George R. Plitnik is an engineering professor at Frostburg State University in Frostburg, Md. He has taught a seminar called “The Science of Harry Potter,” which explores the scientific questions raised by concepts in the series.

Author and speaker Berit Kjos, who leads Kjos Ministries in California, opposes the Harry Potter series.

Douglas Groothuis, associate professor of philosophy at the interdenominational, graduate-level Denver Seminary, is critical of the Harry Potter series.

The Rev. John Killinger is the author of God, the Devil and Harry Potter: A Christian Minister’s Defense of the Beloved Novels and The Life, Death and Resurrection of Harry Potter. He lives in Warrington, Va.

Deborah De Rosa, an assistant English professor at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, wrote the chapter “Wizardly Initiations: Moral, Familial, and Social” for Harry Potter’s World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives (Routledge; 2003).

Catherine A. Jack Deavel  is a philosophy professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., who has written and spoken on the merits of the Harry Potter series and was a contributor to a Harry Potter and Philosophy.

Elizabeth E. Heilman is an assistant professor of teacher education at Michigan State University and editor of Harry Potter’s World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives (Routledge, 2003).

Philip Nel teaches English at Kansas State University and is the author of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels: A Reader’s Guide (Continuum, 2001).

Richard C. Burke is an English professor at Lynchburg College in Virginia and spoke at Nimbus 2003: A Harry Potter Symposium on “Lord Voldemort’s Gift for Spreading Discord & Enmity: The Rise of Evil in Harry Potter.”