Gerard Heather is a political science professor at San Francisco State University and an expert on religion and politics.

Steven J. Zipperstein is a professor in Jewish culture and history at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. He is co-editor of a series of books titled Jewish Lives from Yale University Press. His research areas include modern Jewish history, and he teaches a course on Jews in the modern world.

Eugene Sheppard is an associate professor of modern Jewish history and thought at Brandeis University in Boston and associate director of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry. He is an expert on the influence of European Jewish refugees on public life and academia in the U.S.

The Rev. John Putka is a Marianist priest and lecturer in political science at the University of Dayton in Ohio. Putka specializes in analyzing Catholic voting patterns and believes abortion is a key issue influencing the Catholic vote.

Susannah Heschel is a professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. She teaches courses in contemporary Jewish life and history and is an expert on the Holocaust and on Jewish feminism.

The Rev. Charles E. Bouchard, O.P., is a moral theologian and president of the Aquinas Institute of Theology, a Dominican graduate school in St. Louis.

David Campbell is a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame who has written widely on religion and politics. His books include, as editor, A Matter of Faith: Religion in the 2004 Presidential Election and, as co-author, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.

Jeffrey S. Gurock is a professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University in New York City. He has written several books on American Jewish history and is an expert on American Jews who served in World War II.

Read a May 3, 2013, story at Slate about emerging technologies that could give people enhanced abilities. It asks: “If humans become superhuman, will we turn out to be superheroes — or supervillains?”