Forum Network

David Schapira is a third generation Arizonan and Valley native. He is a former high school teacher, political activist and small business owner who first moved to Tempe in 1984. Schapira's career has been rooted in improving his community. He served as a public high school teacher in the Valley, as an aide to US Senator Tom Daschle in Washington, DC and as manager of Terry Goddard's 2002 campaign for Arizona Attorney General. In 2003, Schapira founded a consulting business. Schapira's company, Democracy Online Campaigns, designs websites and communication strategies for campaigns and small businesses across the country. Community service has been a large part of Schapira's life. He was a member of the Kiwanis youth group, Key Club, in which he held various leadership positions. Schapira, a cancer survivor, has also worked with the American Cancer Society both as staff and as a volunteer. Schapira’s focus at the Legislature is the education of Arizona’s children. As a former public school teacher, he knows the future of education in Arizona depends on investing in student learning, reducing class sizes, paying teachers reasonable wages and working to make our state’s universities leaders in higher education and research. A product of Arizona public schools, Schapira also attended Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University before receiving his Bachelor's Degree in Political Science from The George Washington University in Washington, DC.

Ruben Gallego is a democratic house representative of Arizona's 16th district.

Simons has worked in television and radio in the Phoenix area for more than 20 years, and got his start in TV here at Eight as a public affairs producer/reporter. He most recently hosted the afternoon drive news/talk show on KTAR radio. The long-time Valley journalist previously worked as news director/morning show host for KZON-FM and news/sports anchor/reporter at KPHO-TV. Simons was also sports director/anchor at KOFY-TV in San Francisco, Calif.

Harry Winfield, Fairfax neighborhood resident

Danielle Price, Antioch Development Corporation in Fairfax, CWRU student biographer

Gladys Haddad is Professor of American Studies at Case Western Reserve University and the founder and director of the Western Reserve Studies Symposia, an annual event now in its twentieth year that offers a forum and WEB site for the study of the history and culture of a distinctive northeastern Ohio region. She earned a B.A., Allegheny College, B.F.A., Lake Erie College, M.A. and Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University. She is professor of American Studies emerita at Lake Erie College where she was academic dean and executive assistant to the President. A historian and regionalist her scholarship is centered in Ohio's Western Reserve. She has published on the history, literature, and art of the region. She is the author of Ohio's Western Reserve: A Regional Reader, Anthology of Western Reserve Literature and Laukhuff's Book Store: Cleveland's Literary and Artistic Landmark: An Epilogue. She is the editor of Western Reserve Studies: A Journal of Regional History and Culture and Western Reserve Studies Symposia Papers. She is the Project Archivist, Researcher and Author of the CASE website "Selected Philanthropic Families of Case Western Reserve University."

David Harris, Founder of Living Through Legacies Project

Master artist, educator, and entrepreneur Edward Everett Parker was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's Hill District on Bentley Drive on February 7, 1941. His parents were Augustine Washington and David Nathaniel Parker. When he was in elementary school, his parents moved Edward and his brother David to Toledo, Ohio, where he studied at the Toledo Museum of Art as a child. Parker attended the Lincoln Elementary School and graduated from Scott High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in art from Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio and a Master's Degree in Art Education, with an emphasis in sculpting, from Ohio's Kent State University. He also completed additional graduate level work at the University of Illinois and at Ife in West Africa. Parker taught art education in the Cleveland Public Schools, serving as the head of the Art Department at Audubon Jr. High for a number of years. He later attained the position of Professor and Arts Coordinator at the Western Campus of Cuyahoga Community College and taught as a fulltime professor for nearly twenty years. Parker is the founder and director of the Snickerfritz Cultural Workshop for the Arts, Inc., located in the Edward E. Parker Creative Arts Complex in East Cleveland, Ohio. The complex, which also includes gallery and classroom space, meeting rooms, and a number of small businesses, is housed in a converted nursing home that sat vacant and dilapidated for seventeen years before Parker purchased and rehabbed the facility. His artistic achievements include numerous one-man and group shows in Ohio and other states and commissions from Cleveland's Cuyahoga Community College and Florida Memorial College, among others. His vision as an artist has long been informed by African American history and culture, and his better known works include a life-sized sculpture of the "Chicken George" character from Alex Haley's "Roots" and a celebrated series of African American clown sculptures and prints. Parker resides in East Cleveland, Ohio and has served on the Board of Trustees for the East Cleveland Library.

