David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University, is an expert on First Amendment and civil rights issues and co-author of Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror.

Louise Cainkar, an assistant professor in the department of social and cultural sciences at Marquette University in Milwaukee, has written widely about the effects of Sept. 11 on American Muslims. Her book Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience After 9/11 is to be published in August 2009.

Mehdi Bozorgmehr is a research the City University of New York. He co-wrote a book titled Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond, which looks at how ethnic organizations mobilized to demonstrate their commitment to the United States while defending their rights and distancing themselves from the terrorists.

Nabeel Abraham teaches anthropology and directs the honors program at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Mich. He co-edited Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream.

Edith Turner is a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Boyce Watkins is a scholar, author and leader in the African-American community. He writes frequently about money issues and the African-American community.

Pamela Wesley Gomez is director of development and external church affairs at the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University in New Haven, Conn.

empty tomb inc. is a nonprofit that tracks religious giving in the United States.

Kristen Monroe is a professor of philosophy and political science at the University of California, Irvine, and director of its Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality. She is the author of The Heart of Altruism: Perceptions of a Common Humanity.