David Shneer

David Shneer is the Louis P. Singer chair in Jewish history, professor of history and director of the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. David holds a PhD from the University of California-Berkeley and has been called a “taboo-breaking scholar” by Tikkun magazine and “a new Jewish superhero,” by Jewcy magazine. Professor Shneer’s work concentrates on modern Jewish society and culture, especially Yiddish culture, Russian Jewish history, and Jews and sexuality. His books include “Queer Jews,” finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, “Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture,” finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and “New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora.” His recent book, “Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust,” looks at the lives and works of two dozen World War II military photographers to examine what kinds of photographs Soviet Jewish photographers took when they encountered evidence of Nazi genocide on the Eastern Front. Moment magazine called the book, “along with Vasily Grossman’s ‘The Road,’ one of the outstanding Jewish books of recent times.” Professor Shneer's newest project, Not On Their Last Road, examines Yiddish musical culture's role in the clash between fascism and Communism through the life and work of Lin Jaldati, a Dutch-Jewish Yiddish-singing cabaret singer, who survived the Holocaust and was the last person to see Anne Frank alive. After the war, she moved to East Germany and became the Yiddish diva of the Communist world until her death in 1988.

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Alena Heitlinger

Alena Heitlinger is a Professor of Sociology at Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. She was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, to Holocaust survivors. She left her native country after the Soviet invasion in August 1968. She obtained her B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Sociology in the U.K., and came to Trent in 1975. The author of six books and numerous articles, she has published in the areas of gender, health professions, demographic and social policies, and Jewish studies. Most of her research and publications have been comparative. In 1999-2000 she was the recipient of the Trent University Distinguished Research Award. Her most recent book is entitled In the Shadows of the Holocaust and Communism. Czech and Slovak Jews since 1945 (Transaction Publishers, 2006).

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Feisal al-Istrabadi

Feisal Amin Rasoul al-Istrabadi is Director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East at Indiana University, served as Iraq’s Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2004-2007, and was principal legal drafter of its 2004 interim constitution.

Ambassador Istrabadi focuses his research on the processes of building legal and political institutions in countries in transition from dictatorship to democracy. He brings a mulit-disciplinary approach to studying the emergence of constitutionalism in such societies, including questions of timing and legitimacy, issues of transitional justice, and the political and cultural factors which influence the process of democratization. Ambassador Istrabadi lectures often at universities and think tanks on Iraq-related issues. He appears frequently in national and international media.

Prior to his diplomatic appointment, Ambassador Istrabadi served as a legal advisor to the Iraqi Minister for Foreign Affairs during the negotiations for U.N. Security Council resolution 1546 of June 8, 2004, which recognized the reassertion by Iraq of its sovereignty. He was also principal legal drafter of Iraq's interim constitution, the Law of Administration of the State of Iraq for the Transitional Period, and principal author of its Bill of Fundamental Rights. Before contributing to the reconstruction of Iraq, Mr. Istrabadi was a practicing trial lawyer in the United States for 15 years, with approximately 70 civil trials in federal and state courts, focusing on civil rights, employment discrimination, and constitutional torts. He also served a Senior Legal Fellow for Legal Reform and Development in the Arab World at the International Human Rights Law Institute at DePaul University's College of Law in Chicago.

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Esther Chosnek