Allan Luks is former executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters in New York City and former director of the Institute for the Advancement of Health. He is an author of The Healing Power of Doing Good (Fawcett Columbine, 1992) and coined the phrase “helper’s high” in Psychology Today to describe feelings of well-being reported by individuals […]

William Scott Green is a professor of religious studies and holds the Fain Family Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Miami. Beyond Judaic studies, Scott Green has taught and written on philanthropy, altruism and the ethics of technologies in the late modern age.

David Sloan Wilson is an evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University of the State University of New York who has written and spoken extensively about evolution and human behaviors, including altruism, gossip and decision-making in groups. He co-wrote Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. He has written several books on evolution, including Evolution for […]

V.V. Raman, emeritus professor of physics and humanities at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y., writes and speaks about Hinduism, ethics and altruism.

Robert Thurman, professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia University in New York, wrote “Human Rights and Responsibilities: Buddhist Views on Individualism and Altruism” in Religious Diversity and Human Rights. Thurman is also the author of The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is founder and chairman of the Cordoba Initiative at the American Society for Muslim Advancement. The multifaith effort, based in New York City, seeks to increase intercultural communication and tolerance, stimulate new approaches to achieving peace and heal the relationship between Islam and America. Listen to a video posted at Beliefnet in which he discusses divine […]

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield is president of CLAL – the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, an interdenominational think tank and training institute in New York City. He is co-author of Embracing Life & Facing Death: A Jewish Guide to Palliative Care (CLAL, 2003) and is completing a book on the challenge of Holocaust memory in the […]

Jacob Neusner, professor of theology at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., co-edited Altruism in World Religions. He is the author of scores of books on Rabbinic Judaism and has encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Judaism and its texts. Neusner says altruism is best studied as a religious, not a secular, impulse. He is the editor […]

Khaled Abou El Fadl is an internationally recognized law professor and the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Fellow in Islamic Law at the University of California, Los Angeles. He teaches a course on Islamic law and has also taught about Middle Eastern investment law, immigration law and human rights and terrorism. His books include Speaking in God’s […]