Hollis Robbins is Director of the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University and Chair of the Humanities Department at the Peabody Institute, where she has taught since 2006
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is editor in chief of the Oxford African American Studies Center and TheRoot.com, and creator of the highly praised PBS documentary The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. He is general editor for a Penguin Classics series of African American works