PETER RICHARDSON is author of American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams (University of Michigan Press, 2005) and numerous works on policy, writing, language, and literature. He was formerly a writer and editor at the Public Policy Institute of California, associate professor of English at the University of North Texas, and editor at Harper & Row Publishers, New York. A Fulbright Senior Scholar in 1994 and NEH Summer Seminar Fellow at Harvard University in 1993, he has taught in the Publishing and Editing program at UC Berkeley Extension since 2001. He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. in economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

THOMAS A. SAENZ is Vice President of Litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), a national organization dedicated to securing and promoting the civil rights of Latinos in the United States. As Vice President of Litigation, Tom oversees MALDEF’s efforts nationwide to pursue civil rights litigation in the areas of education, employment, political access, immigrants’ rights, and public resource equity. Tom was born and raised in southern California. He graduated summa cum laude from Yale University, and he received his law degree from Yale Law School. Tom then served as a law clerk to the Honorable Harry L. Hupp of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, and to the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Tom joined MALDEF as a staff attorney in 1993; he became Los Angeles Regional Counsel in 1996, National Senior Counsel in 2000, and Vice President of Litigation in 2001. Tom has served as lead counsel in numerous civil rights cases, involving such issues as educational equity, employment discrimination, immigrants’ rights, day laborer rights, and voting rights. For example, he served as MALDEF’s lead counsel in successfully challenging California’s Proposition 187 in court; as such, he presented extensive written and oral arguments on numerous occasions in three different cases involving the anti-immigrant initiative. He was also MALDEF’s lead counsel in two court challenges to Proposition 227, the English-only education initiative that voters enacted in 1998, and he successfully challenged a Los Angeles County ordinance barring day laborers from soliciting employment. Tom also served as MALDEF’s lead counsel in challenging California’s congressional redistricting in 2001. For seven years, Tom has taught "Civil Rights Litigation" in the spring semester as an adjunct lecturer at the U.S.C. Law School. Tom also currently serves on the Los Angeles County Board of Education and on the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations.