Mustafa Akyol is a Turkish columnist for Hürriyet Daily News, the website Al-Monitor: The Pulse of the Middle East and The International New York Times. He is also the author of Islam Without Extremes. In 2011, he delivered a TED Talk on the subject of faith versus tradition in Islam.

Karima Bennoune is a professor of international law at the University of California, Davis, and the author of Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here.

Karen Armstrong, a former Catholic nun, is an authority on the Abrahamic religions and author of many books on the subject. Her most recent book is Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence.

Neil J. Kressel is a professor of psychology at William Patterson University in Wayne, N.J., and the author of Bad Faith: The Danger of Religious Extremism. His scholarship focuses on religion, psychology, prejudice and race relations, history, journalism, politics and political research. He is an expert on religious extremism and anti-Semitism.

Philip Freeman is a professor of Classics at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. His research focuses on Classical Mythology, Ancient Roman Culture, Greece and Rome in film, as well as Latin.

Tina Beattie is a professor of Catholic studies at the University of Roehampton in London. She focuses her research on the relationship between the Catholic tradition and contemporary culture with an emphasis on gender, sexuality, and reproductive ethics. She also studies Catholic social teaching and women’s rights, and theology and the visual arts.

Andre Key is an assistant professor of history at Paine College in Augusta, Georgia. He is an expert in the historical development of Black Hebrew religion and Hebrew Israelite ethno-religious identity.

Kathleen Garces-Foley is a professor of theology and religious studies at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. She is co-author of The Twenty-something Soul: Understanding the Religious and Secular Lives of American Young Adults.