José Cabezón is a professor of Tibetan Buddhism and cultural studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was a Buddhist monk in the Tibetan Gelukpa order for almost 10 years, living and studying for six years at the Jé College of Sera Monastery in South India. His current research involves Buddhism and sexuality, […]

Judith Simmer-Brown is a professor of Buddhist studies and chairwoman of the department of religious studies at Naropa University, a college founded in the Buddhist tradition in Boulder, Colo. She can speak about American Buddhism and about Buddhist-Christian dialogue.

Anne C. Klein is a professor of Asian religions at Rice University in Houston. The author of five books, she can speak about Indo-Tibetan Buddhist thought and practice and about women in Buddhism. She is also co-founding director of Dawn Mountain, a center in Houston for contemplative study and practice.

Miriam Levering is professor of religious studies at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where she is the editor of Zen Inspirations: Essential Meditations and Texts and can speak about women in Zen Buddhism.

Jin Y. Park is an assistant professor in the department of philosophy and religion at American University in Washington, D.C. She specializes in Buddhist philosophy; her doctoral dissertation was on Zen Buddhism and postmodern thought.

Janice Willis is a retired professor emerita of religion and social sciences at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. She is the author of Dreaming Me: An African American Woman’s Spiritual Journey. Read an excerpt on Beliefnet.com. Willis has talked about her journey from the segregated, revival-preacher South to a Buddhist monastery in Nepal where she began to find peace.

Janet Gyatso is a specialist in Buddhist studies and author of multiple books, including Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (2015).

Ann Taves is professor at the University of California – Santa Barbara. She wrote the article “Religion and Same-Sex Relations in the American Context” for the Religious Studies Review.

Gilbert Herdt is professor of sexuality and anthropology at San Francisco State University and director of the National Sexuality Resource Center.