Barbara A. McGraw is a professor of business administration at St. Mary’s College of California, in Moraga. She is the author of Rediscovering America’s Sacred Ground: Public Religion and Pursuit of the Good in a Pluralistic America and the co-editor of Taking Religious Pluralism Seriously: Spiritual Politics on America’s Sacred Ground, in which she argues that the […]

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which issued a statement April 12, 2012, decrying the House Agriculture Committee’s vote to cut $33 billion from food stamps. “If there’s a more misguided, mean-spirited and counterproductive way to address decades of deficits in this country, the Mayors of the United States can’t think of one,” […]

Jennifer A. Lindholm is project director for the Spirituality in Higher Education study, a project of the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California Los Angeles.

The Rev. James A. Tolle is former senior pastor of the Church on the Way in Van Nuys, Calif., a congregation that includes many immigrants. Tolle has been active on the immigration reform issue, including testifying before a Senate subcommittee. He has been pastor of the Church on the Way’s Spanish-speaking congregation, La Iglesia en el Camino, and […]

Rev. Deborah Lee is executive director of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, which is based in Oakland, Calif. She helped boost northern California churches’ participation in the sanctuary movement.

The Rev. Ben Daniel is pastor of Montclair Presbyterian Church in Oakland, Calif. He is the author of Neighbor: Christian Encounters With “Illegal” Immigration.

The Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California has a principal focus on the study of religion and immigration and its various manifestations. Richard Flory is executive director, and Megan Sweas is communications director.

John Efron is a professor of history and Jewish studies at the University of California-Berkeley. His focus is on the cultural and intellectual history of modern Judaism. He wrote Medicine and the German Jews: A History (Yale University Press, Spring 2001) and The Jews: A History, with Matthias Lehmann and Steven Weitzman (Prentice Hall, 2009), among others.

Arnold M. Eisen is a religion professor at Stanford University in California. He co-wrote the book The Jew Within: Self, Family and Community in America (Indiana University Press, 2000). The book looks at the results of surveys Eisen and his co-author conducted with American Jews. The book states that American Jews are less attached to Israel and […]