Senator Gary Hart and Senator Alan Simpson

Senator Gary Hart

From 1975 to 1987, Gary Hart, a Democrat, represented Colorado in the United States Senate. He was a member of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a committee also known as the “Church Committee.” He also served on the Armed Services Committee, where he specialized in nuclear arms control and was an original founder of the military reform caucus. In addition, he served on the Senate Environment Committee, Budget Committee and Intelligence Oversight Committee. During his Senate years, he played a leadership role in major environmental and conservation legislation, military reform initiatives, new initiatives to advance the information revolution and new directions in foreign policy. In 1984 and 1988, he was a candidate for his party's nomination for president.

Senator Hart currently is Wirth Chair Professor in the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado at Denver and is Distinguished Fellow at the New America Foundation. He co-chaired the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century, a bipartisan entity chartered by the U.S. Department of Defense. The commission performed the most comprehensive review of national security since 1947, predicted the terrorist attacks on America and proposed a sweeping overhaul of U.S. national security structures and policies for the post-Cold War new century and the age of terrorism. He also co-chaired the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Homeland Security, which produced the report “America Unprepared—America Still at Risk” in October 2002. Hart currently is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Task Force on Science and Security.

Senator Hart has been Senior Counsel to Coudert Brothers, a multinational law firm with offices in nineteen countries. He has served as a Visiting Fellow, Chatham Lecturer, and McCallum Memorial Lecturer at Oxford University; Global Fund Lecturer at Yale University; and Regents Lecturer at the University of California. He has earned a doctor of philosophy degree from Oxford as well as graduate law and divinity degrees from Yale. He has been a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School, and he is the author of fourteen books. He resides with his family in Kittredge, Colorado.

Senator Alan Simpson

From 1979 to 1997, Alan Simpson, a Republican, represented Wyoming in the United States Senate. He was elected by his peers to serve as Assistant Republican Leader (party whip) from 1984 to 1994. He chaired the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs and the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration. He also served on the Finance Committee, the Special Committee on Aging, and the Environment and Public Works Committee (co-sponsoring the Clean Air Act).

Senator Simpson, a native of Cody, Wyoming, graduated from the University of Wyoming; served in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956, including an overseas deployment in the Fifth Infantry Division and Second Armored Division; and then returned to the University of Wyoming to earn his law degree. He served as a Wyoming Assistant Attorney General; practiced law in Cody for eighteen years; and served in the Wyoming State Legislature, attaining the position of Majority Floor Leader and Speaker Pro-Tem in the House of Representatives, before he was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Following his service in Washington, D.C., Senator Simpson was a visiting lecturer in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he also served two years as Director of the Institute of Politics. In 2000, he returned to his alma mater, the University of Wyoming, as a visiting lecturer in the political science department, where he co-teaches with his brother Peter (also a former state legislator) a course entitled “Wyoming’s Political Identity: Its History and Politics.” Senator Simpson is a partner in the firm of Simpson, Kepler & Edwards in Cody (a division of the Denver firm of Burg Simpson Eldredge Hersh & Jardine). He is a member of the American Battle Monuments Commission and numerous other corporate and non-profit boards. He resides with his family in Cody.