Jonathan Alter an award-winning author, political analyst, documentary filmmaker, columnist, television producer and radio host.

Alter’s most recent book is American Reckoning: Inside Trump's Trial—And My Own (2024). His earlier books include His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life. (2020), The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies (2013), The Promise: President Obama, Year One (2010) and The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (2006), also one of the Times’ “Notable Books” of the year.

Elizabeth Alexander is a prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author, renowned poet, educator, scholar, and cultural advocate. Among the fifteen books she has authored or co-authored, her memoir, The Light of the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2015 and her poetry collection American Sublime was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2006. Her most recent book, The Trayvon Generation, was released in April 2022. Notably, Dr.

Walter Isaacson Walter Isaacson is a Professor of History at Tulane. He has been the editor of Time Magazine, the CEO and Chairman of CNN, and the CEO of the Aspen Institute. He is an advisory partner at Perella Weinberg, a financial services firm based in New York City, a cohost of the PBS show Amanpour & Co., a contributor to CNBC, and host of the podcast “Trailblazers, from Dell Technologies.”

Elliot Ackerman is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels 2034, Red Dress In Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, and Green on Blue, as well as the memoirs The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan and Places and Names: On War, Revolution and Returning. His books have been nominated for the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize among others.

Sean Illing is a senior correspondent at Vox and the host of "The Gray Area" podcast. He’s a veteran of the United States Air Force and holds a PhD in Political Theory from LSU. He now lives in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Ladee Hubbard is the author of the novel The Talented Ribkins which received the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. She received a BA from Princeton University, a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her short fiction has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Callaloo and Guernica, among other venues. Her film and book reviews appear in The Times Literary Supplement.

Douglas N. Harris is one of the nation’s most influential scholars of education policy. In addition to three books and nearly 100 academic articles, his research examines many of the most pressing education topics facing the country, from charter schools and school accountability to free college and loan forgiveness. His work has been featured in almost every major media outlet and by commentators such as David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Malcolm Gladwell, and Nicholas Kristoff, as well as Bill Gates.

Eric Holder is a civil rights leader who is chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. He served as the eighty-second attorney general of the United States, the first African American to hold that office. Now a senior counsel at Covington & Burling, he lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Dr. Sharon Malone. The couple have three children.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the 1619 Project and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. She has spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, and her reporting has earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the Genius grant, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards and the National Magazine Award three times.

Dr. Richard Haass is a veteran diplomat, a prominent voice on American foreign policy, and a proven leader and manager. He is in his twentieth year as president of the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, publisher, and educational institution dedicated to being a resource to help people better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries.