Dr. Janet Afary has a Ph.D. in Modern Middle East History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she received the Horace H. Rackham Distinguished Dissertation Award. Her dissertation also received the annual award for Best Dissertation of the Year from the Foundation for Iranian Studies. She is an Associate Professor of History and Women's Studies (Joint Appointment), and an affiliate Associate Professor of Political Science, at Purdue University. In 2006 Dr. Afary was appointed University Faculty Scholar by Purdue’s President. Dr. Afary is author of the forthcoming book, Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Her previous publications include: The Iranian Constitutional Revolution: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (N. Y.: Columbia UP, 1996), which was also translated and published in Iran (Bisotoun, 2000); and (with Kevin B. Anderson) Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (University of Chicago Press, 2005). This book received the Latifeh Yarshater Award for Best Book in Iranian Women's Studies and was a first runner-up for the book award from the Association for Humanist Sociology. Dr. Afary has also received year-long fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS). She has served as president of the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS-MESA, 2004-2006); the Association for Middle East Women's Studies (AMEWS-MESA, 2004-2005), and the Coordinating Council for Women in History of the American Historical Association (CCWH-AHA, 2001-2003).

Professor Browning joined the UNC-CH faculty in the Fall of 1999. His publications include: Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942 (2004); Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992); The Path to Genocide (1992); Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution (1985); and The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office (1978). In the Spring of 1999, he gave the George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures at Cambridge University, which have been published under the title Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers (2000). In the spring of 2001, he delivered the first George Mosse Lectures at the University of Wisconsin, which have been published as Collected Memories: Holocaust History and Postwar Testimony. He is also working on a case study of the Jewish factory slave labor camps in Starachowice in central Poland, based on nearly 265 survivor testimonies.

France A. Córdova became the eleventh president of Purdue University on July 16, 2007. Prior to joining Purdue, Córdova served as Chancellor at the University of California (UC) Riverside from 2002-2007. She also was Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UC Riverside. An internationally recognized astrophysicist, Córdova has also served as professor of Physics and Vice-Chancellor for Research at UC Santa Barbara. Before joining UC Santa Barbara in 1996, she was Chief Scientist at NASA from 1993 to 1996, serving as the primary scientific advisor to the NASA administrator and the principal interface between NASA headquarters and the broader scientific community.

Córdova headed the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University from 1989 to 1993. She was a member of the staff of the Space Astronomy and Astrophysics Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1979 to 1989, where she also served as Deputy Group Leader.

Córdova's scientific career contributions have been in the areas of observational and experimental astrophysics, multi-spectral research on x-ray and gamma ray sources, and space-borne instrumentation. She has published more than 150 scientific papers, and has a current experiment flying on the European Space Agency's X-Ray Multi-Mirror Mission. She is the winner of NASA's highest honor, the Distinguished Service Medal, and was recognized as a 2000 Kilby Laureate, for "contributions to society through science, technology, innovation, invention, and education." She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Association for Women In Science (AWIS). In September 2007, she was named to the board of directors of BioCrossroads, Indiana's initiative to grow the life sciences through a public-private collaboration that supports the region's research and corporate strengths while encouraging new business development.

The oldest of twelve children, Córdova attended high school in La Puente, California, east of Los Angeles. She then entered Stanford University, where she graduated cum laude with a bachelor's degree in English, and, among other activities, conducted anthropological field work in a Zapotec Indian pueblo in Oaxaca, Mexico. She earned a PhD in Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1979. In 1997, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.

Sarah Fronczek is the Fine Arts Specialist for the Indiana Department of Education. An honors graduate of Butler University with a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance and a Master of Music in Education, she finds her work at the Department a fulfilling progression of her experiences as a performing artist, music educator, private piano instructor, educational consultant, and staff member with arts education organizations. During her years as a teacher in public school and collegiate settings, she has been an advocate for curriculum integration by her own instructional approach and by developing significant connections with other disciplines.

As Fine Arts Specialist for the Department of Education, Sarah is responsible for creating, implementing, and supporting programs and activities related to the K-12 curriculum in music, visual art, theatre, and dance. This includes developing and revising standards and related assessments; promoting and providing professional development opportunities for teachers; generating strategies and materials that reflect best practice, interdisciplinary learning, and use of technology in arts education; communicating state and national policies as related to the arts; and working closely with community, state, and national arts organizations.

Sarah is the Midwest regional representative for the State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education, and a member of the Music Educators National Conference, Indiana Music Education Association, Arts Education Partnership, Pi Kappa Lambda Music Honor Society, Phi Kappa Phi Scholastic Honorary, Sigma Alpha Iota National Music Sorority, and Tri Kappa Service Sorority.

Her responsibilities at the Department of Education also include serving as International Baccalaureate Coordinator, representative to the executive board of the Indiana Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, representative to the Indiana Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, and the Indiana Teacher of the Year committee. In her work at the Department, she specializes in professional development for teachers focusing on arts and literacy, integrated standards-based curriculum, and cross disciplinary approaches to Holocaust education. She focuses her efforts at the state level on helping to sustain and encourage arts education programs throughout Indiana.

