(Rotterdam, NL, 1960) is the ombudsman of NRC Handelsblad newspaper. He studied philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. From 1983 to 1985 he created the faculty publication Cimedart. In 1990 he started working for NRC Handelsblad, first as copy editor, then as coordinator and assistant editor-in-chief of the national affairs section. He was involved in setting up the paper's website. From 1999 to 2005 he headed the Books section and wrote an opinion column. In 1989 he co-wrote with "student leader" Maarten van Poelgeest the latter's premature memoir, Zo doen we dat dus (That's How We Do It). He also published mini-biographies of Richard Burton, Marcel Proust and Bob Dylan, and illustrated Maarten Doorman's animal stories for the collection Elk beest zijn vet (Every Animal's Stripes). A collection of De Jong's columns was published in 2005 under the title Spijtwraak (Regret-Revenge).

(Orange City, USA, 1963) - child of an American father and a Dutch mother – earned his PhD on studying the cultural change in the Netherlands during the 1960s. Since 2003 he lives in the Netherlands, where he - first as a professor at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and now as the dean of University College Utrecht – specialized in the history of the Netherlands after World War II. When Kennedy was traveling through the United States in 2015, he saw that the increasing popularity of Donald Trump many Americans was an eyesore. He then thought it very unlikely that there would ever be a president Trump.

(1955 ) studied (American) history and international relations. In his new book The Spiegel van Amerika (‘The Mirror of America’), he examines - with Hans Veldman – the current state of the American society. It's the America the new president will be dealing with after the elections. An America that seems to have changed. It's no longer the land of unlimited possibilities, and that doesn't sit well with the averge American citizen. Post has long been an esteemed expert on America and has often appeared in Dutch media to share his expertise. His main interest lies with the tensions and problems surrounding the civel rights in the Southern States of America. For his books he, amongst others, spoke to Orval Faubus, the governor that denied nine black students entry to their high school in Little Rock in 1957 and pastor Billy Kyles, a current civel rights leader, who was standig next to Martin Luther King when he was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968.

Markha Valenta (1967) assistant-professor at the Radboud University, is especially interested in the interaction between global politics, democratic societies and questions of religion, citizenship, and belonging. Her articles in NRC Handelsblad on Dutch moralism and intolerance have caused a great deal of controversy. Ms Valenta argues in a reply to an article in the Gay Krant on Tariq Ramadan that inside a democracy there must be room to think and act differently. To her this not only applies to homosexuals (Ms Valenta is a lesbian) but to Muslims too, who have their own views on homosexuality.