AMERICAN POLARIZATIONS C
Participant Backgrounds
Jack Egan
Elvin Montgomery Ph.D. – is a college professor, consultant and appraiser specializing in historical and cultural objects. He is a certified appraiser of historical materials such as archives, books, documents, historical photographs, and artifacts. He has considerable experience with cultural institutions and private clients. In addition to his work in the historical artifacts and collectibles industry Montgomery has been a management consultant specializing in organizational change and performance. He holds a Ph.D., M.Phil. and an M.S. (all in Psychology) from Columbia. He teaches psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Health Psychology at the New York City College of Technology.
Conn Nugent has spent his career running non-profits. The subject matter has frequently been the environment and the economic activities that most affect it -- agriculture, transportation, mining -- with forays into nuclear weapons, architecture, and New York City politics. He was founder and editor of three award-winning websites, and the author of articles and op-eds on multiple subjects. Nugent currently directs the Seabed Mining Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington. He served in the Peace Corps and graduated from Harvard Law.
As Senior European Correspondent for NPR, Sylvia Poggioli has covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the demise of Communism in Eastern Europe, the wars that disintegrated Yugoslavia and the impact of the arrival of non-European immigrants on Europe’s historically mono-ethnic societies. From her base in Rome, she has also covered three papacies and just about anything from politics to pasta. She is currently working on a book on her family history that unfolds against the backdrop of Fascism and FBI witch hunts: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/05/07/how-my-father-made-landfall/