Jack M. Balkin is a constitutional law professor at Yale Law School and an expert on abortion policy and the First Amendment.

Abbas Amanat is director of the Iranian Studies Initiative at Yale MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and former chairman of the Council on Middle East Studies at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. He is author of Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi’ism (2009).

The Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology wants to establish religion and ecology as an area of study and research in universities, colleges, seminaries and other religiously affiliated institutions. The forum arose out of a series of conferences on the world’s religions and ecology hosted by the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions.

Heidi Hadsell, president of Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Conn., has written about eco-justice and liberation theology.

David Roozen, professor of religion and society and director of the Hartford Seminary Institute For Religion Research, has written about religious television. He specializes in national religious trends.

Eugene Gallagher is a professor of religious studies at Connecticut College in New London. He has written about belief in sorcery and new religious movements. He is the co-author of Why Waco.

Judi Neal heads the Association for Spirit at Work, a professional association for people trying to live out their faith in the workplace.

Scott L. Thumma is a sociology of religion professor at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, where he also directs the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. He studies megachurches, nondenominational Christianity and congregational trends.

The Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, part of Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, is the country’s oldest center for such study. With a history that traces back to 1893, the center focuses on research, teaching, publication and public discourse. Its faculty includes Mahmoud Ayoub, the Rev. Steven Blackburn and Yahya Michot.