Richard Pena served in Vietnam and is now a practicing attorney in Austin, Texas. He is the former President of the American Bar Foundation and a leader within his field, nationally recognized among legal professionals. He has also served as President of the State Bar of Texas, President of the Travis County Bar Association, and as a member of the Board of Governors of the American Bar Association (ABA). He has received three Presidential Citations from the State Bar of Texas for his meritorious service to the profession and has been selected a member of the prestigious American Inns of Court. Richard was recently presented with the Distinguished Lawyer Award by his local bar association and is the 2010 recipient of the American Bar Association Difference Maker Award. Richard has led seventeen legal delegations abroad to various countries, including Vietnam, through the People to People Ambassador Program. While on a trip to Vietnam with People to People Ambassadors Program, Richard visited the Ho Chi Minh City War Remnants Museum where he recognized himself in a photo titled “Last Plane Out.” Seeing this photo, featured on the cover, inspired Richard to reread the journal he kept while at war, which would eventually become "Last Plane Out of Saigon".
John Hagan
John Hagan is the author of nine books and more than 150 articles published in nationally renowned publications, such as Science, Law & Society Review and the American Journal of Public Health. He is best known for Darfur and the Crime of Genocide (Cambridge Press, 2008), which won him the 2009 Stockholm Prize in Criminology and the Distinguished Publication Award from the American Sociological Association. Darfur helped catalyze the United Nations action against perpetrators of genocide in Darfur by bringing to light the atrocity of their crimes. Motivated by his personal experience as part of the movement, his book Northern Passage: American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada (Harvard University Press, 2001) explores the intense and transformative experience of war resisters who migrated to Canada during the largest political exodus since the American Revolution. His most recent book is Who Are the Criminals?: The Politics of Crime Policy in the Age of Roosevelt and the Age of Reagan (Princeton University Press, 2010). John currently serves as the John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and Law at Northwestern University and holds the position of Co-Director of the Center of Law & Globalization at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago.
Co-authors Richard Pena & John Hagan at the American Bar Association's Annual Meeting in Houston, TX.