Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. In a 2005 U.S. governmental report, antisemitism is defined as "hatred toward Jews—individually and as a group—that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity." A person who holds such views is called an "antisemite". Antisemitism may be manifested in many ways, ranging from expressions of hatred of or discrimination against individual Jews to organized violent attacks by mobs, state police, or even military attacks on entire Jewish communities. Extreme instances of persecution include the pogroms which preceded the First Crusade in 1096, the expulsion from England in 1290, the massacres of Spanish Jews in 1391, the persecutions of the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, the expulsion from Portugal in 1497, various Russian pogroms, the Dreyfus Affair, and the Final Solution by Hitler's Germany and official Soviet anti-Jewish policies.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (born June 30, 1959) is an American author and former associate professor of political science and social studies at Harvard University. Goldhagen reached international attention and broad criticism as the author of two controversial books about the Holocaust, Hitler's Willing Executioners (1996) and A Moral Reckoning (2002). He is also the author of Worse Than War (2009), which examines the phenomenon of genocide.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen was born June 30, 1959 in Boston, Massachusetts to Erich and Norma Goldhagen. He grew up in nearby Newton. His wife Sarah (née Williams) is an architectural historian, and critic forThe New Republic magazine.

Goldhagen's father, retired Harvard professor Erich Goldhagen, is a Holocaust survivor who lived in a Romanian–Jewish ghetto in Czernowitz (present-day Ukraine). He credits his father as a "model of intellectual sobriety and probity". Goldhagen has written that his "understanding of Nazism and of the Holocaust is firmly indebted" to his father's influence. In 1977, Goldhagen entered Harvard and remained there for some twenty years, first as an undergraduate and graduate student, then as an assistant professor in the Government and Social Studies Department.

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades. Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as "Hitch", was a columnist and literary critic for New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Mirror, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War, his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind", and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.

Yaron Brook (Hebrew: ירון ברוק‎; born 1961) is a political activist and the current president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, a non-profit organization in Irvine, California, whose mission is to promote the novels of Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism.

Brook was born and raised in Israel. His parents were Jewish socialists who were originally from South Africa. A friend lent him a copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged when he was 16, and he eventually embraced Objectivism. At the age of 18 he was drafted into the Israeli Army. He served for three years (1979–1982), and was a First Sergeant in Israeli military intelligence. Once out of the army, he attended college at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology located in Haifa, and in 1986 he received his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering.

In 1987, Brook moved to the United States to study at the University of Texas at Austin. There, he received his MBA in 1989 and his PhD in Finance in 1994. He was subsequently hired to teach Finance at Santa Clara University in California, where he was an assistant professor for seven years. He was a teacher and developed a class on "Finance and Ethics." In 1998 Brook (with Robert Hendershott) started an investment consulting business called BH Equity Research, located in San Jose, California. He is currently a managing partner of that firm.

Chris Phillips (born March 9, 1978) is a Canadian professional ice hockey player currently playing for the Ottawa Senators of the National Hockey League (NHL). He has been a member of the Ottawa Senators for his entire career, which began with the 1997–98 season. He also serves as their alternate captain and is regarded as a stay-at-home defenceman. The Senators drafted him first overall in the 1996 NHL Entry Draft. He was raised in Fort McMurray, Alberta.

Phillips began his junior career with the Fort McMurray Oil Barons of the Alberta Junior Hockey League in 1993-94, where he had six goals and 22 points in 56 games. In 10 playoff games, Phillips had three assists. He returned to the Oil Barons for the 1994-95 season, in which he saw his offensive production increase to 16 goals and 48 points in 48 games. In 11 post-season games, Phillips had four goals and six points. Phillips also participated in the 1995 Canada Winter Games where he was the captain of the Alberta team.

Phillips joined the Prince Albert Raiders of the WHL for the 1995-96 season, where he had 10 goals and 40 points in 61 games as a rookie with the Raiders. Phillips helped the Raiders to the Conference Finals, as he had two goals and 14 points in 18 games. After the season, Phillips won the Jim Piggott Memorial Trophy and he was drafted first overall in the 1996 NHL Entry Draft by the Ottawa Senators.