Leah Gunning Francis is associate dean for contextual education and assistant professor of Christian education at Eden Theological Seminary. She is based in St. Louis and was present in Ferguson, Mo., during the unrest in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s death.

The Rev. Ashlee Wiest-Laird is pastor at First Baptist JP in Jamaica Plain, Mass. She traveled to Ferguson, Mo., to protest and spoke about the experience on Boston Public Radio.

Shannen Dee Williams is a writer and an assistant professor of United States and African-American history at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. She has called for Catholic theologians to remember the lives of black women in the Black Lives Matter movement.

Bret Lortie serves as senior minister for the Unitarian Church of Evanston, Ill. He has called for placing a Black Lives Matter banner at the church where he preaches.

Yavilah McCoy is a teacher, writer, diversity consultant and performer. She has linked the Jewish holiday of Purim to the fight for justice for the African-American community and the Black Lives Matter movement. She founded Dimensions Educational Consulting in Newton, Mass.

Kenny Wiley is the director of faith formation at Prairie Unitarian Universalist Church in Parker, Colo. He graduated with a degree in political science from the University of Missouri and studied at Harvard Divinity School. Wiley has written about the need for a “Unitarian-Universalist Black Lives Matter Theology” on his blog. Contact through the church website.

J.M. Berger is an analyst and author, and he focuses on extremism, extremist activities in the United States, and extremist use of social media. He works with the Brookings Institution and the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, publishes the web site Intelwire.com and contributes to Foreign Policy. He recently co-authored ISIS: The State of Terror with Jessica Stern. He can be reached through Ashley […]

Jessica Stern is a lecturer on terrorism at Harvard University and serves on the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law. She is the co-author of the book ISIS: The State of Terror alongside J.M. Berger. Stern can be contacted through her publicist Alexis Shanley of Harper Collins.

Hassan Hassan is a co-author of the New York Times bestseller, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror. He also writes for The National. His areas of expertise include Syria and Iraq.