ADVISORY BOARD

Judith Chirlin
Judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court is past chair of the Board of Directors, American Judicature Society, Judge Chirlin has been recognized for her outstanding work as a trial jurist and her tireless efforts to improve the judicial system and to diversify the bench. She has served on the Board of Governors of the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, the International Association of Women Judges, and the National Association of Women Judges, whose Committee on Judicial Appointments she chaired for five years. In August of 2003, Judge Chirlin was a member of a delegation sent by the International Legal Assistance Consortium (ILAC), to study and assist the rebuilding and strengthening of Iraq ’s justice system and legal profession. She is a member of the faculty of the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI) in Prague that teaches training seminars for Iraqi judges at the CEELI Institute in Prague, a result of one of the recommendations following the ILAC delegation’s investigation in Baghdad.

Ronald Gottesman
Professor of English at the University of Southern California, teaching American Literature and Cultures, and Popular Culture—Film and Jazz. His many books as editor or co-editor include The Norton Anthology of American Literature (5th and 6th editions, 1997, 2001), a three-volume encyclopedia, Violence in America (1999), Film Actors on Film Acting (1998), Perspectives on Citizen Kane (1996), Critical Essays on Henry Miller (1992), and Focus on Orson Welles (1976).

Pedro Antonio Noguera
Professor at the Steinhardt School of Education , New York University. Noguera's research focuses on schools' responses to social and economic forces within the urban environment. He has engaged in collaborative research with several large, urban school districts, and he has published and lectured on topics such as youth violence, race relations within schools, the potential impact of school choice and vouchers on urban public schools, and secondary issues resulting from desegregation in public schools.

William Deverell
Professor of History at the University of Southern California and director of the newly-established Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, Deverell is a historian of the 19th and 20th century American West. He has published eight books and countless papers on California . His latest book, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of its Mexican Past, examines the ethnic history of Los Angeles.

Monsignor David O'Connell
Pastor St. Michael Catholic Church, south central Los Angeles. His leadership focusing on youth and schools with LA Metro expands his community work.

Rafael Ramirez
Executive Director of Proyecto Pastoral at Dolores Mission is a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide training, education and social services within the Pico-Aliso/Boyle Heights district of East Los Angeles serving an area containing one of the largest concentration of public housing west of the Mississippi River. He was the former vice president for development for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF). For the past thirty years Ray has been directly involved with education at the local, state, regional and national levels: first as a K-8 teacher and administrator for fourteen years, then as a policy analyst, a Legislative Analyst for U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman, as a Director of a National Education Program and as a consultant to the California Master Plan for Education.

Deborah L. Rolfe
Treasury Management Consultant, Correspondent Banking Group, Wells Fargo Bank.

Barry Sanders, Ph.D.
Sanders established the Department of History of Ideas at Pitzer College , Claremont , California. The co-author of the recently published Alienable Rights: the Exclusion of African Americans in a White Man’s Land, 1619-2000, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and the Robert F. Kennedy Award. Dr. Sanders’ book, A is for Ox, Electronic Media, and the Silencing of the Written Word is recommended reading for (OUT)LAWS & JUSTICE teachers. He is also author of fourteen additional books dealing with orality and literacy.