Bella DePaulo is a visiting professor of psychology at the University of California in Santa Barbara. She is an expert on lying.

Dr. M. William Howard Jr. is the senior pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Newark, N.J., a partner in the New Jersey Character Education Partnership, which tries to instill values, including honesty, in local children.

Steve Ellenwood is the acting director of the Center for Character and Social Responsibility at Boston University in Massachusetts.

Michelle Whittaker is communications director for the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society. Part of the GBCS’s mission is to promote “personal, social and civic righteousness.” Contact through the website.

Danielle Tumminio is a graduate of Yale Divinity school and an Episcopal priest. While at Yale, she taught a course called “Christian Theology and Harry Potter.” The class inspired a book, God and Harry Potter at Yale (Unlocking Press, 2010). She lives in Boston.

Kelly Collinsworth is an assistant professor of legal studies at Morehead State University in Morehead, Ky. She has taught a course called “Harry Potter in the Law,” which uses the series as a context in which to discuss the role of government and legal institutions.

Melissa D. Aaron is an English professor at California Polytechnic State University in Pomona. She teaches a literary and cultural studies course on the Harry Potter 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.