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Michael C. Dawson is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago. He has also taught at the University of Michigan and Harvard University. Dawson received his BA with high honors from Berkeley in 1982 and doctorate degree from Harvard University in 1986. Professor Dawson was co-principal investigator of the 1988 National Black Election Study and was principal investigator with Ronald Brown of the 1993-1994 National Black Politics Study. His research interests have included the development of quantitative models of African American political behavior, identity, and public opinion, the political effects of urban poverty, and African American political ideology. This work also includes delineating the differences in African American public opinion from those of white Americans. More recently he has combined his quantitative work with work in political theory. His previous two books, *Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics (Princeton 1994)* and *Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies (Chicago 2001), *won multiple awards, including Black Visions winning the prestigious Ralph Bunche Award from the American Political Science Association. Dawson has also published numerous journal articles, book chapters and opinion pieces. Dawson's strong interest in the impact of the information technology revolution on society and politics, as well as his research on race are both fueled in part from his time spent as an activist while studying and working in Silicon Valley for several years. Dawson is currently finishing an edited volume, *Fragmented Rainbow*, on race and civil society in the United States as well as a solo volume,* Black Politics in the Early 21st Century.*

Amartya Sen is Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard, and was until recently the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He has served as President of the Econometric Society, the Indian Economic Association, the American Economic Association and the International Economic Association. He was formerly Honorary President of OXFAM. Sen's books have been translated into more than 30 languages. Among the awards that Sen has received are the "Bharat Ratna" (the highest civilian honour in India); the Senator Giovanni Agnelli International Prize in Ethics; the Edinburgh Medal; the Brazilian Ordem do Merito Cientifico (Gra-Cruz); the Eisenhower Medal; Honorary Companion of Honour (U.K.); The George C. Marshall Award; and the Nobel Prize in Economics. Photo courtesy of Jesus de Miguel.

Walter Richard West, Jr. was the founding director of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, retiring in 2007. He is also a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma and a Peace Chief of the Southern Cheyenne. His professional life has been devoted to serving the American Indian community on cultural, artistic, educational, legal and governmental issues. Richard West earned a bachelor of arts degree in American History, graduating magna cum laude in 1965 and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Redlands in California. He also received a master's degree in American History from Harvard University in 1968. West graduated from the Stanford University School of Law with a doctor of jurisprudence degree in 1971, where he also was the recipient of the Hilmer Oehlmann Jr. Prize for excellence in legal writing and served as an editor and note editor of the *Stanford Law Review*.

Jennifer Steele received her B.A. in psychology in 1995, and B.Ed. in 1996 from Queen's University. She then completed an Ed.M. in 1997 at the Harvard School of Education, and an M.A. in 1999 at the Harvard University Department of Psychology. Currently Steele is pursuing my Ph.D. in social psychology. Her research interests focus primarily on stereotyping and interpersonal expectancies. One main line of research that Steele has been pursuing examines the effect of gender and race primes on people's attitudes, evaluations, and behavior. Another line of research looks at the development of stereotypes among children. She have also been examining women's experiences with discrimination and stereotype threat in male-dominated academic areas.

Catherine Snow is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She received her Ph.D. in psychology from McGill and worked for several years in the linguistics department of the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests include children's language development as influenced by interaction with adults in home and preschool settings, literacy development as related to language skills and as influenced by home and school factors, and issues related to the acquisition of English oral and literacy skills by language minority children. She has co-authored books on language development (e.g., *Pragmatic Development* with Anat Ninio) and on literacy development (e.g., *Unfulfilled Expectations: Home and School Influences on Literacy*, with W. Barnes, J. Chandler, I. Goodman & L. Hemphill), and published widely on these topics in referred journals and edited volumes. Snow's contributions to the field include membership on several journal editorial boards, co-directorship for several years of the Child Language Data Exchange System, and editorship of Applied Psycholinguistics. She served as a board member at the Center for Applied Linguistics and a member of the National Research Council Committee on Establishing a Research Agenda on Schooling for Language Minority Children. She chaired the National Research Council Committee on Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, which produced a report that has been widely adopted as a basis for reform of reading instruction and professional development. She currently serves on the NRC's Council for the Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, and as president of the American Educational Research Association.

Robert Serpell is Professor of Psychology at the University of Zambia. From 2003 to 2006 he was Vice-Chancellor of the University. He has conducted numerous studies on gaps in academic performance between ethnic groups, finding that even within a given society, different cognitive characteristics are emphasized from one situation to another and from one subculture to another. These differences extend not just to conceptions of intelligence but to what is considered adaptive or appropriate in a broader sense. Serpell's work shows how conceptions of intelligence vary from culture to culture, and that the majority of these views do not reflect Western ideas. Serpell and others have found that people in some African communities--especially where Western schooling has not yet become common--tend to blur the Western distinction between intelligence and social competence. In rural Zambia, for instance, the concept of nzelu includes both cleverness (chenjela) and responsibility (tumikila).

Richard C. Levy entered Emerson College in Boston in 1964. He majored in television and cinematography. After earning his BA, he joined Paramount Pictures International as intern to the President; this led to a career promoting feature films internationally. For Paramount, Levy did campaigns for over 30 films, including The Odd Couple and Barbarella . In 1971, Levy became a producer himself, co-founding a company and producing the first of over two dozen film and TV documentaries. In 1980, Levy was appointed to the Senior Executive Service of the Federal government, where he later became a principal architect of WORLDNET, U.S.I.A.'s interactive satellite network. In the meantime, Levy had begun to apply his creativity to inventing. Levy's invention specialty was, and remains, toys and games. Levy developed a line of Duncan yo-yo key chains in 1998. In the same year came the crowning achievement to date of Levy's career in toys and games: his licensing and co-development of Furby.In the past twenty years, Richard C. Levy has co-developed over 200 toys and games. Levy has worked extensively with major toy companies like Hasbro and Mattel. Yet he remains independent, with over 200 products and over 30 design and utility patents to his credit. In fact, Richard C. Levy has become a recognized supporter and advisor of aspiring independent inventors, through his frequent public appearances, interviews and the 12 books he has written.

Michael T. Klare is the Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies, a joint appointment at Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies, a position he has held since 1985. Before assuming his present post, he served as Director of the Program on Militarism and Disarmament at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. Professor Klare has written widely on US defense policy, the arms trade, and world security affairs. He is the author of numerous books. Professor Klare is also the defense correspondent of The Nation, and a contributing editor of Current History. Michael Klare serves on the board of directors of the Arms Control Association, and the advisory board of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch; he is also a member of the Committee on International Security Studies of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dorinda Carter Andrews is an assistant professor of teacher education. Her research interests include enhancing African-American student school achievement, examining how race impacts the teaching and learning process, and urban teacher preparation. Her current research projects focus on the racial and achievement self-conceptions of urban African American students and pre-service teachers' development of the necessary dispositions and critical consciousness for urban teaching.