Acclaimed Grammy-nominated pianist Mona Golabek has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New Philharmonica (London), the National Symphony and the Tokyo Philharmonic including performances at the Hollywood Bowl, The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center and London's Festival Hall, with conductors Zubin Mehta, Andre Previn, Michael Tilson Thomas, Leonard Slatkin and David Zinman. The New York Times has written "superior music making" while The Boston Globe and The London Times have called her "enormously talented...a knockout pianist."

Ms. Golabek has been the subject of various PBS television specials, including More than the Music, a concert videotaped at a women's prison and Concerto for Mona, featuring the pianist and Zubin Mehta in the world premiere of William Kraft's Piano Concerto and is the host and creator of the nationally syndicated radio program, The Romantic Hours. "A different breed of radio" writes the Pittsburgh Post. "The Voice of Romance" says the Los Angeles Times. The show is heard on more than 125 stations and on XM Satellite Radio.

A prolific recording artist and producer, the Grammy nominated pianist has recorded the best-selling album, Saint-Saens' "Carnival of the Animals," with her sister Renee Golabek-Kaye and the voices of Audrey Hepburn, Ted Danson, Lily Tomlin and Dudley Moore. She recently released the critically acclaimed recording Babar the Elephant and Mother Goose Suite with the New Zealand Symphony and narration by Meryl Streep. Mona Golabek was taught by her mother, Lisa Jura Golabek, a graduate of the London Royal Academy of Music. her father, Michel Golabek, received the Croix de Guerre during the French resistance. Their life story is the subject of a biography, The Children of Willesden Lane, published by Warner Books.

Joseph Haberer left Germany on the first Kindertransport to England in December 1938 and lived in England until 1946, when he emigrated to the United States. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Purdue University, Director Emeritus of the Purdue Jewish Studies Program and Founding Editor of Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies. He is also the President of the Midwest Chapter of the Kindertransport Association (KTA).

Michael Hovey is Director of the Office for Catholic Social Teaching in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit, and also serves as the Assistant Advisor for Ecumenical and Interfaith Affairs for the archdiocese.

Michael's interest in social justice and peace began during his high school seminary years in Detroit, at the time of the 1967 riot/uprising. Following his freshman year at University of Detroit, and faced with the military draft, he opted to join the U.S. Navy.

Five years later, following several very moving visits to Nagasaki, Japan, he requested and received an honorable discharge as a conscientious objector (1976). Soon after his discharge, he entered the Maryknoll Missioners community, and served as a Brother candidate for five years (1977-82). During that time, he ministered in the South Bronx, New York, studied Spanish in Cochabamba, Bolivia for six months, and engaged in pastoral work in a shantytown in Lima, Peru for a year and a half.

Michael went on to obtain a B.A. in Peace Studies from Manhattan College in New York City (1983) and a Master of Theological Studies degree in Christian Social Ethics from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1985). He served as Executive Director of the Pax Christi Center on Conscience and War in Cambridge from 1985-1990, where he worked with the late Gordon C. Zahn, who "discovered" the story of Blessed Franz Jägerstätter and wrote In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter. It was then that Michael became acquainted with Franz's story, and he visited the martyr's widow, Franziska, twice with Zahn in Austria. In 1990, Michael entered Ph.D. studies in Social Science at Syracuse University, where he also earned an M.A. degree in Political Science (1994). His dissertation research examined the role played by international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at the United Nations in promoting human rights, specifically the human right of conscientious objection to military service.

From 1995-2002, he was a lay campus minister and coordinator of Peace and Justice Education at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, where he also served as an adjunct professor of peace and justice studies. When Iona College celebrated the 20th anniversary of its Peace and Justice Education program in 1998, Michael designed and hosted a "National Symposium on Peace and Justice Education on the Catholic Campus" for 200 participants from 60 Catholic colleges and universities. From 2002-2003, Michael served as Executive Director of Hague Appeal for Peace, an international peace and justice organization that works in collaboration with the United Nations.

A member of the Catholic peace movement, Pax Christi, since 1976, Michael was twice elected to the National Council of Pax Christi USA (1987-1993) and served as principal NGO representative for Pax Christi International at United Nations Headquarters in New York City (1999-2003). He has participated in earlier representations of the movement, including at a Christian- Jewish Dialogue in (West) Berlin in 1989, on a fact-finding tour of Palestina, Israel and Jordan in 1990, at the 50th anniversary commemorations of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in those cities in 1995, and at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland in 1993, 2001 and 2002.

Michael's travels in the Navy, as a missioner and peace educator have taken him to 27 countries in Asia, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. He is delighted to join with others who pray and work for the realization of the Psalmist's dream: "Kindness and Truth shall meet; Justice and Peace shall kiss." (Psalm 85)

Dr. Debra Renee Kaufman is Professor of Sociology and Matthews Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University in Boston. She received her doctorate in sociology from Cornell University and also holds degrees from the University of Michigan. Dr. Kaufman is the author of Rachel's Daughters: Newly Orthodox Jewish Women (1991, Rutgers University Press) and Achievement and Women: Challenging the Assumptions (1992, The Free Press), along with numerous articles and book chapters. Her most recent book is a co-edited volume, From the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Holocaust Denial Trials: Challenging the Media, Law, and the Academy (2007, Vallentine Mitchell). Previously, she has been Director of Jewish Studies and Director of Women's Studies at Northeastern, and has served on the Editorial Board of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Judaism. She is also the past Vice President of the Eastern Sociological Society.

