Rabbi Marc Schneier is founder and president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding and a leading figure in building up relationships between the Jewish community and African-Americans, Latinos, Christians and Muslims. He wrote Shared Dreams: Martin Luther King Jr. & the Jewish Community.

Patricia Raybon, a professor emeritus in journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote My First White Friend: Confessions on Race, Love and Forgiveness (Penguin, 1997) and I Told the Mountain to Move (Tyndale House, 2005). She writes often about religion, family and race

Brenda Salter McNeil is president of Salter McNeil & Associates, based in Oak Park, Ill., and a nationally known consultant on racial healing and diversity within Christian organizations. She co-authored The Heart of Racial Justice: How Soul Change Leads to Social Change (InterVarsity Press, 2004).

The international Victim Offender Mediation Association in St. Paul, Minn., promotes restorative justice. The 250-member association has members from all states.

Howard Zehr is one of the founders of the restorative justice movement. He teaches at Eastern Mennonite University, where he co-directs the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. He speaks and consults extensively on the subject. Among his many publications on the subject is the best-selling The Little Book of Restorative Justice.

Ted Wachtel is founder and president of the International Institute for Restorative Practices in Bethlehem, Pa., which offers graduate degrees and training in applying restorative principles in schools, criminal justice, child welfare and workplaces. Read “In Pursuit of Paradigm: A Theory of Restorative Justice,” a paper delivered by Wachtel and researcher Paul McCold at an international criminology conference in […]

Mark Umbreit is founding director of the Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota school of social work. He is also on the faculty of the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the university. Umbreit is familiar with evaluations of restorative justice.

Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz is director for the Mennonite Central Committee Office on Crime and Justice and co-author of The Little Book of Restorative Discipline for Schools.

Fumitaka Matsuoka is Robert Gordon Sproul Professor of Theology of Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, Calif., where he is executive director of the Institute for Leadership Development and Study of Pacific and Asian North American Religion. He is an ordained minister in the Church of the Brethren. He co-edited Realizing the America of Our Hearts: Theological Voices of […]