Rabbi Elliot Dorff is a professor of philosophy and university rector at American Jewish University in Bel-Air, Calif. He is an expert in Jewish family issues, including adoption. He has studied the Jewish perspective on assisted death, transhumanism and ethics in general.

Joel Zimbelman, a California State University-Chico, religious studies professor, has written on legal decisions and public opinion informing the debate over the removal of life-sustaining treatment, assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Wesley J. Smith is a San Francisco-based attorney, columnist and anti-euthanasia activist. He is the author of Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder (Times Books/Random House, 1997).

Dr. Robert Brody is a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and chief of the Pain Consultation Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital. A former hospice director, he is a Compassion & Choices board member.

The Reentry National Media Outreach Campaign connects reporters with re-entry programs and is particularly interested in helping shine a spotlight on faith-based prisoner release efforts around the country. The campaign is run by Outreach Extensions and funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Contact Sally Turner, re-entry project director.

Kenneth Taylor is a philosophy professor at Stanford University and co-host of the nationally syndicated public radio program Philosophy Talk, which has tackled a number of issues involving religion and belief/nonbelief. His essay “Without the Net of Providence: Atheism and the Human Adventure” is included in Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life (2007).

Bruce Phillips is a professor of Jewish communal service at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles, a leading seminary of the Reform movement. He was on the team that completed the National Jewish Population Survey 2000 and says the Jewish institutional landscape will be reshaped by children of intermarriage who do not belong […]

The Religion, Politics and Globalization Program, based at the University of California, Berkeley, looks to create an intellectual space where scholars from the humanities and social sciences can come together to share and deepen their understanding of the role of religion in world affairs. Lynne Gerber is the associate director and postdoctoral fellow at the […]

William Lobdell is a former Los Angeles Times reporter and the author of Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America — and Found Unexpected Peace (2009). He is now editor of iBusiness Reporting and is a visiting faculty member at the University of California, Irvine.