Gustav Niebuhr is an associate professor of religion and the media, an interdisciplinary position in the College of Arts & Sciences and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Since June 2004, the “On Faith” panelist has directed the Religion & Society Program, an interdisciplinary undergraduate major. Niebuhr served as a visiting fellow/scholar in residence at the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University from December 2001 to 2003. Supported by a Ford Foundation Grant, he conducted research on religious diversity and interfaith collaboration. Prior to his academic tenure, Niebuhr was a national correspondent for The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, writing feature and analytical articles, and reporting on news about religion. He won several awards, including the 1993 Templeton Religion Writer of the Year Award from the Religion Newswriters Association. His articles have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, the Carnegie Reporter, the Christian Century, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and Beliefnet.com. An experienced public lecturer,Niebuhr most recently spoke at Auburn Theological Seminary in May 2006 on “Is ‘Tolerance’ a Social Good?” and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in May 2005, he lectured on “Religion as News.”

Daniel C. Dennett is the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, at Tufts University. His most recent book was Breaking the Spell (2006). The “On Faith” panelist also is Co-founder of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts, and has helped design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston. Dennett has written over 300 scholarly articles on various aspects of the mind in scientific journals. His first book, Content and Consciousness, appeared in 1969. It was followed by Brainstorms (1978), Elbow Room (1984), The Intentional Stance (1987), Consciousness Explained (1991), Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), Kinds of Minds (1996), and Brainchildren: A Collection of Essays 1984-1996 (1998). He co-edited The Mind's I with Douglas Hofstadter in 1981. Dennett completed his D.Phil degree work under Gilbert Ryle at Oxford in 1965, and has lectured at Harvard University, Pittsburgh and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science. In 1987 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He spends most of his summers on his farm in Maine, where he harvests blueberries, hay and timber, and makes Normandy cider wine, when he is not sailing. He is also a sculptor.

Wendy Doniger (O’Flaherty) is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. The “On Faith” panelist also teaches in the University’s Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations. She also serves on the University’s Committee on Social Thought. Doniger’s research and teaching center on Hinduism and mythology, with courses in the latter focusing on cross-cultural themes. Her courses in Hinduism cover a broad spectrum, including mythology, literature, law, gender, and ecology. After training as a dancer under George Balanchine and Martha Graham, Doniger earned two doctorates in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from Harvard and Oxford Universities. Before moving to the University of Chicago in 1978, she taught at Harvard, Oxford, the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and the University of California at Berkeley. She has served as president of the American Academy of Religion and of the Association of Asian Studies. She holds four honorary degrees and serves on the International Editorial Board of the Encyclopedia Britannica and on the board of Daedalus. In 2000, she was recognized by PEN Oakland for excellence in multi-cultural non-fiction for Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India (1998). That same year she received the British Academy’s Rose Mary Crawshay prize for her work on myths about sex: The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade (2000). Doniger has authored more than 20 other books, including translations of Sanskrit texts, among which are The Rig Veda: An Anthology (1981); Laws of Manu(1991) [with Brian K. Smith], and Kamasutra(2002) [with Sudhir Kakar]. She also wrote The Woman Who Pretended To Be Who She Was (2005) and Off with Her Head! The Denial of Women's Identity in Myth, Religion, and Culture [with Howard Eilberg Schwartz].

Irish-born John Dominic Crossan is a professor emeritus in the religious studies department at DePaul University in Chicago. Between 1950 and 1969, he was a member of a 13th-century Roman Catholic religious order, the Servites, and remained an ordained priest from 1957 to 1969. He has delivered lectures to secular and lay audiences from Scandinavia to Australia to Japan to South Africa. The On Faith panelist has authored 23 books and his writings have been translated into 11 languages. His work focuses on the historical Jesus, earliest Christianity and the historical Paul. Core titles include “The Historical Jesus,” “The Birth of Christianity” and “In Search of Paul,” co-written with archaeologist Jonathan L. Reed. Dr. Crossan’s next book, “God & Empire: Jesus Against Rome Then and Now,” is scheduled for publication in February. The professor earned a doctor of divinity degree at St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, Ireland and a humanities doctorate at Stetson University in Florida. The American Academy of Religion and DePaul and Stetson universities have recognized him with awards for scholarly excellence. His Web site is www.johndominiccrossan.com.