János Kádár (26 May 1912 – 6 July 1989) was a Hungarian communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, presiding over the country from 1956 until his retirement in 1988. His thirty-two year term as General Secretary makes Kádár the longest ruler of the People's Republic of Hungary. During Kádár's rule, Hungary was stabilized and liberalized to an extent never before seen in any Eastern Bloc country until Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary. Due to his age and declining health, he decided to retire as Secretary-General of the party in 1988, and a younger generation consisting mostly of reformers took over.

Kádár was born in Fiume to a poor family, his father left his mother and him when he was very young, and he never met his father. After living in the countryside for some years, Kádár and his mother moved to Budapest. After quitting school, Kádár joined the Communist Party of Hungary's youth organisation, KIMSZ. Kádár would go on to become a notable figure of the pre-World War II communist party, even becoming First Secretary. As leader he dissolved the party, and reorganised it as the Peace Party. This new party failed to win any popular support for the communist cause, and he would later be accused, of dissolving the Hungarian communist party. With the German invasion of Hungary, the Peace Party tried again to win support from the Hungarian populace, but failed. At the time of the Soviet occupation, the communists led by Kádár were very small in size.

Robert Carl (b. July 12, 1954 in Bethesda, Maryland) is an American composer who currently resides in Hartford, Connecticut, where he is chair of the composition department at the Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford.

Carl studied with Jonathan Kramer, George Rochberg, Ralph Shapey, and Iannis Xenakis. From each respectively, the composer has commented that he feels he learned about time, history, counterpoint/phrasing, and form. His music finds its roots in the spirit of eclectic juxtapositions, transcendentalism, and experiment embodied in the output of Charles Ives and other American "ultramodernists", including Carl Ruggles.

Carl’s music until 1997 tends to explore different styles, and to create unusual syntheses thereof. A history major as an undergraduate at Yale University, he has felt that the musical past is a fertile source to be manipulated for new expressive purposes. Duke Meets Mort (1992) is a saxophone quartet that interprets the harmonic changes of Duke Ellington’s Mood Indigo in the voice of Morton Feldman. Time/Memory/Shadow (1988) is a double trio (piano quintet and harp) based on a march written in the composer’s adolescence, which is slowly “excavated” in the course of the piece, and only revealed at the end.

Carl Cohen is Professor of Philosophy at the Residential College of the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. He is co-author of "The Animal Rights Debate" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), a point-counterpoint volume with Prof. Tom Regan; he is also the author of "Democracy" (Macmillan, 1972); the author of "Four Systems" (Random House, 1982); the editor of "Communism, Fascism, and Democracy" (McGraw Hill, 1997); the co-author (with J. Sterba) of "Affirmative Action and Racial Preference" (Oxford, 2003), and co-author (with I. M. Copi) of "Introduction to Logic, 13th edition" (Prentice-Hall, 2008).

He has published many essays in moral and political philosophy in philosophical, medical, and legal journals. He has served as a member of the Medical School faculty of the University of Michigan, and as Chairman of the University of Michigan faculty, where he has been an active member of the philosophy faculty since 1955.

In 1996, Cohen made public information he had gathered using the State of Michigan's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) about the substantial weight of racial factors in the University of Michigan undergraduate admissions office use of a "grid system". Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher sued the University based on this data. Barbara Grutter, in a separate proceeding, sued the Law School of the University of Michigan relying on additional data also revealed by Cohen's FOIA inquiry. While the U-M changed its "grid system" to a "point system" the following year, it argued that both mechanical systems were identical in outcome and that the point system, which became more famous, was designed merely to be easier to understand. The system that Cohen made public was ruled unconstitutional by the U. S. Supreme Court [in Gratz v. Bollinger, 2003] as a "mechanical system," although in a separate ruling concerning the U-M Law School [Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003], the limited use of non-mechanical preferences was allowed.