Philip Zimbardo, Stanford University professor emeritus of psychology, is the author of The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. He was director of the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Michael G. Datcher, clinical assistant professor of English at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, co-edited Tough Love: The Life and Death of Tupac Shakur (BlackWords Inc., 1996). He can discuss criticism of rap music and of the hiphop ethos.

Kathleen Sands, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, is the author of Escape from Paradise: Evil and Tragedy in Feminist Theology. She says that in the 1970s, with the onset of liberation theology, religious scholars moved from thinking of evil as an absence of the good to viewing sin as […]

Dancer Jessica Ralph, a member of the National Baptist Convention USA, directs workshops using hiphop, liturgical dance and other art forms in a religious context. She is a member of the World Council of Churches’ transformation team, a group with varied backgrounds and talents who lead classes and workshops.

The Rev. Paul Crowley, professor of religious studies at Santa Clara University, has written about evil for the Encyclopedia of Catholicism. Crowley is primarily concerned with how the problem of evil intersects with the problem of suffering. He says today’s scholarship is much more concerned with social and historical forms of evil, such as genocide and […]

Marcyliena Morgan is a professor in the department of African and African American studies at Harvard University and author of Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2006). She founded the Hiphop Archive at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University while on the faculty there. She now directs the Hiphop Archive@Stanford University and is working […]

Jeff Johnson is ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and is a political activist and media personality. His Washington, D.C., nonprofit, Truth Is Power, is a strategy, leadership training and curriculum-development company focused on hiphop and politics. Johnson produces and hosts Black Entertainment Television’s documentary miniseries The Jeff Johnson Chronicles; hosts BET’s weekly newsmagazine, The Chop Up; and offers commentary […]

Bakari Kitwana is a writer, lecturer and cultural critic. He speaks widely about hiphop culture. Formerly the editor of The Source magazine, which covers hiphop music, culture and politics, Kitwana is the author of The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture (Basic Civitas Books, 2003) and Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wangstas, Wiggers, Wannabes and […]

Eleonore Stump, professor of philosophy at St. Louis University, has written about narrative and the problem of evil, suffering and redemption.