Russ Feingold

Russ Feingold
University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1975, B.A., Political Science
University of Oxford, B.A. 1977, M.A., 2008, Jurisprudence
Harvard Law School, 1979, J.D.

Russ Feingold is a former United States Senator for the state of Wisconsin.  He was born and raised in Janesville, Wisconsin along with three siblings.  His father was a lawyer and his mother was an abstractor at the title company which Leon Feingold owned.  In his teens, his heroes were John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. whom he heard speak in Chicago in 1966.  In high school, he was on the championship-winning debate team. Although he was not the top student in school, he was still a very good student, whom others have described as being well-organized and disciplined.  After attending Harvard Law School, he returned to Wisconsin where he worked as an attorney in two private law firms in Madison until 1985.  His political career began when he became a Wisconsin state senator in 1982.  He was re-elected twice.  Then in 1992, he was first elected to the U.S. Senate, winning 53 to 47 percent against the incumbent Republican Bob Kasten.  Feingold is probably best known for co-sponsoring the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act also known as the McCain-Feingold Act.  He also stands out as the only Senator to oppose the USA Patriot Act in 2001.  He makes his home in Middleton, Wisconsin.

Maggie Little

Maggie Little
University of Iowa, 1983, B.A., Philosophy
University of Oxford, 1985, B.Phil., Philosophy
University of California Berkeley, 1994, Ph.D., Philosophy

Maggie Little grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, the youngest daughter of a computer consultant and an insurance executive.  She has one brother and a sister.  From on early age, she started asking the big questions about life.  Her curiosity led her to pursue the study of philosophy.  Most of her work has focused in some form or another on ethics.  She is currently an associate professor in Georgetown University’s philosophy department and a senior research scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, a think-tank specializing in bioethics. She is also finishing a book entitled Intimate Duties:  Re-Thinking Abortion, the Law, and Morality.