Mark A. Costanzo is a psychology professor at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif. He is an expert on the death penalty, nonverbal communication, expert testimony and social psychology. He wrote Just Revenge: Costs and Consequences of the Death Penalty.

Mark F. Carr is theological co-director for the Center for Christian Bioethics at Loma Linda University in California.

Daniel Smith-Christopher is professor of theological studies and director of peace studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He served for two years in volunteer peace research in Israel/Palestine in the late 1980s. His publications include Subverting Hatred: The Challenge of Nonviolence in Religious Traditions and Jonah, Jesus and Other Good Coyotes: Speaking Peace […]

Joseph Prabhu is a philosophy professor at California State University, Los Angeles. His interests include comparative religion and social and political theory. He is the author of Liberating Gandhi: Community, Empire and a Culture of Peace.

The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, based in Sacramento, Calif., is a nonprofit organization whose purpose is “to assure that people who are guilty of committing crimes receive swift and certain punishment in an orderly and constitutional manner.” Michael Rushford is president, and Kent Scheidegger is legal director/general counsel.

J. Dudley Woodberry is professor of Islamic studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. He co-edited Muslim and Christian Reflections on Peace: Divine and Human Dimensions.

Judith A. Berling is a professor of Chinese and comparative religions at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. She is interested in Chinese spiritualities and has written an article on “Confucianism and Peacebuilding,” in Religion and Peacebuilding.

Kathleen M. Moore is chair of religious studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she is an expert on Islamic studies, law and religion. She has also studied how “Muslim” has become an identity — and not just a faith — in America. She is the author of a paper on American attitudes […]

Tamara Cohn Eskenazi is co-editor of The Torah: A Women’s Commentary and a professor of Bible at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles.