Fred Friendly Seminars have included:

Leaders in Government
Former presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford have been Seminar panelists, along with many other colleagues from Congress and high ranking government officials who have their hands on the levers of power and create the public policy that governs us all.

Panelists have included such leading members of Congress as Orrin Hatch, Barbara Boxer, Christopher Dodd, Newt Gingrich, Warren Rudman, Charles Rangel, Barney Frank, Henry Hyde, John Kerry, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Patricia Schroeder and Fred Thompson.

Cabinet members and government officials from across the political spectrum have included Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Edwin Meese, Joseph Califano, Alan Greenspan, Michael Leavitt, James Schlesinger, and Cyrus Vance.

Prominent Journalists
Journalists know how an issue might play out in the media and the pressures that this puts on policy makers. They can often put their finger on the drivers that might shape the understanding of an issue in the public sphere. Many distinguished reporters, columnists, and broadcast journalists have brought their unique perspective to the Seminars including William Safire, Peter Jennings, Bill Moyers, Anna Quindlen, Nat Hentoff, William Raspberry, James Hoge, Lesley Stahl, William F. Buckley, Jr., Dan Rather, Jake Tapper, Anthony Lewis, and Nina Totenberg.

Distinguished Legal Thinkers
The hypothetical scenarios often turn on nuanced issues that can challenge established law, up to and including the Constitutional level. Providing a very rare public display of their intellectual reasoning, five Supreme Court Justices have participated in the Seminars including Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O'Connor, Potter Stewart , Harry Blackmun, and Stephen Breyer. Participating in his fifth Fred Friendly Seminar in 2009, Supreme Court Justice Breyer joined the panel for MINDS ON THE EDGE: Facing Mental Illness and was shocked to learn that a simple act of kindness and concern that he proposed to take in the hypothetical scenario might be illegal in the United States.

Leading legal thinkers and practitioners such as Theodore Olson, Floyd Abrams, Nadine Strossen, Ken Starr and Johnnie Cochran have been compelled by situations in the hypothetical to come to grips with the vivid dramas that arise when case law and Constitutional law collide with the real world.

Diverse Experts from Many Fields
The Fred Friendly Seminars have tackled a broad array of topics - from terrorism to bioengineering, from health care reform to personal ethics, from corporate governance to choosing a Supreme Court Justice - exploring the complex economic, strategic, military, social, and ethical issues that they surface as well as the real world consequences of decisions that emerge. Whatever the issue, the Seminars always include those who confront it head on. From rapper and activist Chuck D to cardiac surgeon and inventor Michael DeBakey, from billionaire financier T. Boone Pickens to education reformer Deborah Meier, from military commander Gen. William Westmoreland to AARP CEO Bill Novelli, the Seminars have brought together hundreds of individuals who may not have ever had a prior opportunity to share view points, open up avenues of communication, and discover new perspectives on the issues that challenge us.