Eliza Byard is executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, which endorsed the Common Ground guidelines. The network, based in New York City, has registered more than 3,000 Gay-Straight Alliance student clubs in schools nationwide; coordinates an annual No Name-Calling Week and organizes the national Day of Silence.

Gene R. Carter is executive director of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, which endorsed the Common Ground guidelines.

Yaakov Ariel is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Evangelizing the Chosen People: Missions to the Jews in America, 1880–2000, and teaches several courses on contemporary Judaism.

Calvin Goldscheider is a professor of Judaic studies and sociology at Brown University in Providence, R.I. He is also a scholar-in-residence at the Center for Israel Studies at American University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of many books, including Cultures in Conflict: The Arab-Israeli Conflict and Studying the Jewish Future.

Wayne Jacobsen is founder and president of BridgeBuilders, based in Moorpark, Calif. He co-drafted the Common Ground guidelines. Read Jacobsen’s June 2006 report about the process of creating an anti-harassment policy in Marshalltown, Iowa, public schools.

Publishes a chart of the various bills through which abstinence-only sex education is funded nationally and in the states.

In this Feb. 2006 story, the government stopped funding of a national program that teaches abstinence-only sex education after the ALCU filed a lawsuit against the group, saying it promoted religion in public schools.

Co-author of This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor (2007). Contact through the book’s publisher, Public Affairs.

Bristol Palin is perhaps America’s most famous teen mom. She became a “teen-abstinence ambassador” in 2009 for the Candie’s Foundation, and she appeared in a People magazine cover story in which she confided that a teen mom’s job is hard work.