Nick Estes is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He is an award-winning reporter whose writing and research focuses on racism and border town violence, environmental justice, anti-capitalism and decolonization. His upcoming book, Our History is the Future: #NoDAPL, Standing Rock, and the Long Traditions of Indigenous Resistance (Verso, 2019) examines the historical context of the pipeline fight as well as the history of previous Native American resistance movements.
Mouin Rabbani is an independent analyst, commentator and researcher specialising in the contemporary Middle East. He has previously served as Principal Political Affairs Officer with the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Head of Middle East with Crisis Management Initiative/Martti Ahtisaari Centre, Senior Middle East Analyst and Special Advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group. He is Senior Fellow with the Institute for Palestine Studies, Co-Editor of Jadaliyya, Contributing Editor of Middle East Report, Associate Fellow of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and Policy Advisor to Al-Shabaka - The Palestinian Policy Network. A graduate of Tufts University and Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Rabbani has published, presented and commented widely on Middle East.
Melanie is a resident scholar at the School for Advanced Research in New Mexico. Her upcoming book, K’é is Life: Biopolitical Struggle and Relational Possibility, looks at the biopolitical shaping of 20thcentury Navajo history and life. Dr. Yazzie specializes in and writes extensively about Navajo/American Indian history, political ecology, Indigenous feminisms, queer Indigenous studies, and theories of policing and the state. She holds a doctorate in American Studies from the University of New Mexico and a masters in American Studies from Yale.
Mark Gevisser is an award- winning South African author and documentarian and longtime Nation correspondent. His latest book, Lost and Found in Johannesburg: A Memoir is about his personal relationship with his home-town. Mark graduated from Yale in 1987 with a degree in comparative literature, and worked in New York as a high school teacher and writer for The Village Voice and The Nation, before returning to South Africa in 1990. He has published widely with work focusing on politics, sexuality and urbanism in South Africa. His journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Granta, The Guardian, The Observer and many other publications. He is also the author of the acclaimed book A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream.