Frank Rich became a New York Times Op-Ed columnist in 1994 after serving for thirteen years as the newspaper’s chief drama critic. He has written about culture and politics for many other publications and was on the staffs of Time, the New York Post, and New Times magazine after starting his career as a founding editor of The Richmond Mercury, a weekly newspaper, in the early 1970s. He is the author of The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina; Ghost Light, a childhood memoir; Hot Seat: Theater Criticism for The New York Times, 1980–1993; and The Theatre Art of Boris Aronson, coauthored with Lisa Aronson. A native of Washington, D.C., he lives in Manhattan with his wife, the author Alex Witchel, who is a reporter for The New York Times. Mr. Rich received his AB from Harvard College in 1971.
David Frum is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and writes a daily column for National Review Online. From 2001-2002, Mr. Frum served as a speechwriter and special assistant to President George W. Bush and Mr. Frum is the author is five books, including two New York Times bestsellers: The Right Man: The Sunrise Presidency of George W. Bush (2003), and An End to Evil: What’s Next in the War on Terror (2004). Mr. Frum contributes frequently to the editorial pages of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, as well as to Great Britain’s Daily Telegraph and Canada’s National Post; and he appears regularly on CNN, Fox News, and the BBC.
Mr. Frum received a BA and MA in history from Yale University in 1982. He was appointed a visiting lecturer in history at Yale in 1986; in 1987, he graduated cum laude from the Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Federalist Society.
Fredrick C. Harris is Professor of Political Science and Director of Columbia University's Center on African-American Politics and Society. His research interests include American Politics with a focus on political participation, social movements, and African-American politics. Professor Harris is the co-principal investigator of a major pre-election race relations poll with the ABC News Polling Unit and has been a commentator for a variety of media outlets, including Good Morning America and National Public Radio. Professor Harris's current book project is on the implications of the Obama candidacy for black politics, which is tentatively entitled “The Price of the Ticket: Barack Obama and the Rise and Fall of Black Politics.”
Professor Harris is the co-author of Countervailing Forces in African-American Civic Activism, 1973-1994 (Cambridge University Press, 2006), which received the 2006 W.E.B. DuBois Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists and the 2007 Ralph Bunche Award from the American Political Science Association for the best book on ethnic and cultural pluralism. Professor Harris received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and the Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Professor Harris has been a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation and a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
Jennifer Hochschild is the Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government and Professor of African and African American Studies. She also holds lectureships in the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Graduate School of Education. Prof. Hochschild studies the intersection of American politics and political philosophy -- particularly in the areas of race, ethnicity, and immigration -- and educational policy. She also works on issues in public opinion and political culture.
Professor Hochschild is the author of Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation (Princeton University Press, 1995); The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation (Yale University Press, 1984); and What's Fair: American Beliefs about Distributive Justice (Harvard University Press, 1981). Her current book project is tentatively entitled "Unstable Boundaries: Skin Color, Immigration, and Multiracialism in American Politics."
Brandon Terry (moderator) is a doctoral student in Political Science and African American Studies at Yale University, where he is the recipient of a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. A product of Baltimore County public schools, Mr. Terry graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with an AB in Government and African and African American Studies. Upon graduation, he earned an MSc in Political Theory Research as the 2005-2006 Michael von Clemm Fellow at Corpus Christi College at the University of Oxford.
Mr. Terry has written for The Huffington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Harvard Crimson, The Oxford Isis, REMIX Magazine, and provided commentary for Time, The Boston Globe, MTV News, The Nation, and other publications. He has lectured at Oxford, Harvard, the University of California—Irvine, and for various college student groups, high schools, and youth programs. His academic interests include philosophy of race and racism, Black intellectual and political thought, U.S. history, political philosophy, poverty, crime, and hip-hop.