Jim Avila is a veteran member of the Chicago Arab journalists association. He is a longtime Chicago television journalist and now serves as international and national correspondent for NBC TV. He recently reported from Afghanistan. His personal stories about growing up as the child of an Arab American immigrant and Hispanic mother are inspiring, compelling and motivating. His reports have won numerous awards.

Arlene Hirsch is a career counselor and psychotherapist in Chicago. She is the author of two best selling career books, Love Your Work and Success Will Follow and The Wall Street Journal Premier Guide to Interviewing. Both books were written in collaboration with the Wall Street Journal and published by John Wiley & Sons. Arlene has recently written her first memoir. The Palestinian and the Jew: An Intimate Journey of Love and Madness. She has lectured extensively, appeared on local and national radio and television, and has been widely quoted in the media. Arlene also teaches Career Psychology at Northwestern University

Emilia Askari is a reporter at the Detroit Free Press.

President of the American Muslims for Peaceful Co-existence, Moin Moon Khan is widely recognized in the Muslim American and Asian American communities for his moderate and patriotic views and commitment to coalition-building efforts. Served on the boards of more than a dozen civic organizations in the past 15 years that include the Illinois Ethnic Coalition, United Way, American Cancer Society, Council of Islamic Organizations, Asian American Institute, Federation of Indian Associations, Moon has been extensively quoted and profiled in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Daily Herald, Daily Southtown and also served as one of the panelists at the WTTW Channel 11's Chicago Tonight's show. In its October 9th editorial, the Chicago Tribune admired him for urging fellow Muslims to defend the United States in its war against terrorism.A native of India and a proud US citizen, Moon lives in a western suburb of Illinois (Lombard) along with his wife, Shanu, and son, Shaan. Founding president of the Republican Minority Caucus, Moon holds MA and MBA degrees and works in the Management Information Service field.

 

Hannah Allam, a 24-year-old Egyptian-American who moved to the United States about six years ago. Allam was raised in the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia by an Egyptian father and American mother, both Muslim. He attended the University of Oklahoma, graduating in 1999 with a BA in journalism with a French minor. He was editor of the campus paper and interned at three papers in college, including The Washington Post. The Post kept me on after my internship ended and I stayed there several months until taking a courts job with the Pulitzer-winning St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota. Since Sept. 11, he has authored articles told from the perspective of Muslims and Arab Americans. He lives in Minneapolis. Ironically, two of his brothers --- Ahmed and Mohamed --- are U.S. Marines who are intelligence specialists. They translate Arabic in several dialects and are now stationed with Marines in or near Afghanistan. The events of Sept. 11 have affected him in a very personal way.

Author of "Finding Palestine. Her topic is writing about Palestine and the Middle East towards reaching the American Audience. Her book is filled with history and political analysis but reads like a novel. Liza Elliott holds a BSN from Indiana University, 1976, an MSN from Catholic University of America ,1979, and a PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University,1991. She is a Board member of the National Council on US-Arab Relations, Gulf States Committee, a Board member of the United Nations Association, Greater Birmingham Chapter, and President of the Birmingham Branch of the National League of American Pen Women. An adjunct professor at University of Alabama at Birmingham, School of Public Health she lectures on refugee health care, NGO’s and is a consultant to the Palestine Red Crescent Society. Liza Elliott lives in Birmingham, AL with her husband, Peter Glaeser.

Ramzy Baroud is the President of Palestine Independent News Agency (PINA Online), Editor-in-Chief of PalestineChronicle.com, and Managing Editor of Middle East News Service. As an international journalist whose writing covers various subjects and conflicts around the world, mainly in the Middle East and Africa, Baroud was published by over 50 publications in over 40 countries.

Osama Siblani is the publisher of the very popular Arab American Detroit Newspaper, the Arab American News. This is a weekly newspaper published in full color and includes Arabic and English.

Eddy Calis is the publisher of the monthly newspaper Via Dolorosa which focuses on Christian Middle East issues as well as issues of concern to the Arab American community. Via Dolorosa is published in English. Via Dolorosa Newspaper will be represented by a reporter from the Chicago area.

Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian and media scholar, is the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity (New York University Press, 2001). He is currently working on a book about Napster and the ways we regulate our information ecosystem. Vaidhyanathan has written for many periodicals, including The Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and The Nation. He is a frequent contributor on media and cultural issues to MSNBC.COM and The Chronicle of Higher Education. His research has been profiled by programs on National Public Radio, CNN, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, International Herald-Tribune Television, Pacifica Radio, and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Vaidhyanathan has also been featured in articles in AsianWeek, India Abroad, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Industry Standard, and ZDNet.com. After five years as a professional journalist, Vaidhyanathan earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Vaidhyanathan has taught at the University of Texas, Wesleyan University, and New York University. He is currently an assistant professor of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Marda Dunsky is an assistant professor at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, where she has taught since 1994. She teaches newspaper editing for graduate and undergraduate students and the Global Journalism seminar as well as advanced print editing. Dunsky worked as an editor at the Chicago Tribune from 1983 to 1988, first in features and then on the National/Foreign Desk. She worked as an Arab affairs reporter for the Jerusalem Post during 1988-1990, covering the Palestinian minority in Israel.  Dunsky’s op-ed and analysis pieces on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict/peace process have been published in the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post and the Cape Times (South Africa). Her study on how U.S. media report the conflict appeared in the summer 2000 issue of Arab Studies Quarterly. She does frequent public speaking on the topic in the Chicago area. Dunsky is currently writing her Ph.D. dissertation in the history department at Chicago, "The Land Speaks Arabic: A Social History of the Palestinians in Israel," for which she received a Fulbright research grant. She earned a master's degree in Middle Eastern studies at the University of Chicago in 1988 and a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1981. Dunsky also has worked as a copy editor at the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, Mass.

Mary Ann Tawasha is the Assistant Managing Editor of CountryWatch.com

Joseph (Yousef) R. Haiek , publisher of the News Circle Magazine and editor of the online news web site, www.arab-american-affairs.net.

Steve Huntley is Editor of the Editorial Page of the Chicago Sun-Times. Under his leadership, the Sun-Times editorial page staff was awarded a Peter Lisagor Award for exemplary journalism in 1998. Before joining the Sun-Times Editorial Board in 1997, Huntley was Assistant Managing Editor/Metro of the Sun-Times.  Under his leadership, the Metro staff won Lisagor awards in 1996 for coverage of the Fox River Grove, Ill., school bus-train crash that killed seven children, in 1993 for coverage of the Chicago Loop flood and in 1992 for the "After the Shooting Stops" series on the impact of violent death on families and communities. Huntley previously was Night City Editor of the Sun-Times.  He joined the newspaper in 1986. Huntley worked for seven years (1979-86) for U.S. News & World Report, heading up its Chicago bureau before transferring in 1982 to Washington, D.C., where he was an Associate Editor until promoted to Senior Editor in 1985. Huntley worked 13 years (1965-78) for United Press International as a writer and editor in bureaus in Chicago, Greensboro, N.C., Atlanta, Ga., and Columbia, S.C.  He was promoted in 1977 to Executive Editor of UPI'sNational Broadcast Department.

Jawed Anwar is the Editor of Muslims Newspaper.

Michael Flannery has been the Political Editor for CBS 2 News since 1980, responsible for covering City Hall, Springfield and all elections. Flannery also serves as an investigative reporter for the station.  He exposed unlicensed insurance companies that cheated thousands out of their health insurance.  As a result of this investigation, the offending insurance companies were put out of business and many of the defrauded people were reimbursed. Flannery has received many awards throughout his career. He won two Gold Bell Awards from the Mental Health Association in Illinois for his coverage of the atrocious treatment of patients in state run mental hospitals.  Flannery’s disclosure of a pattern of abuse of chronically ill psychiatric patients in a private halfway house won him the Illinois Associated Press Award for Best Enterprise (1982).  He received two more awards from the Associated Press; Best Reporter Award (1986) and was honored for his work on “The Death of Mayor Washington.”

PhD thesis at Cambridge College was on Arabs and their culture, their differences, etc. profiled in the February-March 1998 issue of the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs.

Dr. Aslam Abdallah is the Editor-in-Chief of the Minaret magazine & Vice-Chairman of MPAC. A community leader of the Islamic American community, he is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer, and author.

