Ernesto Galarza
The scholar-activist and farm-worker organizer helped launch Mexican American student activism as early as 1929, when he vocalized his views on the treatment of Mexican immigrant workers as a young graduate student at Stanford University. He was the first Mexican American admitted to Stanford and to earn a Ph.D. in history and political science at Columbia University. Following World War II, Galarza became a labor organizer and was named executive secretary of the National Farm Labor Union.

Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr.
As chairman of Harvard University's Afro-American studies department, Gates has elevated Harvard to pre-eminence in Black studies by assembling an academic "Dream Team" that includes Cornel West, William Julius Wilson and Anthony Appiah. Considered an intellectual entrepreneur, Gates exerts a scholarly impact that extends far beyond even Harvard's reach. His forays into publishing, journalism, documentary production, Internet Web site development, and Black anthologies and encyclopedias have proven him as ambitious as his intellectual forefather, W.E.B. DuBois.

William and Belinda Gates
The foundation headed by and bearing the name of the chairman and the CEO of the Microsoft Corp. and his wife pledged $1 billion over 20 years to fund scholarships for minority college and graduate students in science, engineering, math and education. The gift, which will fund the Gates Millennium Scholars, is by far the largest ever made to higher education.

Paula J. Giddings
A research professor in Women's, African and African American Studies at Duke University. Giddings is a journalist,  scholar and author of the book, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Race and Sex in America, a groundbreaking study on women's social and political history.

Guy Gorman, Ned Hatahli, Robert Roessel and Allen Yazzie
Co-founders in 1968 of the Navajo Community College, the first institution of higher education chartered by an Indian tribe, these educators successfully advocated the first federal support of a tribal college.  When asked what made NCC different from other colleges, Hatahli said, "Well, we don't teach that Columbus discovered America."