regular contributor to The Atlantic Monthly’s online Food Channel and a frequent guest lecturer at universities across the country on the subject of the food system’s relationship to climate change. She has also spoken at the national conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Nobel Peace Prize Forum in the United States. A New York native who currently lives in San Francisco, Helene earned her undergraduate degree at Harvard and master’s at Yale.
  • Thomas H. Murray is President of The Hastings Center. Dr. Murray was formerly the Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics in the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was also the Susan E. Watson Professor of Bioethics. He is a founding editor of the journal Medical Humanities Review, and is on the editorial boards of The Hastings Center Report; Human Gene Therapy; Politics and the Life Sciences; Cloning, Science, and Policy;Medscape General Medicine; Teaching Ethics; Journal of Bioethical Inquiry and the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. He served as President of the Society for Health and Human Values and of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. Dr. Murray has testified before many Congressional committees, and is the author of more than 200 publications. His most recent books are The Worth of a Child, published by the University of California Press, Healthcare Ethics and Human Values: An Introductory Text with Readings and Case Studies, Blackwell Publishers, edited with Bill Fulford and Donna Dickenson, The Cultures of Caregiving: Conflict and Common Ground among Families, Health Professionals and Policy Makers, edited with Carol Levine, and Genetic Ties and the Family: The Impact of Paternity Testing on Parents and Children, edited with Mark A. Rothstein, Gregory E. Kaebnick and Mary Anderlik Majumder. He is also editor, with Maxwell J. Mehlman, of the Encyclopedia of Ethical, Legal and Policy Issues in Biotechnology, (John Wiley & Sons, 2000). In January 2004 he received an honorary Doctor of Medicine degree from Uppsala University.