Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona. Author of American Power and the New Mandarins and Manufacturing Consent (with Ed Herman), among many other books, he is a linguist, historian, philosopher, and cognitive scientist who has risen to prominence in the American consciousness as a political activist and the nation's foremost public intellectual.

Robert Pollin is Professor of Economics and founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Among his many books are The Living Wage (with Stephanie Luce) and the edited volume Transforming the US Financial System (with Gary Dymski and Gerald Epstein). He has worked with the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress and the United Nations Development Program.