Nicholas Lemann was born, raised and educated in New Orleans. He began his journalism career as a 17-year-old writer for an alternative weekly newspaper there, the Vieux Carre Courier. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1976, where he concentrated in American History and Literature and was President of the Harvard Crimson.

David M. Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and professor, has taught at Stanford University since 1967 and was named the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History in 1993. His many books include the 1971 Bancroft prize-winningBirth Control in America; 1981 Pulitzer Prize finalist Over Here: The First World War and American Society, and Freedom From Fear, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 2000.

Jay T. Harris, the former publisher of the San Jose Mercury News, is director of The Center for the Study of Journalism and Democracy at the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California.

Donald E. Graham became chief executive officer of The Washington Post Company in 1991 and chairman of the board in 1993. Publisher of the The Washington Post newspaper since 1979, Graham is a trustee of the Federal City Council in Washington, D.C., chairman of the District of Columbia College Access Program, and a member of the board of directors of The Summit Fund of Washington.

With nearly 30 years of service with The Wall Street Journal, Paul Gigot has been the paper's editorial page editor and vice president since September 2001. He is responsible for the newspaper's editorials, op-ed articles and Leisure & Arts criticism and directs the editorial pages of the Journal's Asian and European editions and the OpinionJournal.com web-site. He is also the host of the weekly half-hour news program, the Journal Editorial Report, on the Fox News Channel.

Thomas L. Friedman, a native of Minneapolis, graduated summa cum laude in 1975 with a degree in Mediterranean Studies from Brandeis University. On a Marshall Scholarship, he studied at Oxford University's St. Antony's College and later earned a master's degree in Middle East studies from Oxford in 1978.

After a year as a general assignment reporter in the London bureau of United Press International (UPI), Friedman was transferred to UPI's Beirut bureau as a correspondent from 1979-1981.

Kathleen Carroll has served as executive editor for the AP since 2002 and as senior vice president since Sept. 2003.

Before joining the news organization some 25 years ago, she studied journalism at the University of Texas at Arlington and worked as a reporter for the Dallas Morning News.

Amanda Bennett, Executive Editor/Enterprise for Bloomberg News, was elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board in 2002. Bennett was editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer from June, 2003, to November, 2006, and prior to that was editor of the Herald-Leader in Lexington, KY. She also served for three years as managing editor/projects for The Oregonian in Portland.

Named the National Press Foundation's 1997 Editor of the Year and Editor and Publisher's 2005 Editor of the Year, Jim Amoss has been editor of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans since July 1990. Previously, he had been associate editor of The Times-Picayune since 1988. Under his leadership, the paper won the 1997 Pulitzer Prizes in both public service and editorial cartooning. These were the paper's first Pulitzers since its inception in 1837. The paper also won the 2006 Pulitzer Prizes in public service and breaking news.

Danielle Allen is a scholar whose intellectual scope spans the fields of the classics, philosophy, and political theory. Her book The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens examines the theory and practice of punishment in classical Athens as it affected both the intellectual elite and ordinary citizens. Allen weaves evidence from legal statutes and court speeches with contemporaneous literary and philosophical documents to explore the challenges posed by punishment to democratic Athenian politics and society.