George Avakian

Offlcially recognized as a Living Legend Giant of Jazz, American record producer George Avakian is best known for his work with Columbia Records producing the albums of Miles Davis and other notable musicians, such as Louis Armstrong and Johnny Mathis. In 1962, he organized Benny Goodman's successful tour of the USSR. Born to Armenian parents in Russia in 1919, in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution, George attended Yale University where he became an avid fan and collector of jazz music. While still at Yale he discovered some unissued Louis Armstrong masters from his Hot Five and Hot Seven period and was responsible for the flrst reissues Columbia put out around 1940. He is a founding oficer of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (presenters of the Grammy Awards). Among his many awards are a Knighthood from the Knights of Malta, the Order of Lenin (highest award of the former USSR), and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement.

Krishen Mehta

Engaged with Human Rights Watch (HRW) since 2007, Krishen Mehta helped with the launch of HRW's ofices in Japan in 2009 and in India in 2010. Currently, he serves on the Board of Directors in Japan, and on their Asia Advisory Council in New York. He is also involved with the Carnegie Council's Ethics in International Policy, serving as an Advisor. He has written on the subject of development, poverty, and illicit flows, and spoken at various forums including the Carnegie Council and the Ethical Society of New York. He is on the Adjunct Faculty of American University in Washington, DC, oversees a Capstone project at Columbia University in New York, and is a guest lecturer at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston in their Graduate Management in Arts program.

Marlene Saunders

A three-time Emmy Award-winning correspondent, writer, producer, and broadcast news executive, Marlene Saunders began her broadcast journalism career in 1955 working for Mike Wallace of CBS, as his local producer. She is a female pioneer in broadcasting and has a number of flrsts to her credit: the flrst woman to cover the Vietnam war from the fleld; the flrst woman anchor of a nightly newscast for a major network; and eventually the flrst woman vice president and director of documentaries at ABC News, producing a number of award-winning documentaries for the network. In 1978, she joined CBS News as a correspondent and documentary maker. She has co-authored a book with Marcia Rock about women in television news: Waiting for Prime Time.

Allison Blakely

An award-winning academic historian teaching at Boston University since 2011, Allison taught for thirty years at Howard University. A graduate from the University of Oregon, and from the University of California, Berkeley, with an MA and PhD, he is the author of Blacks in the Dutch World: Racial Imagery and Modernization (Indiana Univer-sity Press, 1994); Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought (How-ard University Press, 1986 - a winner of an American Book Award in 1988), several articles on Russian populism, and others on various European aspects of the Black Diaspora. His interest in history has centered on comparative populism and on the historical evolution of color prejudice. He is the immediate past President of the Phi Beta Kappa Society (2006-2009), a leading advocate for excellence in the liberal arts and sciences embracing the principles of freedom of inquiry and liberty of thought and expression, and serves on the Editorial Board of its journal, The American Scholar.

Oz Scott

Oz Scott is an accomplished and award-winning television, theatrical and motion picture director. In his two decades plus years of experience, Scott has directed hundreds of television episodes along with dozens of stage productions, made-for-TV movies and motion pictures. One of the best in his field, Scott has directed multiple episodes for ABC's Boston Legal and NBC's Medium; CBS' CSI NY, C.S.I., and many more. Traveling to Russia with The Old Settler for the Eugene O'Neill Theater, Scott directed both an American cast as well as a Russian cast. At the O'Neill Oz has worked on many new plays with some of the most talented writers in the theater. Oz has received an NAACP Image, the Drama Desk and a Village Voice OBIE Awards for Off Broadway, Genesis and the Nancy Susan Reynolds Awards. Mr. Scott also served on the Board of Directors for the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, a community-oriented medical school based in Los Angeles, CA.

Dr. Harold D. Weaver

Dr. Harold D. Weaver is the Principal Curator of The BlackFilm Project, The ChinaFilm Project, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Du Bois Research Institute, Harvard University. Dr. Weaver has taught, lectured, and published on Third-World films in several countries in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. He has been active on the juries of several film festivals and has organized national film retrospectives in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America. His current focus is using films to enhance cross-cultural understanding and respect for the U.S., China, Africa, and the African Diaspora through The BlackFilm Project and The ChinaFilm Project.

