Seymour Topping has had a varied career as foreign correspondent, editor, university professor and author.

He retired in 2002 as Administrator of the Pulitzer after nine years of service and was appointed San Paolo Professor Emeritus of International Journalism at Columbia University.

Prior to Columbia, he was a member of the New York Times for thirty years as chief correspondent in Moscow and Southeast Asia, foreign editor, deputy managing editor and managing editor from 1986 to 1987.

During his nine-year tenure as president of Columbia University, Dr. Rupp focused on enhancing undergraduate education, on strengthening the relationship of the campus to surrounding communities and New York City as a whole, and on increasing the university’s international orientation. At the same time, he completed both a financial restructuring of the university and a $2.84 billion fund-raising campaign that achieved eight successive records in dollars raised.

Tom Goldstein worked as a reporter at AP, Newsday, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He was press secretary to New York City Mayor Edward Koch. Goldstein has written “The News at Any Cost,” “A Two-Faced Press” and co-authored “The Lawyers Guide to Writing Well.” He edited the “Killing the Messenger: 100 years of Press Criticism.” Goldstein is a graduate of Yale and Columbia’s law school and journalism school.

Tom Goldstein joined the Pulitzer Prize Board in 1998.

Sandra Mims Rowe is editor of The Oregonian, the largest daily newspaper in the Northwest.

John S. Carroll, 60,  has been editor and executive vice president of the Los Angeles Times since 2000 and vice president of Times Mirror since 1998.

Previously, he was editor of The Baltimore Sun and senior vice president of The Baltimore Sun Company for nine years. Prior to that he served as editor, vice president and executive vice president at the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Louis D. Boccardi, president and chief executive officer of Associated Press, has been elected chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board. His selection was announced by President George Rupp. Columbia University awards the annual prizes on the board's recommendation.

William Safire, who won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1978, has been a political columnist for the New York Times since 1973. Readers also know him for his New York Times Magazine column "On Language" upon which he has based 13 books. Previously, Safire served as a senior White House speech-writer for President Nixon.

Andrew Barnes, chairman of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and former chairman and CEO of the St. Petersburg Times, is a native of New York City and a graduate of Harvard University where he took his degree in history.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, chair of the Afro-American Studies Department and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University.

With 40 honorary degrees, Gates is a world-renowned scholar and teacher of African and African-American history and culture. He has authored seven books and written numerous essays and reviews on a broad range of African and African-American issues, including slavery, race, feminism, dialect and identity.