- Touraj Atabaki is chair of Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia at Leiden University, the oldest university in the Netherlands. Atabaki also heads the Middle East and Central Asia Desk at the International Institute of Social History.

- Charles Kurzman is co-director of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations and sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

- Salim Tamari is a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon, and the former director of its affiliated Institute of Jerusalem Studies. He is editor of Jerusalem Quarterly and Hawliyyat al Quds and a professor of sociology at Birzeit University in Palestine.

- John O. Voll is associate director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. He is also an Islamic history professor at Georgetown and is a past president of the Middle East Studies Association, as well as the New England Historical Association.