Thomas G. Weiss is presidential professor of political science at The City University of New York’s Graduate Center and director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, where he is co-director of the United Nations Intellectual History Project and chair of the Academic Council on the United Nations System. He was editor of Global Governance, research director of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, research professor at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies, Executive Director of the Academic Council on the United Nations System and of the International Peace Academy, a member of the UNCTAD secretariat, and a consultant to several public and private agencies. He was educated at Harvard and Princeton Universities and has written or edited some thirty-five books and numerous scholarly articles about multilateral approaches to international peace and security, humanitarian action, and sustainable development.

Tatiana Carayannis is associate director of the Social Science Research Council's Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum, having recently moved from The City of New York University's Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, where she managed the research of the United Nations Intellectual History Project. Her research and publications focus on UN peacebuilding, African security, and the intellectual role of multilateral institutions. Her work has appeared in numerous books and academic journals. She is co-author of one book and under contract for a second. She has been a Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar and is completing a PhD dissertation on conflict networks and security communities in Central Africa. She holds an MPhil from The CUNY Graduate Center, an MA from New York University, and a BA from Adelphi University. She received a Cértificat Pratique de français commercial et économique from the Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie de Paris, and training in elite interview methods from Columbia University.

Louis Emmerij is a senior research fellow at The City University of New York’s Graduate Center and co-director of the UN Intellectual History Project. He was special advisor to the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, president of the OECD Development Centre, rector of the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, and director of the ILO World Employment Programme. He studied in Paris, Bologna, and New York, and has a PhD from the University of Paris and a honorary doctorate from the University of Ghent, Belgium. He has published twenty books and about 150 articles in the fields of the economics of education, labor market, and development studies.

Richard Jolly is a senior research fellow at The City University of New York’s Graduate Center and co-director of the UN Intellectual History Project, and honorary professor at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, where he was director from 1972-81. He worked for the UN from 1982 to 2000, for fourteen years as deputy executive director of UNICEF and afterwards as special advisor to the administrator of UNDP and architect of the widely-acclaimed Human Development Report. He chaired many UN committees involved in coordination. Richard Jolly graduated from Cambridge University and obtained his doctorate in economics from Yale University. He has honorary doctorates from the Universities of East Anglia and Sussex. Publications to which he has contributed include: UN Contributions to Development Thinking and Practice; Development with a Human Face; Adjustment with a Human Face; The UN and the Bretton Woods Institutions: New Challenges for the Twenty-First Century and Disarmament and World Development.