Michelle Alexander is the Director of the Racial Justice Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California. Ms. Alexander is also a Consulting Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, where she teaches courses in federal litigation and civil procedure. Ms. Alexander has also served as a law clerk on the United States Supreme Court for Justice Harry Blackmun, and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for Chief Judge Abner Mikva. Ms. Alexander is one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in a federal class action lawsuit, Rios v. UC Regents, alleging that the new admissions process adopted by University of California, Berkeley following the repeal of affirmative action discriminates against African American, Latino and Filipino applicants.

Walter Allen is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Allen's research and teaching focus on family patterns, socialization and personality development, race and ethnic relations, health inequality and higher education. He has also worked as a consultant to communities, business, and government. Dr. Allen has co-authored The Colorline and the Quality of Life in America, co-edited three books, Beginnings: The Social and Affective Development of Black Children, College in Black and White: African American Students in Predominantly White and Historically Black Public Universities, and Black American Families, 1965-84. Dr. Allen also serves as a panel member on the Panel on Racial Dynamics in Colleges and Universities.

Paul Brest, has been a professor at Stanford Law School since 1969, and Richard E. Lang Professor and Dean since 1987. He received an A.B. from Swarthmore College in 1962 and an LL.B from Harvard Law School in 1965. He served as law clerk to Judge Bailey Aldrich and Justice John M. Harlan, and practiced with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., in Jackson, Mississippi, doing civil rights litigation. Professor Brest's main fields are constitutional law and problem solving and decision-making. As Dean he has spearheaded the expansion of Stanford's curriculum in business, environmental, and high technology law and in problem-solving and negotiation skills.

Ethan Bronner is the national education correspondent for The New York Times. Before joining The Times in the summer of 1997, he spent 12 years at The Boston Globe where he was Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem as well as Supreme Court correspondent in Washington. He is the author of Battle For Justice: How the Bork Nomination Shook America, named by the New York Public Library one of the 25 best books of 1989. Bronner worked for five years for Reuters in Madrid, Brussels and Jerusalem. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Albert M. Camarillo is Professor of History at Stanford University and the director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (established in 1997), one of the nation’s first research and teaching programs to provide domestic and international comparative perspectives on the study of race and ethnicity. Dr. Camarillo has published six books and over a dozen articles dealing with the experiences of Mexican Americans and other racial and immigrant groups in American cities. In addition to teaching and research, he has occupied several administrative positions: founding Director of the Stanford Center for Chicano Research (1980-1985); founding Executive Director of the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (1985-1988); Associate Dean and Director of Undergraduates Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences (1991-1993).

Mitchell Chang is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Before going to the University of Massachusetts, Dr. Chang was a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. His dissertation is entitled Racial Diversity in Higher Education: Does a Racially Mixed Student Population Affect Educational Outcomes? Dr. Chang serves as Executive Director on the Panel on Racial Dynamics in Colleges and Universities.

Henry Der, currently the Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction, Education Equity, Access and Support Branch at the California Department of Education, has a long history of civil service and activism in California. From 1974 to 1996, Mr. Der served as the executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, a civil rights organization based in San Francisco that advocates for equal opportunities for Asian American, other racial minorities and women. He has been a chairperson and member of numerous boards and committees, including the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC), the San Francisco Education Fund, the National Advisory Committee to the Stanford University Haas Public Service Center, the 2000 Census Advisory Committee to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and the California State Bar Board of Governors.

Theresa Fay-Bustillos has been the Vice President of Legal Programs at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) since 1995. Specializing in education issues, Ms. Faye-Bustillos’ work at MALDEF centers on conducting class-action and impact litigation and protecting and advancing the civil rights of Latinos residing in the United States. Ms. Faye-Bustillos has also held litigation positions with the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and briefly served as an Administrative Law Judge. Ms. Faye-Bustillos teaches a civil rights litigation class at the University of Southern California (USC) School of Law and has served as a lawyer representative to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference for the Central District and currently chairs the district’s pro se litigation committee. Ms. Faye-Bustillos currently serves as counsel in Rios v. Regents, the legal challenge to U.C. Berkeley's admissions system as discriminatory against Latinos, African Americans, and Filipino Americans.

