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.

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.

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 […]

Jack Levin, professor of sociology and criminology and co-director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflictat Northeastern University in Boston, has written about domestic terrorism, hate crimes, youth violence, ethnic conflict and mass and serial murder.

Christopher Thrutchley is a lawyer in Tulsa, Okla., who has written a paper titled “Eroding Biblical Foundation, Exploding Judicial Activism,” about what he sees as the erosion that teaching evolution has had on the nation’s laws.

The Texas Freedom Network is a pro-evolution citizens watchdog group that monitors science education standards in the state. Its Texas Faith Network is a group of clergy and laypeople who would like to keep religious teaching about the origins of the world and of life out of the public school classroom.

Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz is director for the Mennonite Central Committee Office on Crime and Justice and co-author of The Little Book of Restorative Discipline for Schools.