Carl H. Coleman is director of the Health Law and Policy Program at Seton Hall Law School in Newark, N.J. Professor Coleman served as Bioethics and Law Adviser at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland from 2006-2007. He has written on assisted suicide and was a member of the New York State Attorney General’s […]

Claudine Michel chairs the department of black studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She edits The Journal of Haitian Studies and co-edited (with Patrick Bellegarde-Smith) two books on Vodou, Haitian Vodou: Spirit, Myth, And Reality (Indiana University Press, 2006) and Invisible Powers: Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

Bill Colby was the attorney for the Nancy Cruzan family in the first right-to-die case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. He is the author of Unplugged: Reclaiming Our Right to Die in America (AMACON, 2006) and Long Goodbye: The Deaths of Nancy Cruzan (Hay House, 2002).

Mozella Gordon Mitchell is professor and chairwoman of religious studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Her expertise includes Afro-Caribbean religions and the history of African-American religion.

Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, a professor in the department of Africology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is an expert on Haitian Voodoo and on religion, gender and class issues in the African Diaspora. He edited Fragments of Bone: Neo-African Religions in a New World (University of Illinois, 2005) and co-edited (with Claudine Michel) two volumes on Vodou, Haitian Vodou: Spirit, […]

The Rev. Cyprian Davis is professor emeritus of church history at St. Meinrad School of Theology in St. Meinrad, Ind. He is a Benedictine monk and has expertise on African-American Christianity and on blacks and Catholicism.

Sister Jamie T. Phelps is a professor of systematic theology and director of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans.

The Rev. Clarence Williams directs the Office for Black Catholic Ministries at the Archdiocese of Detroit and is pastor of St. Anthony Church in Detroit. He is president of the Black Catholic Televangelization Network and has worked nationally and internationally to heal racism and to create dialogue among African-Americans and Latinos. He is a member of the […]

Bernard Richardson is an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. He teaches pastoral care and counseling at Howard University School of Divinity, where he also is dean of the Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel.