Edward W. Said (1935-2003) was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Literature and of Kings College Cambridge, his celebrated works include Orientalism, The End of the Peace Process, Power, Politics and Culture, and the memoir Out of Place. He is also the editor, with Christopher Hitchens, of Blaming the Victims, published by Verso. New Left Review published an obituary in Nov-Dec 2003: http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2481

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona, and the author of more than one hundred books.

Norman G. Finkelstein taught political theory and the Israel-Palestine conflict for many years. He is the author of eight books, which have been translated into more than forty foreign editions, including What Gandhi Says; This Time We Went Too Far; Beyond Chutzpah; and Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.