AMY DEAN was president of the South Bay Labor Council in Silicon Valley from 1993-2001. Dean chaired AFL-CIO President John Sweeney’s committee on the future direction of labor strategy at the regional level. She is co-author, with David B. Reynolds, of A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement.

KANISHKA GOONEWARDENA was trained as an architect in Sri Lanka and now teaches urban design and critical theory at the University of Toronto. He co-edited Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre (New York: Routledge, 2008) and is working on a book on the late capitalist appropriations of critical theory by urban studies entitled The Future of Planning at the End of History. The broad counters of his research--published in journals such as Antipode, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Planning Theory, Radical History Review--are marked by the making of cities, the modes of imperialism and the production of ideology.

JOEL ANDREAS is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, where studies political contention and social change in contemporary China. His recent book, Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China’s New Class (2009), analyzes the contentious process through which old and new elites coalesced during the decades following the 1949 Communist Revolution. He is currently investigating changing relations between managers and workers in Chinese factories between 1949 and the present. 

NOAM CHOMSKY is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics. In the 1950s, Chomsky began developing his theory of generative grammar, which has undergone numerous revisions and has had a profound influence on linguistics. His approach to the study of language emphasizes "an innate set of linguistic principles shared by all humans" known as universal grammar, "the initial state of the language learner," and discovering an "account for linguistic variation via the most general possible mechanisms." He also established the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages in terms of their generative power. Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident, an anarchist, and a libertarian socialist intellectual. Beginning with his opposition to the Vietnam War, Chomsky established himself as a prominent critic of US foreign and domestic policy. In February 1967, Chomsky became one of the leading opponents of the war with the publication of his essay, "THE RESPONSIBILITY OF INTELLECTUALS," in the The New York Review of Books. This was followed by his 1969 book, AMERICAN POWER AND THE NEW MANDARINS, a collection of essays that placed him at the forefront of American dissent. A prolific author, Chomsky has written dozens of books, including THE FATEFUL TRIANGLE: THE UNITED STATES, ISRAEL, AND THE PALESTINIANS (1983), MANUFACTURING CONSENT: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE MASS MEDIA, with E. S. Herman (1988), NECESSARY ILLUSIONS: THOUGHT CONTROL IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES (1989), 9-11 (2001), UNDERSTANDING POWER: THE INDISPENSABLE CHOMSKY (2002), HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL: AMERICA'S QUEST FOR DOMINANCE (2003), and HOPE AND PROSPECTS (forthcoming, 2010). His far-reaching criticisms of US foreign policy and the legitimacy of US power have made him a controversial figure: largely shunned by the mainstream media in the United States, he is frequently sought out for his views by publications and news outlets worldwide. According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar during the 1980–92 period, and was the eighth most-cited source. He is also a self-declared adherent of libertarian socialism, which he regards as "the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society."

INGRID ROBEYNS is a professor in practical philosophy at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She holds master degrees in economics and in philosophy, and received her PhD degree from Cambridge University, for a dissertation on gender inequality and the capability approach. Her main areas of research are theories of justice, especially applied to issues of gender, the family, care, and global poverty, and also the further theoretical advancement of the capability approach. She is also interested in other questions at the intersection of economics and normative practical philosophy.

WILLIAM JELANI COBB is an Associate Professor of History at Spelman College. He specializes in post-Civil War African American history, 20th century American politics and the history of the Cold War. Professor Cobb is the author of  To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic (NYU Press 2007) which was a finalist for the National Award for Arts Writing. His collection The Devil & Dave Chappelle and Other Essays (Thunder’s Mouth Press) was also published in 2007. He is editor of The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader, which was listed as a 2002 Notable Book of The Year by Black Issues Book Review. He has two forthcoming books: In Our Lifetimes: Barack Obama and the New Black America and a scholarly monograph titled Antidote to Revolution: African American Anticommunism and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1931-1957. His articles and essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Essence, Vibe, Emerge, The Progressive, The Washington City Paper, ONE Magazine, Ebony and TheRoot.com. He has contributed to a number of anthologies including In Defense of Mumia, Testimony, Mending the World and Beats, Rhymes and Life. He has also been a featured commentator on National Public Radio, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CBS News and a number of other national broadcast outlets.

JOSEPH G. SCHLOSS is a Visiting Scholar & Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at New York University, and was recently named the 2009 Hip-Hop Scholar of the Year by Words, Beats and Life, Inc. A past recipient of the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Charles Seeger Prize, Schloss is the author of Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop (Wesleyan University Press: 2004), which won the International Association for the Study of Popular Music’s 2005 book award, and Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls and Hip-Hop Culture in New York (Oxford University Press: 2009).

JOSEPH "PIKO" EWOODZIE is a third year graduate student in the UW Department of Sociology.  He is the instructor for the seminar accompanying this speaker series.  He is currently completing his master's thesis titled "The Creation of a Social Object: Hip Hop Between 1973 and 1979."

KATRINA FLORES is a graduate student in the UW Curriculum and Instruction department, focusing her research on building capacities of institutions to allow students to bring there whole selves to their academic and educational worlds.  Currently, she is the Arts-In-Education Director for the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives and First Wave where she co-directs the Teacher and Community Educator Institute for Hip Hop and Spoken Word in the Curriculum and OMAI's First Wave Pre-Collegiate Programing.  She is a co-founder of the MultiCultural Student Coalition, a student and community activist, and a visual artist.

CHRIS WALKER is Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Artistic Director for UW-Madison's First Wave program. Professor Walker is a dancer and choreographer with the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica (NDTC). He is also the founder and artistic director of “VOICES,” a dance company exploring the fusion of Caribbean dance and contemporary styles using the traditional stage, alternate spaces, and multimedia as a medium. Mr. Walker has toured the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and the Caribbean, and his choreographies have been performed in Jamaica, New York and England.

Dr. DAMON A. WILLIAMS is Vice Provost for Diversity and Climate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His practice centers on diversity, inclusion, and organizational change across all areas of organizational life, with a specific focus on college and university environments. His research on chief diversity officers and inclusive excellence has been featured in a wide array of academic publications. His forthcoming book is The Chief Diversity Officer: Strategy, Structure, and Change Management, co-authored with Dr. Katrina Wade-Golden.