Rabbi Audrey S. Pollack is the Rabbi of Temple Israel, West Lafayette. Prior to accepting the pulpit of Temple Israel in 2002, Rabbi Pollack served pulpits in Denver, Colorado, and Glencoe, Illinois as associate rabbi. Rabbi Pollack received her B.A. in Comparative Religion from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and was ordained as a rabbi from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati in 1994 where she also earned a Masters Degree in Hebrew Letters. Her congregational work includes teaching, counseling, pastoral care, and community outreach. Rabbi Pollack’s teaching experience and counseling credentials are extensive and she has served on the regional and executive boards of several rabbinic councils and networks. In addition to her congregational work, Rabbi Pollack writes feminist midrash and creative liturgy, and enjoys playing the guitar and singing. Several of her feminist commentaries appear in Beginning the Journey: A Women's Commentary on the Torah, published by the Women of Reform Judaism and in A Women's Torah Commentary: 54 Women Rabbis On the Weekly Torah Portions, published by Jewish Lights Publishing.

Sarah Powley is the English Department Chair at McCutcheon High School in Lafayette, Indiana, and the High School Language Arts Chair for the Tippecanoe School Corporation. She has taught in the Tippecanoe School Corporation for 27 years. Sarah co-sponsors The International Club, an extra-curricular program that provides cross-cultural learning experiences and opportunities to participate in international service projects.

Sarah served as a consultant in the development of curriculum materials for The Children of Willesden Lane. She has made numerous presentations on teaching this book at national conferences and at Indiana Department of Education workshops. In 2006, Sarah was the recipient of a Lilly Teacher Creativity Fellowship Award to study the causes of the Rwandan genocide and to compare the events in Rwanda with the Holocaust and other genocides of the 20th century. She traveled to Rwanda in 2006; since then, she has written about the pattern of genocide and, with her students, presented a workshop for educators at the 2007 Greater Lafayette Holocaust Remembrance Conference.

She is a graduate of DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, and completed her M.S. in English Education at Purdue University. She was the 1992 Indiana Teacher of the Year, Runner-Up. In 1993, she received the Milken Family Foundation National Educator Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2002, she was the recipient of the Crystal Apple Award from the School of Education at Purdue University.

Thomas Ryba is Notre Dame Theologian-in-Residence at the Saint Thomas Aquinas Catholic Center at Purdue University, as well as Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor of Jewish Studies at Purdue University.  Author of The Essence of Phenomenology and Its Meaning for the Scientific Study of Religion (1991) and over thirty  five articles on theology, philosophical theology and theories of religion, Ryba is principal editor of The Comity and Grace of Method (2004) and is at work on two books: the first—tentatively entitled Optics of the Anti-Christ—will treat the relationship between evil, appearance and reality; then second—untitled—is on the analogy between Roman Catholic dogma and scientific discourse.  In 1999, Ryba was a recipient of a Templeton Foundation grant for his course “Homologies and Heterologies in the Development of Theology and Science” and, in May, 2004, became the North American editor of the journal, Religion (which was founded in the 70’s by Ninian Smart).

Originally majoring in Philosophy and Anthropology at Northwestern (Honors BA, Philosophy 1975), he completed his MA and PhD (1986) in the History and Literature of Religions under Edmund Perry, there.   His first teaching position was as assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University from 1986 through 1990. In 1990, he became the Notre Dame Theologian-in-Residence at the Saint Thomas Aquinas Center at Purdue, where he now directs (and teaches in) the University of Notre Dame satellite MA program in Theology at Purdue.  Since coming to St. Tom’s he has taught over thirty eight different classes ranging over theology, Eastern religions and the relations between science and theology.

His primary interests are the history of ideas and the historical relations between theology, religion, philosophy, science and ideology.

David Shaheed has been involved with interfaith dialogue for nearly twenty-five years. He was a member of Imam W. Deen Mohammed's delegation to Rome, Italy as Muslim friends of the Focolare in June 1998 and also in October 1999. He is also former Chairperson of the Interfaith Alliance of Indianapolis and a member of the Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis.

David Shaheed was the Facilitator for the Islamic Affairs Council to the American Society of Muslims. He has served as an Assistant Imam in Indianapolis, Convenor of Imams of the Midwest Region and one of the founding members of the Coalition for Good Government. Shaheed was the producer of a weekly news and Islamic perspectives television program, Al-Islam in America. He was a consultant to the Lilly Endowment on the Growth of Al-Islam in America. He made pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia in 1987 and in February 2003.

Born in Los Angeles Judge Shaheed holds a J.D. from Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis and a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Evansville. He has held many positions as lecturer and faculty member.