J. Peter Pham is former director of the William R. Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University in Virginia. He is also a former Vatican diplomat who worked under John Paul II and is author of Heirs of the Fisherman: Behind the Scenes of Papal Death and Succession. Currently, he is the director of the Michael […]

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of international relations and history at Boston University.

Diana Hayes is a retired professor of systematic theology at Georgetown University, gave an opening speech at Sisters, a conference on the role of women’s leadership in Catholicism and Islam, in 2003. The conference took place at the Catholic Theological Union. It began on the first day of the war in Iraq.

Shireen T. Hunter is director of the Carnegie Project on Reformist Islam at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She is also a distinguished scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where she directed the Islam Program from 1998 to 2005. She is author of Reformist Voices of Islam: Mediating Islam and Modernity (2008) and […]

Steve Ridgway is interim CEO of Open Doors USA, which supports persecuted Christians in 60 countries. It’s based in Santa Ana, Calif.

Richard H. Seager is an associate professor of religious studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. He is studying the globalization and Americanization of Buddhism and is the author of Buddhism in America and Encountering the Dharma: Daisaku Ikeda, Soka Gakkai and the Globalization of Buddhism Humanism.

Godfrey Yogarajah is executive director of the Religious Liberty Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance, a network of churches in 127 countries.

Jay P. Greene is endowed chair and head of the department of education reform at the University of Arkansas and is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a nonprofit public policy institute in New York.

William M. Bodiford is professor of Asian languages and cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Buddhism and editor of Going Forth: Visions of Buddhist Vinaya. He can speak about Japanese Buddhism, including rituals and worship of local gods.