George Church is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and professor of health sciences and technology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He co-launched the Human Genome Project in 1984. His current research includes efforts to extend animal lifespans.

Leonard M. Fleck is a professor in the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences and the department of philosophy at Michigan State University. He studies how decisions are made about controversial medical advancements, including genetic technologies.

Marcy Darnovsky is executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society. She speaks and writes about why scientific advancements such as gene editing are a social justice concern.

Jonathan Judaken is a professor of history at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. He is an expert on different forms of racism, especially anti-Jewish and anti-black racism.

Shaun King is a former church pastor, activist and journalist who focuses on social justice and racial justice issues. He is currently a writer-in-residence at Harvard University’s Fair Punishment Project. In 2018, he was the keynote speaker at Washington State University’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. Contact via his agent, Josh Katz.

The Rev. William J. Barber II is pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, N.C., and president of Repairers of the Breach, a national ministry for civil rights and social justice. In 2013, Barber began a campaign on behalf of the poor that instigated “Moral Mondays” — acts of civil disobedience and mindfulness designed to […]

Taylor Branch is the author of the multivolume series America in the King Years, which covers 1954 to 1968. Branch is an expert on every aspect of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and the broader civil rights movement. He is currently working with David Simon on developing a television series based on his King books. Contact […]

Brad Roth is pastor at West Zion Mennonite Church in Moundridge, Kansas. He is the author of God’s Country: Faith, Hope and the Future of the Rural Church (2017), which is excerpted here.

Sara Imari Walker is an associate professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration and deputy director of Beyond: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz. She is also the leader Emergence, an ASU research group focused on the origins of life here and elsewhere in the universe.