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  • Jagdish Bhagwati, is University Professor at Columbia University and Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has been Economic Policy Adviser to Arthur Dunkel, Director General of GATT, Special Adviser to the UN on Globalization, and External Adviser to the WTO. He has served on the Expert Group appointed by the Director General of the WTO on the Future of the WTO and the Advisory Committee to Secretary General Kofi Annan on the NEPAD process in Africa, and was also a member of the Eminent Persons Group under the chairmanship of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso on the future of UNCTAD. Professor Bhagwati has published more than three hundred articles and has authored or edited over fifty volumes; he also writes frequently for *The New York Times*, *The Wall Street Journal*, and *The Financial Times*, as well as reviews for *The New Republic* and *The Times Literary Supplement*. Professor Bhagwati is described as the most creative international trade theorist of his generation and is a leader in the fight for freer trade. He is a Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research . He was advisor to India 's Finance Minister, now Prime Minister, on India 's economic reforms. He works with several NGOs in the US and India. He was chosen as the first recipient of the Asian NGOs' Award, the Suh Sang Don Award. A native of India, Professor Bhagwati attended Cambridge University where he graduated in 1956 with a first in Economics Tripos. He then continued to study at MIT and Oxford returning to India in 1961 as Professor of Economics at the Indian Statistical Institute, and then as Professor of International Trade at the Delhi School of Economics. He returned to MIT in 1968, leaving it twelve years later as the Ford International Professor of Economics to join Columbia.
  • Kevin Bales is President of Free the Slaves, the US sister organization of Anti-Slavery International (the world's oldest human rights organization), and Professor of Sociology at Roehampton University in London. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the International Cocoa Initiative. His book *Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy*, published in 1999, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and has now been published in 10 other languages. Archbishop Desmond Tutu called it a well researched, scholarly and deeply disturbing expose of modern slavery. A revised edition was published in 2005. In 2006, his work was named one of the top 100 World-Changing Discoveries by the association of British universities.
  • Harvey Cox is Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard, where he has been teaching since 1965, both at HDS and in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. An American Baptist minister, he was the Protestant chaplain at Temple University and the director of religious activities at Oberlin College; an ecumenical fraternal worker in Berlin; and a professor at Andover Newton Theological School. His research and teaching interests focus on the interaction of religion, culture, and politics. Among the issues he explores are urbanization, theological developments in world Christianity, Jewish-Christian relations, and current spiritual movements in the global setting (particularly Pentecostalism). He has been a visiting professor at Brandeis University, Seminario Bautista de Mexico, the Naropa Institute, and the University of Michigan. He is a prolific author. His most recent book is *When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making Moral Decisions Today*. His *Secular City*, published in 1965, became an international bestseller and was selected by the University of Marburg as one of the most influential books of Protestant theology in the twentieth century. His other books include *The Feast of Fools*; *The Seduction of the Spirit*; *Religion in the Secular City*; *The Silencing of Leonardo Boff: Liberation Theology and the Future of World Christianity*; *Many Mansions: A Christian's Encounters With Other Faiths*; *Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality*; *The Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century; and Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christian's Journey Through the Jewish Year*.
  • Hardy specializes in American religious culture and contemporary Christian thought with a special emphasis on black religious culture and thought. Hardy is the author of James Baldwin's *God: Sex, Hope and Crisis in Black Holiness Culture*. He is currently at work on a book tentatively entitled: *We Grappled for the Mysteries: Black God-Talk in Modern America* which will span the 1920s through the civil rights period and consider how black descriptions of the divine have evolved in the modern period.
  • Dr. Callahan, was a member of the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania as assistant professor of religious studies. She has also served as the Assistant Professor of Modern Church History and African American Studies at New York Theological Seminary. A native of Gary, West Virginia, she experienced her first Christian education and formation at Apostolic Temple Church where she developed an enduring love for Jesus Christ and for Christ's body, the Church. Having experienced her call to ministry at an early age, Callahan began the public proclamation of the gospel at age 19. Her formal education includes the Bachelor of Arts in Religion from Harvard/Radcliffe and the Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in Religion from Princeton University. Her research interests include religious history in the United States, particularly independent African American Christianity and Pentecostal studies.
