Kenneth Surin, professor of religion, literature and critical theory at Duke University, has written about liberation as a critical term of religious study and the relevance of Marxism.

Lynn Pasquerella is president of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and has written about medical ethics.  She formerly chaired the University of Rhode Island institutional review board.

Lorine Getz is a scholar based in Hilton Head, S.C., and a retired professor of religion, culture, ethics and spirituality and the arts at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She co-edited Struggles for Solidarity: Liberation Theologies in Tension (Fortress Press, 1991).

The Rev. Iain Maclean, associate professor of Western religious thought, philosophy and religion at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., has written about liberation theologians and the struggle for democracy in Brazil.

Arthur Pressley, associate professor of psychology and religion at Drew University in Madison, N.J., has written about liberation theology, pastoral care and the spirituality of violence.  

Ann Cook is director of the National Rural Bioethics Project, based at the University of Montana in Missoula, where she is a professor of psychology. The project helps address ethics issues in rural communities.

John Burdick, Syracuse University professor and anthropology chair, is the author of Legacies of Liberation: The Progressive Catholic Church in Brazil (Ashgate Publishing, 2004). He says the emphasis in liberation theology has shifted from the poor to those marginalized by race, ethnicity or gender – though not yet sexuality. Contact , .

Abdulaziz A. Sachedina is a coordinator of the Islamic bioethics group of the International Association of Bioethics and is a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He contributed the entry on bioethics for The Oxford Dictionary of Islam.

Gilbert Meilaender is a senior research professor at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Ind., and a fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. He was a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2002 to 2009.