Walid Rabah is the publisher of the Arab Voice Newspaper based in New Jersey. He is also an activist with the Palestinian Writer's Guild in the United States.

Dr. Barbara Nimri Aziz is the executive director of RAWI, Radius of Arab American Writers, Inc. She currently works as a journalist for Pacifica-WBAI Radio in NY, where in addition to news reports, she produces and hosts two weekly programs, "Behind the News" and "Tahrir-Voices of the Arab Muslim Peoples Here and Abroad." www.RadioTahrir.com, a recently launched web page, illustrates her broadcasting work at WBAI 99.5 fm, NY. Aziz regularly visits the Arab homelands to interview individuals. From her assignments in the "field" she also makes live reports to WBAI Radio.  Before entering journalism, Aziz worked for 20 years in Asia as a professional anthropologist. She completed her PhD in anthropology at the University of London, UK. In addition to two earlier books based on her anthropological research in Asia, Aziz has just completed a third book. Released by the University of Nepal in Oct. 2001, HEIR TO A SILENT SONG: TWO REBEL WOMEN OF NEPAL, is available from the author. She is currently working on a new book based on her extensive experience in Iraq. Her news writings and OpEds have appears in MEI (UK), Christian Science Monitor, Aramco Magazine, Natural History Magazine, Toward Freedom (Vermont), The Catholic Reporter, among others. She is featured, along with other Muslim women, in the current issue of Azizah Magazine.

Kamal Abu-Shamsieh is a former Palestinian journalist and a documentary film maker. He is currently the national community relations director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) based in Los Angeles. He provides the Muslim & ethnic media outlets with weekly updates and news about the Muslim community.

Anisa Mehdi is an award-winning reporter and producer of television news programs and documentaries. Her specialties are religion and the arts. Currently Ms. Mehdi is Executive Producer for The Islam Project, In 1998 she produced award-winning coverage of the Hajj for PBS’s "Religion and Ethics News Weekly," becoming the first American woman to report for television from Mecca. She has been arts correspondent for New Jersey’s nightly PBS newscast for 14 years. Prior to working with PBS, Ms. Mehdi was with CBS News in New York. She has an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. in Spanish from Wellesley College.

Jerome McDonnell, Host, Worldview Jerome has been with WBEZ since 1984. He has served in almost every capacity at the station beginning as an intern-volunteer. He's stuffed envelopes, dubbed tapes, produced call-in shows and a weekend magazine show, had a number of technical functions, and a management fling as well. Jerome was also the producer of WBEZ's Midday with Sondra Gair, a international news analysis show. He has hosted Worldview since 1994. Jerome is the winner of the Peter Lisagor Award and the Illinois Broadcasters' Association for Best Public Affairs Program in a series.   

Ali Alarabi is a freelance columnist covering the Muslim and Arab communities in the United States. His columns are published around the Arab World. He is a board member of the National Arab Journalists Association. Previously he worked as a writer for the Times of Houston Arabic Language weekly newspaper.

Nidal Zayid is the publisher of the Al-Maraya Newspaper and representative of the Arab American Media & Information Center in Houston, Texas.

Riad Al-Majali is a columnist and writer for the Houston-based Al-Maraya Newspaper and a member of the Arab American Media & Information Center in Houston, Texas.

Julie Snyder works with WBEZ Radio's popular "This American Life" program and is a veteran Chicago radio journalist. She has covered the Chicago Arab American and Muslim American community and has authored several reports since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Julie has also participated on several panels addressing media coverage of the Arab and Muslim American community.

Khaled has been actively involved in the Arab community. In 1998, he and a friend founded Chicagoland Arab Professionals & Students (CAPS), a professional networking and socializing organization. He is currently a member of Arab American Bar Association (ABAR), and sits on Mayor Daley’s Advisory Council on Arab Affairs. Much of his time is spent working with the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). As Vice President of ADC Chicago, he is actively involved in many issues. One of the most important recent issues has been the FBI interviews of Arab Americans as a result of September 11^th. ADC and ABAR are part of a coalition providing free legal assistance to Arabs contacted by the FBI.

Dr. Assad Busool is a professor of Islamic Studies at the American Islamic College in Chicago. He is the author of several scholarly works on Islam. And he is a frequent lecturer on Islam, the myth and the reality as a religion and a political force.