Allen C. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, where he serves as Director of the Civil War Era Studies Program.Rachel A. Shelden says that for two decades Guelzo, "has been at the forefront of Civil War-era scholarship. In particular, he has focused his analytical efforts on the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln, publishing books covering the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the origins of the Emancipation Proclamation, and Lincoln's presidential leadership, among others."

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, as well as director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. He is the author most recently of Black in Latin America (New York University Press, 2011) and Faces of America (New York University Press, 2010), which expand on his critically acclaimed PBS documentaries, and Tradition and the Black Atlantic: Criticism in the African Diaspora (Basic Books, 2010). He is the co-editor of Call and Response: Key Debates in African American Studies (W. W. Norton, 2011). His four-hour documentary, Black in Latin America, aired on PBS in April and May.