Diane Hess is Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She teaches courses for undergraduate and graduate students in social studies education, social studies research, and democratic education. Since 1998 she has been researching what young people learn from deliberating highly controversial political and legal issues in schools. She is currently the lead investigator of a five-year study that seeks to understand the relationship between various approaches to democratic education in schools and the actual political engagement of young people after they leave high school. Professor Hess also researches the ideological messages embedded in high school textbooks and other forms of curriculum. Her study of what curricula communicate about terrorism and 9/11 and its aftermath has just been completed and will be published this spring. A similar study about how textbooks treat Brown v. Board of Education was published in 2004. Hess is currently writing a book on the importance of controversial issues in schools that will be published in 2008.