DARE's Board of Visitors is made up of people who share a belief in the value of the project and a strong desire to see it completed. They meet twice yearly at locations around the country to discuss development ideas and the editorial progress being made on the Dictionary.  The members of the Board, as of January 2007, are listed below.

GREG ALFUS is Professor Emeritus of English at McHenry County Community College in Woodstock, Illinois, where he chaired the English Department and the Academic Success Center.

JOHN BORDIE is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin. His specialties include applied linguistics, teaching English as a foreign language, psycholinguistics, and adult literacy.

RICHARD EKMAN, currently President of the Council of Independent Colleges in Washington, D.C., has also served as Vice President of the Atlantic Philanthropic Service, Secretary of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Director of the Division of Research Programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities.

HARLAN ELLISON is a multiple-award-winning author, lecturer, columnist, and social critic who has written or edited more than seventy-five books. He has won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award twice, as well as the Silver Pen for First Amendment Journalism, from P.E.N.

MORRIS F. GOODMAN, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at Northwestern University, has specialized in historical linguistics, with emphases on pidgins, creoles, and African languages.

JAMES J. KILPATRICK's syndicated columns The Writer's Art and Covering the Courts appear in newspapers throughout the country. He has written or edited eleven books and is well known as a commentator on the 60 Minutes television program.

ROBERT D. KING is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin, where his interests include the Yiddish language, the politics of language, and the language of politics in India.

DAVID MARANISS is an author and journalist. He is Associate Editor of The Washington Post and has written numerous books, including First In His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton, and When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi.

MARIANNE MEANS is the Washington columnist for the Hearst Newspapers, syndicated by King Features and by the New York Times News Service. She is a former White House correspondent and an occasional television and radio commentator.

JACQUELYN MITCHARD writes a nationally syndicated column, The Rest of Us, and has published numerous novels, including the best-selling The Deep End of the Ocean.

MARY LU MITCHELL, a lifelong advocate for libraries, is former Chair of the Atlanta Public Library and the Georgia Library Trustees Association. She was a founding member and Chair of the Friends of the Atlanta Public Library and served on the Board of the national Friends of Libraries USA.

CYNTHIA L. MOORE was an attorney in Arlington, Virginia, who specialized in estate planning and government relations services for pension plans, and also provided advice on trademark issues. She has recently returned to graduate school to study Spanish and Linguistics. She has written for the journal Dictionaries.

ROBERT H. MOORE worked as Senior Vice-President of Alexander and Alexander Services, Inc. in Washington, D.C. and New York, and he served as Chairman and President of A&A Government and Industry Affairs, Inc. He has also taught at the Universities of Wisconsin and Maryland as well as at the Military Academy at West Point.

DONALD ORESMAN is Of Counsel at Simpson Thacher and Bartlett in New York City. He has served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Paramount Communications, Inc. and is a Trustee of the Library of America, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the American Academy of Poets, and the Morgan Library.

WILLIAM SAFIRE's column On Language appears weekly in The New York Times Magazine, and his political commentary appears regularly in The New York Times. He has also worked as a radio and television producer as well as a speech writer for Richard Nixon.

GEORGE L. SCHUEPPERT currently serves as the President of the Great Books Foundation in Chicago. This work follows a very full career as a financial executive, in which he was Senior Vice-President for Continental Bank, Corporate Finance Consultant for Coopers and Lybrand, and Chief Financial Officer of CBI Industries and Outboard Marine Corporation.

VIRGINIA RICHARDS SCHWERIN was Senior Vice President of Smythe Associates, a New York City executive recruiting firm.  She serves on the Boards of the Wildlife Conservation Society (Bronx Zoo) in New York, the Nature Conservancy on Long Island, and the Humane Society of Vero Beach, Florida.

BRUCE WALKER worked as a geologist for Standard Oil Company, first doing exploratory work in South America and later serving in an executive position in the New York office. His interest in language dates back to his courses with Frederic Cassidy.

SIMON WINCHESTER is probably best known for The Professor and the Madman, a best-selling book that details the relationship between James Murray and W.C. Minor during the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. As well as writing many other books, he has also served as a correspondent for The Sunday Times and The Guardian in the United Kingdom and for the Conde Nast Traveler magazine.