Khaled Helmy is a visiting professor in the political science department at Tulane University in New Orleans, where he teaches a course in the comparative politics of the Middle East.

PollingReport.com offers a collection of polls on Americans’ opinions on politics and religion.

Najib Ghadbian is an assistant professor of political science and Middle East studies at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Ghadbian’s research interests include political currents and media in the Arab world, Islamic movements, Syrian politics, and domestic and international politics in the Arabian/Persian Gulf.

Leonardo A. Villalón is an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida in Gainesville and director of its Center for African Studies. He is at work on a project for the Carnegie Corporation of New York titled “Negotiating Democracy in Muslim Contexts: Political Liberalization and Religious Mobilization in the West African Sahel.” He […]

Michael Peletz is an anthropology professor at Emory University in Atlanta. He is an expert on Islam and politics in Malaysia, Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia.

David Gilmartin is a history professor at North Carolina State University and director of its Center for South Asia Studies. He can discuss the politics in Pakistan. He is in Raleigh, N.C.

Michaelle L. Browers is an associate professor in the political science department of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. Her expertise is in Arab and Islamic political thought, political ideologies, feminist theory and democratic theory.

Catherine Warrick is an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University in Villanova, Pa. She teaches a course in Middle East politics, and one of her areas of research and expertise is comparative politics in the region.

Read a June 29, 2013, story from The New York Times about Texas’ record of executed inmates’ last words. The state, with the highest number of executions in the U.S., keeps an online database of the executed’s last words.