Jean H. Fetter began her administrative career at Stanford University in 1975, serving for twenty-two years in five different positions, including Assistant to the President, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, and Dean of Undergraduate Admissions. Dr. Fetter’s book, Questions and Admissions: Reflections on 100,000 Admissions Decisions at Stanford, was based on her experience as Dean of Admissions (Stanford Press, 1995). Outside Stanford, Dr. Fetter has served on numerous college accreditation committees and on several boards including the National Advisory Council for the Danforth Foundation Graduate Fellowship Program, as Chairman of the Research and Development Committee of the College Board, and as Chairman of the National Selection Committee for the Coca-Cola Foundation Scholars.

Cheryl D. Fields is the executive editor of Black Issues In Higher Education magazine. Her work covering education, business, politics, and the arts has appeared in several newspapers and magazines over the past decade, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Business Journal, the Los Angeles Weekly, The Black Collegian, Howard University Magazine, UCLA Magazine and American Visions. Prior to launching her journalism career, she spent 10 years as a Los Angeles-based public relations and marketing executive. Fields is a member of the Washington Association of Black Journalists, where she served on the board of directors from 1996-98. She also is a member of the Washington Independent Writers Association and the National Association of Female Executives.

Kenji Hakuta is Professor of Education at Stanford University. An experimental psychologist by training, his major areas of specialization are in bilingual education and second language acquisition. His major publications include Mirror of Language: The Debate on Bilingualism, and In Other Words: The Science and Psychology of Second Language Acquisition. He has served on a number of committees in education and the behavioral sciences at the national level. In 1997, Dr. Hakuta chaired a committee at the National Research Council that issued a report, Improving Schooling for Language Minority Children: A Research Agenda. He currently serves as Chair of the National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board of the U.S. Department of Education, as a board member of the Educational Testing Service (ETS), and as co-chair of the Panel on Racial Dynamics in Colleges and Universities.

Sylvia Hurtado is Associate Professor at the University of Michigan's Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education. Her research centers on diverse college contexts for the success of diverse college students. She serves on the Board of the American Association of Higher Education, American Educational Research Association (Division J), the Journal of Higher Education, Sociology of Education, and the Journal of College Student Development. She has coordinated several national research projects on undergraduate education (through the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement) and the National Study of Hispanic College Students. Recent publications include Enacting Diverse Learning Environments (in press), The Educational Value of Diversity, Journal of Liberal Education (in press); and Differences in College Accessand Choice Among Racial/Ethnic Groups, Research in Higher Education (1997).

James M. Jones is Professor of Psychology at the University of Delaware and the Director of the Minority Fellowship Program and Affirmative Action Officer at the American Psychological Association. A second edition of Dr. Jones' classic 1972 book, Prejudice and Racism was published by McGraw-Hill in December 1996. Dr. Jones is now at work on a new book, Cultural Psychology of African Americans. Dr. Jones is a member of editorial boards of numerous scientific journals, and is a past president of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. Dr. Jones is co-chair of the Panel on Racial Dynamics in Colleges and Universities.

Jerome Karabel is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1984. The author of numerous articles on higher education and social inequality, he is the co-author of The Diverted Dream: Community Colleges and the Promise of Educational Opportunity in America, 1900-1985, which won the Outstanding Book of the Year Award of the American Educational Research Association. Since the early 1970s, Professor Karabel has had a special interest in the social consequences of policies of university admissions. In 1989, he chaired the Admissions and Enrollment Committee of the Academic Senate of the University of California at Berkeley and wrote the report, Freshman Admissions at Berkeley: A Policy for the 1990s and Beyond. His research on college and university admissions has appeared in such journals as The American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Educational Record, Harvard Educational Review, and Theory and Society.

