David Brooks | “American’s Today- How We See Ourselves, How We See the World” Brooks writes two weekly columns for The New York Times.  He is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, a contributing editor at Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly, and a regular analyst on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.  His work has appeared in the Washington Post, The New Yorker, Public Interest, Smart Money, The New Republic, and U.S. News and World Report.  He is also a frequent analyst on NPR’s All Things Considered. His most recent book, On Paradise Drive, is about suburban life in America.  His first book, BoBos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, was on the New York Times best selling list.

Dr. Jared Diamond | “Guns, Germs, and Steel” Dr. Diamond is universally regarded as one of the great minds of our time. His Pulitzer-Prize winning book, Guns, Germs and Steel, has been a runaway best-seller, and the top selling science book on Amazon.com for five years running. Dr. Jared Diamond's blockbuster best-seller earned him a place as one of the most influential thinkers of our time.

Tom Friedman | “The Global Economy and American Foreign Policy” Friedman is one of America ’s foremost authorities on international economics and the politics of the Middle East. Author of the current bestseller, The World is Flat, he is the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, and the author of two Pulitzer Prize-winning bestsellers, From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Olive Tree.

David Gergen | “Eyewitness to Power: Leadership in America” Gergen is a commentator, editor, teacher, public servant, best-selling author and adviser to presidents – for 30 years, he has been an active participant in American national life. He served as director of communications for President Reagan and held positions in the administrations of Presidents Nixon and Ford. In 1993, he put his country before politics when he agreed to first serve as counselor to President Clinton on both foreign policy and domestic affairs, then as special international adviser to the president and to Secretary of State Warren Christopher.  

Brian Greene | “Beyond Global” Greene has worked on superstring theory for more than a decade.  He has been widely recognized for a number of discoveries in the field and for his presentations of cutting-edge research to scientists and fellow physicists.  The Washington Post calls Greene “the single best explainer of abstruse concepts in the world today.”  In 1990, Greene and a Harvard colleague discovered mirror symmetry – a remarkable property of string theory that has launched a vibrant field of research in mathematics and physics.  Greene is the co-director of Columbia University's Institute for Strings, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics and he is leading a research program that studies the cosmological implications of string theory

Dr. Richard Leakey | “Elephant Wars: The Fight to Save the African Elephant” Dr. Leakey is one of the world’s best known paleoanthropologists and Africa conservationists. Leakey served as the Director of the National Museums of Kenya, Director of the Kenya Wildlife Services, Head of the Civil Service and Secretary of the Kenya Cabinet. Dr. Leakey is one of the foremost authorities on wildlife and nature conservation, and continues to educate others about the dangers of environmental degradation. 

Dr. Joseph Stiglitz | “The U.S. Role in the Global Economy” Dr. Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize winning economist, who has been recognized around the world as a leading economic educator.  Stiglitz’s work has helped explain the circumstances in which markets do not work well, and how selective government intervention can improve their performance. He is heavily involved in reshaping the popular debate about globalization. At Columbia University, where he is the Professor of Economics and Finance, he has launched an organization, the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, designed to furnish developing nations with alternative views on everything from trade policy to financial reform. 

Fareed Zakaria   | “Democracy in the Middle East”
As Editor of  Newsweek International, and a regular roundtable member of ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Zakaria is one of the world’s most widely circulated columnists, and an expert on the Middle East. Zakaria oversees eight editions of Newsweek International, which are read in Asia , Latin America , Europe and the Middle East . His latest book, The Future of Freedom, is a New York Times best-seller.