Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is the author of twelve books, including several award-winning works of literary criticism as well as the memoir Colored People; The Future of the Race, co-authored with Cornel West; Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man; and Tradition and the Black Atlantic. Gates has hosted ten PBS television specials, including Looking for Lincoln and the two part series, African American Lives, upon which his book In Search of Our Roots was based. He is winner of the 2009 Ralph Lowell Award for Outstanding Contributions to Public Television and the 2010 NAACP Image Award for Non-Fiction.
Anthony P. Griffin was General Counsel for the NAACP and was removed in 1993 for his representation in a first amendment case of a Grand Dragon of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Donald E. Lively is a Professor of Law at the University of Toledo.
Nadine Strossen is Professor Emerita at New York Law School and past national President of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008). She is a Senior Fellow with FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) and an internationally acclaimed free speech scholar, activist, speaker, and media commentator. She is the author of many books, including Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know® and Speaking of Race, Speaking of Sex: Hate Speech, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties.