Michael W. Kirst is Professor of Education Policy at Stanford University and co-director of Policy Analysis for California Education (a research consortium including Stanford, University of California, Berkeley, and University Southern California). Prior to Stanford, Dr. Kirst served as Staff Director to the U.S. Senate Subcommitee on Manpower, Employment, and Poverty, and as the Director of Program Planning and Evaluation for the Bureau of Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education. Dr. Kirst serves and has served on numerous boards and committees including positions as co-editor of Educational Researcher, as Principal Investigator of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, as the Vice President of the American Educational Research Association, as a Commissioner to the Education Commission of the States, and as the President of the California State Board.

Bill Lann Lee has been the Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Justice since December of 1997. Mr. Lee has spent his 24 year legal career seeking equal opportunity for all people and working diligently against discrimination in all forms, including in employment, housing, voting, and education. Before his appointment at the Department of Justice, Mr. Lee lived in Los Angeles and served as Western Regional Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Educational Fund (LDF). Prior to working at LDF, Mr. Lee served for five years as the supervising attorney for Civil Rights Litigation at the Center for Law in Public Interest in California. Mr. Lee has also served as an adjunct professor of Political Science at Fordham University, and as counsel to the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Shana Levin is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Claremont McKenna College. She received her B.A. in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and her Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. In her work as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Psychology at UCLA, she coordinated a longitudinal study of the development of ethnic attitudes and behaviors among college students on the ethnically diverse UCLA campus. In addition to her research on diversity in higher education, she has conducted research in the areas of ethnic identification, group dominance motives, ideologies of group inequality, perceived discrimination, and intergroup attitudes in the United States and Israel.

Eugene Y. Lowe, Jr. is currently Associate Provost and Senior Lecturer in Religion at Northwestern University. From 1983-1993 he served as Dean of Students at Princeton University and as a member of the department of religion. His research on diversity in higher education has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. An Episcopal priest and historian of American religion, his writings on the social gospel, progressivism, and race in American history have been published in a number of volumes. His book Promise and Dilemma: Perspectives on Racial Diversity and Higher Education, was just published by Princeton University Press. Dr. Lowe supervises the Northwestern University Press, and is a member of the University Budget Committee and the Provost Planning Group. He is co-chair of the Task Force on Underrepresented Minorities and senior administration liaison for the Committee on Women in the Academic Workplace.

Jeffrey F. Milem joined the faculty of the College of Education at the University of Maryland this fall after spending five years in the Department of Educational Leadership at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. He has an extensive background in higher education having spent the past nineteen years serving as an administrator, researcher, and teacher. His research interests focus on the impact of college on students (with a focus on the effect of peer groups and normative reference groups), racial dynamics in higher education, the educational outcomes of diversity, the condition and status of the professorate, and the pedagogical practices of faculty. He is active in AERA, ASHE, and works on a variety of projects with ACE.

John Payton is a partner at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Wilmer, Cutler, & Pickering and co-chairs the firm’s Litigation Practice Group. Presently representing the University of Michigan and the University of Michigan Law School in the lawsuits that challenge their use of race in the admissions process, Mr. Payton, has extensive civil rights and discrimination litigation experience. He defended Richmond in the Supreme Court in Richmond v. Croson and filed an amicus brief on behalf of 66 members of the U.S. Senate and 118 Members of the House of Representatives in the U.S. Supreme Court in Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, a racial discrimination in employment case. Mr. Payton also chairs and serves on numerous boards including the National Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, the People for the American Way, the Public Defender Service, and the Southern Africa Legal Services and Legal Support Project.

Eric Schnapper is currently the Pendleton Miller Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law. He is also one of the lead lawyers representing the University of Washington School of Law in the case alleging that the school’s race-conscious admissions policies discriminate against non-racial minority students. Mr. Schnapper also served as a consultant to the campaign against the Washington State ballot initiative I-200 that banned the use of affirmative action in state-run education and employment programs. Prior to coming to the University of Washington, Mr. Schnapper served as Assistant Counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund from 1969 to 1994 where he litigated cases in employment discrimination, voting rights, and constitutional law. Mr. Schnapper also serves as an Articles and Book Review Editor for the Yale Law Journal, and as Chair of the Committee on Consumer Affairs, Association of the Bar of New York.

