Rebekka Armstrong

Exposed: An HIV+ Playboy Playmate Tells Her Story

At the age of 18, Rebekka became a Playboy Playmate after being chosen to be Miss September 1986, a culmination of her childhood dream. For the next four years, she led an exciting life as a Playmate, traveling, modeling, and attending star-studded parties. However, she was often tired and bruised easily. At the age of 22, she was diagnosed with HIV.

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Dr. Terrence Roberts

Lessons from Little Rock

All the seats at the hamburger joint were reserved for white patrons, so 13 year old Terrence Roberts ordered food to go. While waiting, he impulsively sat down at the counter and then realized a hush had fallen over the place. Suddenly everyone seemed to be looking at him threateningly. He canceled his order and left. As he walked home, Roberts remembers wondering “what it would take for (him) to be treated like a real human being.”

Two years later, in 1957, he volunteered to be one of the ‘Little Rock Nine’ who desegregated Central High School, in Little Rock, Arkansas.

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Ellen Bremen

Say This, Not That (To Your College Professor)

Two people have control over your success in any college class: you and your college professor. In classrooms around the country, as professors teach quantum physics, Russian literature, and Western civilization, they rarely teach students the most important lesson of all:

“The way you behave and communicate with me can affect your success in this course and in college.”

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Amanda Koster

Can I Come WIth You?

Amanda Koster is an internationally acclaimed photographer whose commercial and personal work has shown a consistent commitment to telling stories of real people, human rights, cultural diversity and global equality. She combines her anthropology background with multi-media skills to create content as a means for powerful communication and storytelling.

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Loung Ung

Author, Cambodian Landmine Actvist

Loung is a survivor of the killing fields of Cambodia, one of the bloodiest episodes of the twentieth century.

She was five years old when the Khmer Rouge invaded Phnom Penh. Over the next three years, Loung lost half of her family, including both parents, and spent time in a camp for child soldiers. After the war was over, she and her older brother relocated to Vermont, where she grew to adulthood. Today she is an internationally best-selling author and a well-known human rights activist.

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Eliaichi Kimaro

A Lot Like You:

A first-generation American goes in search of her identity and discovers that the cycle of gender violence she’s been working hard to break in the US is part of her history and culture on another continent. A Lot Like You raises questions about the cultures we inherit and what we choose to pass down, and reveals how bearing witness can break silences that have lasted lifetimes…

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Chaplain James Yee

Islamophobia: An irrational fear and hostility towards Islam and Muslims

The September 11th attacks, the ongoing military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the “War on Terror,” the recent Fort Hood shootings, and the Christmas day terrorist attempt to bring down a jetliner have all elevated the prejudices leading to discrimination, profiling, violation of constitutional rights and hate crimes in our society.

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