Larry Acosta is president of the Hispanic Ministry Center and the evangelical Urban Youth Workers Institute in Buena Park, Calif. He can discuss the organization’s use of Christian rap and the response of youngsters to it.

Shay Bilchik is a research professor and the founder and director of the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute. From 2000-2007 he served as president and CEO of the Child Welfare League of America. Before that, he was administrator of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and […]

David Hawa manages the Muslim trio Native Deen and other Muslim musicians through his entertainment marketing company Daze Studios in Sterling, Va. He can discuss the Muslim music scene and connect reporters with musicians, including Native Deen.

Howard Altstein is a professor in the University of Maryland School of Social Work with an expertise in adoption.

Benjamin Chavis Muhammad lead the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, a nonprofit founded in 2001 to use hiphop as a catalyst for improving society and addressing poverty and injustice. Contact through Jody L. Miller.

Philip Zimbardo, Stanford University professor emeritus of psychology, is the author of The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. He was director of the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Michael G. Datcher, clinical assistant professor of English at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, co-edited Tough Love: The Life and Death of Tupac Shakur (BlackWords Inc., 1996). He can discuss criticism of rap music and of the hiphop ethos.

Kathleen Sands, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, is the author of Escape from Paradise: Evil and Tragedy in Feminist Theology. She says that in the 1970s, with the onset of liberation theology, religious scholars moved from thinking of evil as an absence of the good to viewing sin as […]

Dancer Jessica Ralph, a member of the National Baptist Convention USA, directs workshops using hiphop, liturgical dance and other art forms in a religious context. She is a member of the World Council of Churches’ transformation team, a group with varied backgrounds and talents who lead classes and workshops.