  • David D. Daniels III joined the faculty of McCormick Theological Seminary in 1987 and was inaugurated professor of Church History in 2003. David received the Bachelor of Arts from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, in 1976, majoring in religion and economics. In 1979 he obtained the Master of Divinity from Yale University. During his years at Yale, he was a Benjamin E. Mays Fellow for the Fund for Theological Education. David earned a PhD in church history from Union Theological Seminary in New York in May 1992. From 1979 to 1983, he was instructor of religion at the Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH. David has been a member of the American Academy of Religion since 1989, the Society for the Study of Black Religion since 1993 and the Society for Pentecostal Studies since 1979. He is a member of the steering committee of the Evangelical Theology Group and Afro-American History Group of the American Academy of Religion. He is a member of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and Pentecostal International Dialogue. He has served as commissioner for the Faith and Order Commission of the National Council of Churches USA for the 1988-91 quadrennium and has participated on consultations sponsored by the National council of Churches in the US and the World Council of Churches in the US and Costa Rica. He is author of various articles on the history of Christianity and book reviews published in *Theological Education in Pneuma, Christianity Century, Encyclopedia of African American Religions*, and* A Sourcebook for the Community of Religions*. David also served as an advisor to *Legacy of A Leader*, a 1991 video documentary on Charles Harrison Mason. He serves on the editorial committee of a new history of World Christianity project funded by Orbis Press.
  • Robert Michael Franklin is an African-American educator, author, and the 10th president of Morehouse College, a renowned historically black college located in Atlanta, Georgia. Franklin officially took office on July 2, 2007, replacing retiring President Walter Massey. Previously, Franklin served as Presidential Distinguished Professor of Social Ethics at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University and the leader of Emory's university wide, multi million dollar initiative, "Confronting the Human Condition and the Human Experience," that focuses on themes of religion, race, and global health. He also is a senior fellow in the Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Religion at the Emory University School of Law. Franklin's major fields of study include social ethics, psychology, and African-American religion. Listed among the "Honor Roll of Great Black Preachers," he has served on the faculties of his alma maters, The University of Chicago and Harvard Divinity Schools, Colgate Rochester Divinity School, and the Candler School of Theology where he gained a national reputation as director of Black Church Studies. In his former role as program officer in Human Rights and Social Justice at the Ford Foundation, he served as an advisor to the president of the foundation on issues related to future funding for religion and public life initiatives.
  • Cheryl Townsend Gilkes is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. She is also an ordained Baptist minister and serves as the Assistant Minister at Union Baptist Church in Boston.
  • Shayne Lee is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Houston. He earned a PhD in sociology (Northwestern University, 2002), two master's degrees, in religion and in biblical studies, a BA in theology, and an AA in social science. Lee's forthcoming book, *American Phenomenon: Bishop T. D. Jakes*, offers the ministry of a popular preacher and cultural icon as a prism through which we can learn more about contemporary religion and America. Lee's work also studies the striking interplay of politics and religion in black churches. His recent publications include the articles "The Structure of a Spiritual Revolution: Black Baptists and Women in Ministry," published in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (33:154-177), and "The Church of Faith and Freedom: African American Baptists and Social Change," published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (42:31-42). Lee teaches various courses, including African American Religion, Race and Ethnicity, Postmodern Society, and Sociology of Mass Communication.
  • Bishop Lewter's ministerial career began in 1973 while still a student at Oberlin College majoring in communications and religion. While on campus, Bishop Lewter directed the Oberlin Black Ensemble, served as chairman of Abusua and president of African-Heritage House. He also helped to find the Oberlin Voices of Christ. After graduating with a BA with honors in 1976, he entered Harvard University in pursuit of a master's of divinity degree. Bishop Lewter holds an earned doctorate of ministry degree from the United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. In Boston he served at the Union Baptist Church with Pastor Melvin G. Brown as an assistant pastor in charge of communications and drama, directing James Baldwin's "Amen Corner." In 1979 he graduated from Harvard Divinity School and spent additional time in a post-graduate study program at Oxford University. In 1985, Bishop Lewter responded to an invitation by the Oakley Baptist Church to come and assume the pastorate. His tenure is marked by the development of a live TV ministry, growth of the membership, and a church newspaper. In 1991, Bishop Lewter made history by leading the New Life Fellowship of Churches in the purchase of WO8BV TV8, Ohio's only African-American religious television station. The station has the participation of approximately 40 churches ranging from Columbus, New York, Chicago, and Atlanta. In February 1993, Bishop Lewter led the African American Religious Connection in the acquisition of their first radio station, WLGO 1170 AM, reaching 16 counties in central South Carolina.