Walter Ze'ev Laqueur (born 26 May 1921) is an American historian and political commentator. He was born in Breslau, Lower Silesia, Prussia (modern Wrocław, Poland), to a Jewish family. In 1938, Laqueur left Germany for the British Mandate of Palestine. His parents, who were unable to leave, became victims of the Holocaust. He lived in Israel 1938–53 and since then in the UK and US.

Laqueur was Director of the Institute of Contemporary History and the Wiener Library in London in 1965–1994. He was founder and editor, with George Mosse, of the Journal of Contemporary History and of Survey 1956–1964. He was founding editor of the The Washington Papers. From 1969 he was member, later Chairman (until 2000) International Research Council of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington. Laqueur was Professor of History of Ideas at Brandeis University 1968–1972, University Professor at Georgetown University 1976–1988. He has been visiting professor of history and government at Harvard, University of Chicago, Tel Aviv and Johns Hopkins University.

Barry Rubin is an American-born Israeli expert on terrorism and Middle Eastern affairs.

Rubin is a professor at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel, the director of the ICD Global Research in International Affairs Center, and a senior fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center's International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism. He is also Research Director of the IDC's Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy; editor of the journal Turkish Studies and the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA); and a member of the editorial board of Middle East Quarterly.

He was a deputy director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He is the co-author, with his wife, of Hating America: A History and a collection of essays entitled Loathing America.

Rubin has been a guest on This Week with David Brinkley, Nightline, Face the Nation, The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, The Larry King Show, and others on CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. Among the newspapers around the world for which he has written are La Vanguardia in Spain, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany; The National Post and The Globe and Mail in Canada; La Opinión, Liberal Forum, and Limes in Italy; The Age, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Australian Financial Review in Australia; Zaman, Referens, and Radikal in Turkey; and The Pioneer in India. Rubin is a frequent contributor to the Middle East column in The Jerusalem Post.

Diogenes the Cynic (Ancient Greek: Διογένης ὁ Κυνικός, Diogenēs ho Kunikos) was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy. Also known as Diogenes of Sinope (Greek: Διογένης ὁ Σινωπεύς, Diogenēs ho Sinōpeus), he was born in Sinope (modern-day Sinop, Turkey), an Ionian colony on the Black Sea, in 412 or 404 BCE and died at Corinth in 323 BCE.

Diogenes of Sinope was a controversial figure. His father minted coins for a living and when Diogenes took to "defacement of the currency", he was banished from the city. After being exiled, he moved to Athens to debunk cultural conventions. Diogenes modelled himself on the example of Hercules. He believed that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory. He used his lifestyle and behaviour to criticise the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt society. He declared himself a cosmopolitan. There are many tales about him dogging Antisthenes' footsteps and becoming his faithful hound, but it is by no means certain that the two men ever met. Diogenes made a virtue of poverty. He begged for a living and slept in a tub in the marketplace. He became notorious for his philosophical stunts such as carrying a lamp in the daytime, claiming to be looking for an honest man. He publicly mocked Alexander and lived. He embarrassed Plato, disputed his interpretation of Socrates and sabotaged his lectures.