Forum Network

Peter Schrag, retired editorial page editor and columnist for the Sacramento Bee, has been writing for *The Nation* for nearly a half-century. His new book, *Not Fit for Our Society: Nativism, Eugenics and Immigration*, will be published next spring.

Michael Rebell is the Executive Director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is an experienced litigator in the field of education law, and he is also Professor Law and Educational Practice at Teachers College and Columbia Law School. Rebell was co-counsel for the plaintiffs in Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Inc. versus State of New York, a school funding adequacy lawsuit that claimed that the State of New York was not adequately funding public schools in New York City. Rebell argued the case three times before the New York Court of Appeals, New York's highest court. Rebell calls himself a child of the 60's, and says he was inspired by John F. Kennedy's call to public service. He attended Harvard College as an undergraduate and subsequently served in the Peace Corps for two years in Sierra Leone. After returning from the Peace Corps, he attended Yale Law School.

Askold Melnyczuk is Associate Professor for Creative Writing at UMass Boston. His publications include Ambassador of the Dead (Counterpoint Press, 2001), What Is Told, Blind Angel (novella, 2002); Short Fiction, Poems and Reviews in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Nation, The Partisan Review

Elmar Weitekamp is a restorative justice pioneer in Germany. He is studying the relationship between the restorative justice movement and the human rights movement which led to truth and reconciliation commissions. He currently serves as Professor of Criminology, Victimology and Restorative Justice in the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at Katholieke University in Leuven, Belgium. Weitekamp began his career as a Social Worker in the Department of Juvenile Welfare for the City of Mchengladbach, Germany. After earning an M.S.W. in Social Work in 1980 at Fachhochschule Niederrhein, Mnchengladbach, Germany, and an M.A. in Criminology (1982) at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, he entered the field of criminological research at the University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany. Weitekamp then taught in various positions at the University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School, and earned a Ph.D. in Criminology for the Graduate Group of Managerial Sciences and Applied Economics, The Wharton School (1989).

Dr. Rivlin was the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office. Prior to that, she was the chair of the District of Columbia Financial Management Assistance Authority, a vice chair of the Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System, and director of the Office of Management and Budget. Currently, she is the director of the Greater Washington Research Program and senior fellow of Economic Studies at The Brookings Institution. She is also a visiting professor at the Public Policy Institute of Georgetown University.

David Grinspoon is principal scientist in the Department of Space Studies at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, CO. He is funded by NASA to study the evolution of earthlike worlds. His new book is *Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life*.

Tom Oliphant, moderator, is a former columnist for The Boston Globe. He is also a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, who has covered countless political stories and appears frequently as a television commentator.

Edward Hirsch was educated at Grinnell College and the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a PhD in folklore. He is the author of six books of poems: *Lay Back the Darkness* (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003); *On Love* (1998); *Earthly Measures* (1994); *The Night Parade* (1989); *Wild Gratitude* (1986), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award; and *For the Sleepwalkers* (1981), which received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from The Academy of American Poets and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, and a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. He has been a professor of english at Wayne State University and the University of Houston. Hirsch is currently the president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.