Social Justice Institute director Rhonda Y. Williams, PhD, is an associate professor of history and the founder and director of the postdoctoral fellowship in African American studies at Case Western Reserve. The award-winning author of The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women's Struggles against Urban Inequality, Williams has been honored by History News Network as a Top Young Historian and is listed in the 2009 edition of Who's Who in Black Cleveland. Her research interests include the manifestations of race and gender inequality on urban space and policy, the history of low-income people's lives and activism, and illicit narcotics economies in the post-1940s United States. Williams is a recipient of an American Association of University Women Postdoctoral Fellowship and a former Harvard University W.E.B. Du Bois Institute Fellow. She is the co-editor of the recently launched book series, Justice, Power, and Politics, with the University of North Carolina Press. Williams received her PhD in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1998 and her undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Maryland College Park in 1989, where she became that university's first black salutatorian in its then 187-year history. Her publications include articles on black power politics, the war on poverty, low-income black women's grassroots organizing, and urban and housing policy. To learn more about social justice initiatives at Case Western Reserve and how you can be involved, contact the Social Justice Institute at 216.368.2515 or socialjustice@case.edu.

Philippe Sands joined the Faculty of the University College of London in January 2002. He is Professor of Law and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals in the Faculty, and a key member of staff in the Centre for Law and the Environment. His teaching areas include public international law, the settlement of international disputes (including arbitration), and environmental and natural resources law. Prof. Sands is a regular commentator on the BBC and CNN and writes frequently for leading newspapers. He is frequently invited to lecture around the world, and in recent years has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto (2005), the University of Melbourne (2005) and the Universite de Paris I (Sorbonne) (2006, 2007). He has previously held academic positions at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, Kings College London and , University of Cambridge and was a Global Professor of Law at New York University from 1995-2003. He was co-founder of FIELD (Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development), and established the programmes on Climate Change and Sustainable Development. He is a member of the Advisory Boards of the European Journal of International Law and Review of European Community and International Environmental Law (Blackwell Press). In 2007 he served as a judge for the Guardian First Book Prize award. As a practicing barrister he has extensive experience litigating cases before the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, and the European Court of Justice. He frequently advises governments, international organisations, NGOs and the private sector on aspects of international law. In 2003 he was appointed a Queen's Counsel. He has been appointed to lists of arbitrators maintained by ICSID and the PCA.

V.S. Ramachandran is the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and a professor with the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego. He lives in San Diego.

Dr. Watson is Professor and Coordinator of American Studies at Lynn University. Prior to joining Lynn’s faculty in 2007 he taught for 15 years at four other universities and with the Junior Statesman Foundation at Yale, Stanford, and Georgetown. Watson is the author or editor of 30 books and two encyclopedia sets, and has published over 150 scholarly articles, book chapters, and essays on topics in American politics and history. A frequent media commentator, Watson has been interviewed by CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, USA Today, The New York Times, Time, U.S. News & World Report, and most other major outlets in the United States. His commentary has appeared on C-SPAN, Book TV, The Voice of America, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, to name a few, as well on the BBC and public television/radio in ten countries, and one of his lectures was the debut program for the launch of C-SPAN’s new American History TV channel. Watson also writes a Sunday column for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, tapes a Sunday talk show for south Florida’s PBS affiliate and a Sunday morning news show for south Florida’s NBC affiliate, and serves as the political analyst for WPTV 5 and WFTL 850 AM. The co-convener of seven national conferences on the presidency, Watson has served on the boards of several scholarly journals, academic associations, and community foundations as well as with the Calvin Coolidge Foundation, Harry S. Truman Foundation, and George McGovern Center for Public Service. He regularly organizes town halls, civic education programs, and voter registration drives in the community and has delivered roughly 2,000 lectures for universities, libraries, historic sites, and community groups around the country. Watson also founded the non-profit think tank Think Act Lead, co-founded the Florida Election Reform Initiative, and was the founding editor of the scholarly journal White House Studies. For his work Watson has received a number of awards, including the International Abraham Lincoln Award for his contributions to the study of the presidency, the Children's Hero Award for the programs he offers area schools, the South Florida Business Journal’s “Heavy Hitter in Education,” the League of Women Voters’ Good Government Award, both the Professor of the Year and Faculty Service Awards multiple times while at Florida Atlantic University, and Lynn’s Teacher of the Year Award.