Susan Neiman is Director of the Einstein Forum, Potsdam. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Neiman studied Philosophy at Harvard and the Freie Universität Berlin, receiving her Ph.D. from Harvard in 1986. Before becoming director of the Einstein Forum in 2000 she was Associate Professor of Philosophy at Yale (1989-1996) and Tel Aviv University (1996-2000). Neiman’s work centers on moral and political philosophy and on the history of modern philosophy. She is also a political and cultural commentator whose essays have appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and other journals. Her books are: Slow Fire: Jewish Notes from Berlin (1992); The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant (1994); Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (2002); Zum Glück (Co-ed., 2004); Fremde sehen anders. Zur Lage der Bundesrepublik (2005); and Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (2008).
 
Jonathan Shay is a clinical psychiatrist whose treatment of combat trauma suffered by Vietnam veterans combined with his critical and imaginative interpretations of the ancient accounts of battle described in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey deepen our understanding of the effects of warfare on the individual. He received a B.A. (1963) from Harvard University and an M.D. (1971) and Ph.D. (1972) from the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1987, he has been a staff psychiatrist at the Department of Veteran Affairs Outpatient Clinic in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2001 Shay served as Visiting Scholar-at-Large at the U.S. Naval War College, and from 2004 to 2005 he was Chair of Ethics, Leadership, and Personnel Policy in the Office of the U.S. Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel. At present he is MacArthur Fellow (until 2012). In 2009 Shay will be Omar Bradley Chair of Strategic Leadership at the US Army War College and the Dickinson College. Selected publications: Action Theory and Ego Psychology: A Model of the Personality (1963); Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (1995); and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming (2002).