Peter Schrag recently retired after 19 years as editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee. He began his career as a reporter for the El Paso (Texas) Herald-Post; was associate education editor and executive editor of the Saturday Review; editor of Change Magazine, a journal in higher education and a contributing editor to a number of other publications. He currently serves as a contributing editor of The American Prospect. He also continues to write a weekly column for the Bee. He is the author of many articles in the Atlantic, Harper's, the Nation, the New Republic, Playboy, the American Prospect and other publications, as well as nine books on American politics, education and other social issues. His most recent book, Paradise Lost: California's Experience, America's Future, was published by the New Press in 1998 and as a paperback by UC Press in 1999. He now serves on the Advisory Council of the Public Policy Institute of California and is a member of the board of directors of EdSource, which conducts research and publishes data on schools in California.

Theodore Shaw is the Associate Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. (LDF) in which capacity he has litigated civil rights cases throughout the country on the trial and appellate levels and in the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Shaw has held several different positions at LDF and established their Western Regional Office in 1987. He has also served as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and as a law professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Mr. Shaw currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Wesleyan University, the Greater Brownsville Youth Council, the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, and the Archbishop's Leadership project.

William L. Taylor is a lawyer, teacher and writer in the field of civil rights and education. He practices law in Washington, D.C., specializing in litigation and other forms of advocacy on behalf of low-income and minority children. Mr. Taylor is the founder and former director of the Center for National Policy Review, Vice Chair of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the founder and Vice Chair of the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights. Mr. Taylor is an adjunct professor in education law at Georgetown University Law School. He has written widely about public law and policy issues for legal and education journals, magazines and newspapers, and is the author of a book, Hanging Together: Equality in an Urban Nation, published by Simon and Schuster in 1971.

Ewart A.C. Thomas has been a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University since 1972. He has served as Chair of the Psychology Department, and, from 1988 to 1993, he served as Dean of the University's School of Humanities and Sciences. Thomas teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Statistics, Research Methods, and Mathematical Models in the Social Sciences. His research interests include the development and application of mathematical and statistical models in many areas, such as, signal detection, motivation, inter-rater reliability, assessment of group differences, parent-infant interaction, and law as a social science.

William T. Trent is Professor of Educational Policy Studies and Sociology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Currently, he also holds an appointment as Associate Chancellor. Trent has published and served as an expert witness on issues of school desegregation at the K-12 and post-secondary levels of schooling. His interest in questions of equity, race and ethnicity, class and gender in education have found expression not only in his early years of practice and in his publications but also in his co-founding work in establishing the Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender, Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. More recently he has turned to questions of race and ethnicity in the preparation of teachers and broader questions of pre- and in-service preparation of teachers.

Peggy Walsh-Sarnecki has been with the Detroit Free Press since 1996, covering higher education and education issues and trends. Ms. Walsh-Sarnecki has worked for a total of nine newspapers, in five states. She has spent most of her career covering politics and government, but in recent years changed to reporting on education. She is currently the primary reporter at the Detroit Free Press who is assigned to cover the Gratz and Hamacher v. University of Michigan case.

Linda Wightman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Research Methodology, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She has been a member of the UNCG faculty since January 1997. Prior to coming to UNCG, she worked in the area of applied measurement as Vice President for Operations, Testing, and Research for the Law School Admission Council, and as Principal Measurement Specialist and Senior Measurement Statistician for the Educational Testing Service (ETS). She serves on the board of editors for Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice and serves as an occasional reviewer for several other scholarly journals. Dr. Wightman is an active member of NCME and AERA and is author of numerous monographs and scholarly publications.