Lawrence Weschler was a staff writer at The New Yorker for over 20 years, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies. He has published numerous books on arts and politics, including A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers, his influential study of systematic political torture in South America and the stories of torture victims who unveiled the atrocities and sought justice. He is director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU and concurrently holds the position of artistic director of the Chicago Humanities Festival.

Elliot Lefkovitz was, for 29 years, education director at Am Yisrael congregation, where he continues to serve as education consultant. He is also Adjunct Professor of Holocaust Studies at Spertus Institute and Adjunct Professor of History at Loyola University of Chicago. He has taught at both of these institutions for more than 30 years. Dr. Lefkovitz has been involved in the production of five Holocaust related films and has interviewed a number of Holocaust survivors for The Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Project and the local Holocaust Museum and Education Center. He has published studies on modern Jewish history, Jewish education and film study guides.

D. Soyini Madison is Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University and Interim Director of the Program of African Studies. Professor Madison lived and worked in Ghana, as a Senior Fulbright Scholar conducting field research on the interconnections between traditional religion, political economy, and indigenous performance tactics. Her current book project, Acts of Activism: Rights and Radical Performances, is an examination of local Ghanaian activists and their performance tactics in the defense of human rights and social justice. Her other publications include Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance and The Woman That I Am: The Literature and Culture of Contemporary Women of Color.