Recipients of the annual John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award® are selected by a distinguished and bipartisan committee of national political and community leaders. The members of the 2007 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award Committee are:
Al Hunt, Chairman of the Profile in Courage Award Committee, is Washington executive managing editor of Bloomberg News. He was previously a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, where he covered national politics as a columnist and served as Executive Editor of the Washington D.C. Bureau.
Michael Beschloss is an award-winning historian of the American Presidency and the author of several critically acclaimed books on American presidents. He is a trustee of the White House Historical Association, the National Archives Foundation, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in Monticello, the Urban Institute, and the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs.
David W. Burke is chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors of the United States Information Agency. He served as former Chief of Staff for Senator Edward M. Kennedy and as former Chief of Staff for the Governor of New York. He is the former vice president and executive vice president of ABC News, and former president of CBS News.
U.S. Senator Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi) was first elected to the US Congress in 1972, where he served until 1978 when he was elected to the United States Senate.
Marian Wright Edelman is founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund, the nation's leading advocacy group for children. A graduate of Yale Law School, she worked first in New York for the NAACP Legal and Defense Fund, and then in Mississippi for the same organization. She was the first African American female admitted to the Mississippi Bar and served as counsel to the Poor People's Campaign organized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Edelman is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.
Antonia Hernandez is president and CEO of the California Community Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic organizations in Southern California. Previously, she was president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), a national nonprofit litigation and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the civil rights of the nation's 35 million Latinos. An expert in civil rights and immigration issues, Hernández began her legal career as a staff attorney with the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice. She also worked as counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary before joining MALDEF in 1981 as regional counsel in Washington, D.C.
Elaine Jones is the former president and director-counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF). One of America's foremost civil rights lawyers, she was the first African-American woman to graduate from the University of Virginia School of Law, and the first African-American elected to the American Bar Association's Board of Governors.
Caroline Kennedy, president of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, is an attorney and the editor of the New York Times bestselling "A Family of Poems - My Favorite Poetry for Children," "A Patriot's Handbook," "The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis" and "Profiles in Courage for Our Time," and the co-author of "The Right to Privacy" and "In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action." She formerly served as chief executive for the Office of Strategic Partnerships for the New York City Department of Education where she helped raise more than $65 million in private support for the city's public schools. She currently serves as the Vice Chair of The Fund for Public Schools. A graduate of Columbia Law School, she is a Director of the Commission on Presidential Debates and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and she serves as honorary chairman of the American Ballet Theatre.
U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) was elected to the United States Senate in 1962 to fill the vacancy caused by the 1960 resignation of his brother, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Paul G. Kirk, Jr., is a founding board member of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and currently serves as chairman of the Foundation's board of directors. He is a board member and former chairman of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) for International Affairs, and co-founder and co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates. He served as both the chairman and the treasurer of the Democratic Party and as special assistant for Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA). A graduate of Harvard Law School, Mr. Kirk is affiliated with the law firm Sullivan & Worcester LLP of Boston, Massachusetts of which he was a partner from 1977-1990. He is chairman and CEO of Kirk & Associates, Inc., a business advisory and consulting firm located in Boston.
Shari E. Redstone is the President of National Amusements, Inc., a world leader in the motion picture exhibition industry operating more than 1,500 movie screens in the U.S., U.K., Latin America and Russia under its Showcase, Multiplex, Cinema de Lux, and KinoStar brands. Based in Dedham, Massachusetts, National Amusements is a closely held company operating under the third generation of leadership by the Redstone family. National Amusements is the parent company of both CBS Corporation and Viacom of which Ms. Redstone is a member of the Board of Directors.
John Seigenthaler is founder of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. A former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, he served for 43 years as an award-winning reporter, editor and publisher for The Tennessean, Nashville's morning newspaper, and was founding editorial director of USA TODAY. In the early 1960s he served as administrative assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and distinguished himself in the civil rights movement as chief negotiator with Alabama Governor George Wallace during the Freedom Rides. Seigenthaler served with distinction as the Chair of the Profile in Courage Award Committee from 1996-2006.
U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) served in the Maine House of Representatives from 1973-1976, and in the Maine State Senate from 1976-1978. She was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1978 and to the United States Senate in 1994.
Patricia M. Wald served as the chief judge for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. She was Assistant Attorney General for legislative affairs during the Carter Administration. She currently serves on the Iraq Intelligence Commission, an independent panel tasked with investigating U.S. intelligence surrounding the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq and Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and chairs the board of directors of the Open Society Justice Initiative.