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120523religionandsecurityinworldaffairs

May 23, 2012

Religion and Security in World Affairs

Religion and security considerations intersect in multiple, complex ways across the globe and are thus consequential for government policy, strategy, and engagement. Workshop participants explored the multi-dimensional context of religion on the world stage, including its role in the phases of conflict, terrorism, peace operations, and development. An enhanced perspective on these factors will inform what has largely been a neglected area in U.S. national security policy: how stakeholders can understand and address urgent contemporary security challenges with religious implications. The speakers, largely drawn from the Washington, DC policy community, included academics, specialists, and individuals with a wide range of government and security expertise. This workshop was an opportunity to better understand religion as a set of factors that cannot be ignored in international security and to overcome resistance to engaging this sensitive topic in foreign policy conversations. The workshop was co-sponsored by the Berkley Center, the Naval Post-Graduate School’s Center for Stabilization and Reconstruction Studies, and The Institute for Collaboration and Adaptive Security.
The two-and-a-half day workshop consisted of the following sessions.

Schedule

Wednesday, May 23
Evening Keynote Address & Reception by Andrew Natsios, former USAID Administrator

Thursday, May 24
Session Two: The Religious Dynamics of War and Peace
Panelists: Eric Patterson, Georgetown University; Dayne Nix, Naval War College; Heather Gregg, Naval Postgraduate School

Session Three: Religion and National Security
Panelists: Eric Patterson, Georgetown University; Timothy Shah, Georgetown University; Ambassador John Campbell, Council on Foreign Relations

Session Four: Understanding US International Religious Freedom (IRF) Policy
Panelists: Victoria Alvarado, Director, Office of International Religious Freedom, US Department of State; Thomas Farr, Georgetown University; Touqir Hussain, Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities

Session Five: Faith & Religious Actors in Peace Operations: USAID’s Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding Toolkit
Presenter: Marci Moberg, Conflict Program Assistant, Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation, US Agency for International Development

Friday, May 25
Session 6: Religion & Terrorism
Presenter: Paul Pillar, Georgetown University

Session 7: Religion & Development
Presenter: Katherine Marshall, Senior Fellow, Berkley Center, Georgetown University and Executive Director, World Faiths Development Dialogue

Session 8: Stabilization Operations in Highly Religious Societies: The Afghan Case
Facilitators: Eric Patterson, Dayne Nix, Vince Dreyer

Featuring

Andrew Natsios

Andrew Natsios

Andrew Natsios is an executive professor and Scowcroft Institute Fellow at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University for the 2012-2013 academic year. A leading practitioner in the field of development, he previously was a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy and advisor on International Development in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Prior to that he served as the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan. From 2001 to 2006, he was the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which oversees U.S. international economic development and humanitarian assistance. He has also served as the director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and as assistant administrator for the Bureau for Food and Humanitarian Assistance. From 1993 to 1998, Natsios was vice president of World Vision US, the largest faith-based non-governmental organization in the world. He is the author of Sudan, South Sudan and Darfur: What Everyone Needs to Know (2012), The Great North Korean Famine (2001), U.S. Foreign Policy and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1997), as well as numerous articles on foreign policy and humanitarian emergencies.

Eric Patterson

Eric Patterson

Eric Patterson, PhD is Senior Research Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. He also serves as Dean of the School of Government at Regent University in Virginia Beach, VA. His research and teaching focuses on religion and politics, ethics and international affairs, and just war theory in the context of contemporary conflict. He has written and edited nine books, including most recently: Ending Wars Well: Just War Thinking and Post-Conflict (Yale University Press, 2012), Ethics Beyond War's End (Georgetown University Press, 2012), and Politics in a Religious World: Toward a Religiously Literate U.S. Foreign Policy (Continuum, 2011). Other recent books include Debating the War of Ideas (with John Gallagher, 2009) and Just War Thinking: Morality and Pragmatism in the Struggle Against Contemporary Threats (Lexington Books, 2007).

Participants

Thomas Farr

Thomas Farr

Full List of Publications

Thomas F. Farr is Director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and a Visiting Associate Professor of Religion and International Affairs at Georgetown’s Edmund A....
Katherine Marshall

Katherine Marshall

Katherine Marshall is a Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, where she leads the Center's program on Religion and Global Development. After a long career in the development field, including several leadership...
Timothy Shah

Timothy Shah

Timothy Samuel Shah is Associate Director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center For Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Government Department, Georgetown University. He is a political...