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  • John G. Ruggie is the Kirkpatrick Professor of International Affairs and Weil Director of the Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar Rahmani Center for Business and Government, as well as Affiliated Professor in International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. From 1997 to 2001 he was Assistant Secretary-General and Chief Advisor for strategic planning to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He has been Dean of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, where he taught for many years; he has also taught at the University of California's (UC) Berkeley and San Diego campuses and directed the UC system-wide Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Ruggie is a recipient of the International Studies Association's Distinguished Scholar Award and the American Political Science Association's Hubert H. Humphrey Award for outstanding public service by a political scientist. Ruggie has a BA in politics and history from McMaster University in Canada; a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley; and a Doctor of Laws (honoris causa) from McMaster.
  • **James Carroll** is the author of 10 novels and 5 previous works of non-fiction, including the National Book Award winning *An American Requiem*, *The New York Times* bestselling *Constantine's Sword*, now an acclaimed documentary, and *House of War*, which won the first PEN-Galbraith Award. Carroll has written for *The New Yorker*, *The Atlantic*, and other publications, and his column appears weekly in *the Boston Globe*. His writing, and his long work toward Jewish-Christian-Muslim reconciliation, make him a leading voice on the problem of religion and violence. James Carroll, Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Suffolk University, received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from St. Paul’s College, the Paulist Fathers’ seminary in Washington, DC. After studying poetry at the University of Minnesota and working as a community organizer in Washington and New York, he was ordained into the priesthood. The Paulists and Cardinal Cushing assigned Carroll to Boston University, where he served as Catholic chaplain from 1969 to 1974. During those years he published numerous books on religious subjects and a weekly column in the *National Catholic Reporter*, which earned him awards from the Catholic Press Association and other organizations. Carroll remained active in the antiwar movement until the Vietnam War ended. He left the priesthood to become a writer and has since published nine novels, an award-winning memoir, and a weekly op-ed column for *the Boston Globe*. Carroll is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves on its Committee for International Security Studies. He is a member of the council of PEN/New England, and he served four years as its chair. He has been a Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at the Harvard Divinity School. Carroll is also a trustee of the Boston Public Library and a member of the advisory board of the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life at Brandeis University.
  • James Peyser is a partner with NewSchools Venture Fund and serves as chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education, a position he has held since 1999. He is also chairman of the Educational Management Audit Council. Prior to joining NewSchools, Peyser served as education advisor to Governors Mitt Romney and Jane Swift. He also worked for eight years as Executive Director of Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research. During his tenure at Pioneer, Peyser took a four month leave of absence to serve as Under Secretary of Education and Special Assistant to Governor William Weld for Charter Schools. Peyser is a member of the board of overseers of WGBH and is a former member of the board of directors of Boston Partners in Education. He also serves on the policy board of the National Council on Teacher Quality.
  • Award-winning documentary filmmaker Michael Kirk has produced more than 200 national television programs. A former Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University, Kirk was the senior producer of *FRONTLINE* from the series' inception in 1983 until the fall of 1987, when he created his own production company, The Kirk Documentary Group. His most recent *FRONTLINE* productions include three investigations of the recent financial crisis--*The Warning*, the unique story of a regulator's warning about the dangers of derivatives in the 1990s, *Breaking the Bank*, an inside look into the complicated financial and political web threatening superbank Bank of America, *Inside the Meltdown*, a major investigation into the collapse of the American economy. In 2008 Kirk produced *The Choice*, an examination of the political and personal biographies of presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama. In the spring of 2008 he produced, directed and wrote, the four and a half hour, two-part special *Bush's War* (EMMY Award). He has produced 10 films on the "war on terror" including *Cheney's Law* (Peabody Award), *Endgame*, *The Lost Year in Iraq* (EMMY Award), *Rumsfeld's War*, *The Torture Question* (EMMY Award), *The Dark Side*, *The War Behind Closed Doors*, an analysis of the political infighting that led to the war with Iraq; and *The Man Who Knew*, the extraordinary saga of FBI Agent John O'Neil. Kirk's long relationship with *FRONTLINE* also includes the Peabody Award-winning *Waco--The Inside Story*, (1995) a behind-the-scenes look at the FBI siege of the Branch Davidian compound; and the EMMY Award-winning *The Kevorkian File*, (1994) an in-depth examination of Dr. Jack Kevorkian's controversial record and cases. Kirk also produces programs that concentrate on social and cultural issues in America. *Caring for Your Parents* tells the story of five families caring for their elderly parents; *Navy Blues* (EMMY award) examines gender politics in the military; *The Way the Music Died* a behind-the-scenes report on the recording industry; and the groundbreaking *Misunderstood Minds*, a two-year examination of the personal stories of five families confronting the challenges of a child's learning disabilities.
  • Kirk Wolter, Ph.D., is Executive Vice President, Survey Research, with the National Opinion Research Center, an affiliate of the University of Chicago, and is also Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Chicago. During his career, he has led or participated in the design of many of America's largest and most important information systems, including the Current Business Surveys, the Current Employment Statistics program, the Current Population Survey, the 1980 and 1990 Decennial Censuses, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, and the National Resources Inventory. Wolter is currently a member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on the Design of the 2010 Census Program of Evaluations and Experiments and a charter member of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee. He recently completed service on National Academy of Sciences panels on federal business statistics and on cost-of-living indexes. He is author of *Introduction to Variance Estimation*, a standard work in its field, and has published numerous articles in refereed statistical journals. Wolter has received extensive recognition for his work, including the U.S. Department of Commerce's silver and bronze medals. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and past President of the International Association of Survey Statisticians and of the Survey Research Methods Section of the American Statistical Association. His Ph.D. in Statistics is from Iowa State University.