Davis said he intends to use the current election as a case study for his forum on "Media and Political Campaigns."

"I'm really excited to be really able to take something fresh and convey those experiences to the students, and I hope to impart to them the importance of political activism," he said.

DeParle is a fellow jointly sponsored by the Harvard University Health Care Policy Forum and the IOP. She headed the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare, Medicaid and State Children's Health insurance Program.

DeParle will hold weekly one-and-half hour sessions on "Health Care and the Uninsured and Reforming Medicare."

Drinan, a Jesuit priest, former Massachusetts Congressional representative and national figure in the Vietnam War protests, gave up politics when the Pope asked him to choose between his priesthood and his public office. Drinan is now a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center and lectures throughout the country on human rights issues.

Father Drinan's study group will be called "Religion and Politics."

Writer Ted Conover has authored such books as Newjack, Whiteout and Coyote and regularly contributes to the New Yorker Magazine and The New York Times Magazine. For Newjack, his recent bestseller, Conover took a job as a prison guard at New York's Sing Sing Prison in order to write an investigative look behind the walls of that famed correctional facility.