Keith Josef Adkins

Keith Josef Adkins is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His plays have been presented and/or developed at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, the New York Theater Workshop, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Mark Taper Forum and the Alliance Theater. Most recently, Keith worked as a writer on the hit CW series Girlfriends.

Lawrence Bobo

Lawrence Bobo is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Bobo is co-author of Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations, and the recently published Prejudice in Politics: Group Position, Public Opinion, and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights, and was director of the center for Comparitive Study in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.

Spencer P. Boyer

Spencer P. Boyer is the Director of International Law and Diplomacy in the National Security and International Policy Department of the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank.He waspreviouslythe Executive Director and War Powers Initiative Director at the Constitution Project, based at Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute, and has served with international courts and tribunals in The Hague, Zurich, and Paris.

Veronica Chambers

Veronica Chambers is a journalist, editor and author of several books including The Joy of Doing Things Badly: A Girls' Guide to Love, Life and Foolish Bravery. and Having it All? Black Women and Success. She writes for numerous magazines and has been an editor and correspondent at several publications including Savoy, Newsweek and Premier.  

Stanley Crouch

Stanley Crouch s an editorial columnist for the New York Daily News, He is the author of Always in Pursuit, The All-American Skin Game, Notes of a Hanging Judge, and Don't the Moon Look Lonesome. For years a staff writer for the Village Voice, he is artistic consultant to jazz at Lincoln Center.

Michael Dawson

Michael C. Dawson is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. His research interests include 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. He is author of Behind the Mule:Race and Class in African-American Politics and Black Visions:The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies 

Lise Funderburg

Lise Funderburg is a writer, editor, and creative writing teacher. She has written for The Nation, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times , The Hungry Mind Review, and O, the Oprah Magazine. She is the author of Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity, and the forthcoming memoir/social history, Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home (Free Press, May 2008).

Vanessa Northington Gamble

Vanessa Northington Gamble is a physician and medical historian is University Professor of Medical Humanities at the George Washington University. She is the first woman to hold the prestigious endowed faculty position.

Thelma Golden

Thelma Golden is Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem. She is a former curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. She has organized a number of exhibitions, including 'Chris Ofili: Afro Muses 1995-2005', 'harlemworld: Metropolis as Metaphor', 'Black Romantic' and 'Isaac Julien: Vagabondia' among many others.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell

Melissa Harris-Lacewell is Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University.  She is the author of the award-winning book, Barbershops, Bibles and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought And she is currently at work on a new book: For Colored Girls Who've Considered Politics When Being Strong Wasn't Enough.

Marc Lamont Hill

Marc Lamont Hill is Assistant Professor of Urban Education and American Studies at Temple University. His work, which covers topics such as hip-hop culture, politics, sexuality, and education, has appeared in numerous journals, magazines, books, and anthologies. In addition to writing, he is an activist, working closely with the ACLU Drug Reform project, My5th.org,  and many grassroots social justice movements.

Amy Holmes

Amy Holmes is a Republican strategist who is a regular commentator on CNN.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault

Charlayne Hunter-Gault  is a distinguished journalist who made history as the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Georgia. She is the author 'In My Place' (1992), a memoir about her time at the University of Georgia.

Sundaa Bridgett Jones

Sundaa Bridgett Jones is currently with the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University where she counsels students on international careers in the federal government.  She is a former UN advisor on Asia and Middle East affairs. She has worked in Africa, Asia and the Middle East as a specialist in democracy and governance for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Kim McLarin

Kim McLarin, a former reporter for the New York Times, is the author of three novels—most recently, Jump at the Sun, which was chosen by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association as a 2007 Fiction Honor Book. She is the host of Basic Black, a weekly news and cultural affairs program on WGBH, Boston and a writer-in-residence at Emerson College.

John McWhorter

John McWhorter is a culture and politics Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute as well as a columnist for the New York Sun. He is also the author of 'Losing the Race.'

Lola Oggunaike

Lola Oggunaike  is  a reporter and pop culture critic for CNN, former culture correspondent for The New York Times, former reporter for the Daily News and Vibe magazine.

Rev. Eugene Rivers

Rev. Eugene Rivers is a minister and Activist in Boston. As a political commentator, he discusses religious issues and the black church for The Root.

Tricia Rose

Tricia Rose is Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University and specializes in 20th century African-American culture, politics, and social thought.

Linda Villarosa

Linda Villarosa is a freelance writer and editor. She is a former editor of the New York Times, and was also the executive editor of Essence Magazine, where she wrote or edited a number of award-winning articles. In 1991, with her mother, Clara, Linda wrote Essence's ground-breaking article, "Coming Out," which received more mail than any other in the magazine's history.

Phill Wilson

Phill Wilson is founder and Executive Director of the Black AIDS Institute. He served as the AIDS Coordinator for the City of Los Angeles and was the Director of Policy and Planning at AIDS Project Los Angeles. He has coordinated programming at International AIDS conferences in Switzerland, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, and Canada.

William Julius Wilson

William Julius Wilson is the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University and Director of the Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.  He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Education and the Institute of Medicine. He is author of several books including The Bridge over the Racial Divide (1999).

Kai Wright

Kai Wright is a writer and editor in Brooklyn, NY, whose work focuses on the politics of race, sex and health. He is the author the newly released book Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York.