Berkley Center

Aziz Abu Sarah is the cofounder of MEJDI Tours, a social enterprise that offers tours in areas experiencing cultural conflict. He previously was a National Geographic Explorer, a 2014 TED Fellow, and the executive director of George Mason University’s Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution.

Aaron Barnea is a member of the board of the Parents Circle-Families Forum, having joined the organization following the death of his youngest son Noam, who was serving in the Israeli Army, in 1999. He has been a peace activist and involved in the Israeli labour movement for many years.

John J. DeGioia is the forty-eighth president of Georgetown University. For nearly four decades, DeGioia has worked to define and strengthen Georgetown University as a premier institution for education and research. As the first lay president of a Jesuit university he places emphasis on sustaining and strengthening Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit identity and its responsibility to serve as a voice and an instrument for justice. He has also been an advocate for interreligious dialogue. He continues to teach an Ignatius Seminar each fall, part of a program offering first year students the opportunity to encounter unique courses of study inspired by the Jesuit educational theme of cura personalis (“care for the whole person”). He is a member of the Order of Malta, a lay religious order of the Roman Catholic Church dedicated to serving the sick and the poor. Before becoming president, DeGioia served at Georgetown as senior vice president, responsible for university-wide operations, and dean of student affairs. DeGioia earned his B.A. and Ph.D at Georgetown University.

The Right Reverend Jane Holmes Dixon served as Episcopal bishop of Washington, pro tempore, from 2001 until she retired in 2002. Consecrated in 1992 as suffragan bishop of Washington, she was the second woman to become bishop in the Episcopal Church and third in the worldwide Anglican Communion. She died in 2012.

Chester Gillis is a professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies who served as the dean of Georgetown College from 2008 to 2017. An expert on the U.S. Catholic Church, the history of Catholicism, and the papacy, including Pope Benedict XVI, his other areas of expertise include interfaith dialogue and religious pluralism. Gillis was the initial holder of the Amaturo Chair in Catholic Studies and was a Berkley Center research fellow who directed the center's Program on the Church and Interreligious Dialogue; in 2008, he was the faculty mentor for the Berkley Center's undergraduate fellows program. Gillis has served on the faculty of Georgetown University since 1988. His publications include, among others, Catholic Faith in America (2003/2012), The Political Papacy (2005), and Pluralism: A New Paradigm for Theology (1993). He holds degrees in philosophy and religious studies from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Rabbi Gary Greenebaum is the former U.S. director for interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and held the position of western regional director at the AJC. He was awarded the French National Order of Merit in April 2006. He is currently an executive coach and consultant.

Radwan A. Masmoudi is founding president of the Center of the Study of Islam & Democracy, a Washington-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting freedom, democracy, and good governance in the Arab and Muslim world, as well as improving relations between the United States and the Muslim world. 

Fathali Moghaddam is professor in the Department of Psychology and a faculty fellow at the Berkley Center. He previously was director of the Conflict Resolution Program in Georgetown's Department of Government. Moghaddam's expertise include culture and intergroup conflict, with a particular focus on the psychology of globalization, radicalization, human rights and duties, and terrorism. His recent publications include The Psychology of Democracy (2015), The Psychology of Dictatorship (2013), Psychology for the Third Millennium (2012, with Rom Harre), The New Global Insecurity (2010), and Multiculturalism and Intergroup Relations: Psychological Implications for Democracy in Global Context (2008), as well as numerous other books, journal articles, and book chapters. He is the editor of Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. He was awarded the Outstanding International Psychologist Award for 2012 from the American Psychological Association’s Division of International Psychology. He holds a B.A. from the University of Liverpool and M.Sc. and Ph.D from the University of Surrey, England.