Pamela Newkirk

An award-winning journalist, fellow at the Nation Institute, and Professor of Journalism at New York University, Pamela is the author of Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media which won the 2001 National Press Club Award for media criticism. She also edited A Love No Less: More Than Two Centuries of African-American Letters. Her articles on African American art and culture have appeared in many distinguished journals, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation and Andrews. Pamela was also part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News at New York Newsday in 1992 and won the New York Association of Black Journalists International Reporting Prize in 1990.

Marilyn Nelson

Connecticut State Poet Laureate 2001-2006, Marilyn has published numerous collections of poetry including The Fields of Praise, which was a finalist for the 1998 Leonore Marshall Poetry Prize 1998, the National Book Award 1997, and the PEN Winship Award. A graduate of the University of California, Davis, and a postgraduate from the University of Pennsylvania (MA) and the University of Minnesota (PhD), her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, and the Fulbright Teaching Fellowship. She is currently an English professor at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, where she has taught since 1978.

Vladimir E Alexandrov

An award-winning professor and chair of the Slavic Languages and Literatures department at Yale, Vladimir received his doctorate in comparative literature from Princeton and previously taught at Harvard and Princeton. His publications include Andrei Bely: The Major Symbolist Fiction and Nabokov's Otherworld. He also was editor of The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov and has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters. He was associate editor of the Russian Review (1982—86) and has served on the editorial board of Nabokov Studies and Yale Russian and East European Publications. He currently serves on the Advisory Council of the Slavic and East European Journal. Vladimir is the recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Meredith Roman

An award-winning associate professor of history at the State University of New York (SUNY) The College at Brockport, and with a PhD in Comparative Black History Studies from Michigan State University, Meredith has written numerous articles on comparative Russian and African American history published in the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, International Labor and Working-Class History, Race & Class, and Critique: A Journal of Socialist Theory. Her book Opposing Jim Crow: African Americans and the Soviet Indictment of US Racism, 1928-1937, will be published in July 2012. She has given many presentations in conjunction with the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, and in 2007 on the topic of Anti-Empire, Anti-Racism: Representations of the Soviet Union as a Superior Society during the Interwar Era. Among her other publications are Racism in a 'Raceless' Society: Racial Violence at the Stalingrad Giant of Socialist Industry and Images of Soviet Ra-cial Equality, August 1930, and an essay entitled Robert Robinson: Celebrity Worker in the USSR.

Romy Taylor

A graduate of University College, Berkeley, with a PhD from the University of Southern California, Romy Taylor is currently writing a book which explores the experiences of African-American men and women who immigrated to the Soviet Union in the 1930s. A recipient of Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, Kennan Institute and Social Science Research Council grants, she has most recently taught courses on contemporary Russia, Russian language, literature, women's studies and Kazakhstan as Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at the University of Arizona.

supporting advisory institutions

The National Jazz Museum, Harlem

The National Jazz Museum in Harlem, New York, is dedicated to maintaining the spirit of jazz culture, past and present. Apart from New Orleans, no community has nurtured jazz more than Harlem. Legends such as Duke Ellington, Benny Carter, Thelonious Mark, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday and others have enlivened the streets with their unique sounds. The museum's executive director, Loren Schoenberg, is a tenor saxophonist, writer of sleeve liner notes, a jazz historian, and two-time Grammy Award winner. In 2002 he published The NPR Curious Listener's Guide to Jazz. Loren attended the Manhattan School of Music and worked with Charlie Parker, Benny Carter, Benny Goodman and other well known names. He is the founder of the Loren Schoenberg Big Band and has conducted the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. Currently, he is a faculty member of the Julliard Institute for Jazz Studies.

The A Philip Randolph Campus High School

A public secondary school in New York City, the A Philip Randolph Campus High was established in 1979 as an educational collaboration between the Board of Education and The City College of New York. The high school is open to all New York City residents, and more than 90% of its graduates attend college. It is named in honor is Asa Philip Randolph who is considered one of the most important black labor leaders in American History.  As a chairman of the 1963 March on Washington, Randolph fought for the oppressed races with a passionate respect for democratic guidelines. The school offers three highly regarded programs in engineering, humanities and medicine.

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