Berkley Center

Engy Abdelkader is based at Rutgers University, where her teaching and research explores religion, race, and gender at the intersection of law, politics, and society. Abdelkader is also a fellow at the Public Religion Research Institute and the German Marshall Fund of the United States. 

Helen M. Alvaré is a professor of law at the George Mason University's Antonin Scalia School of Law, where she researches and writes about the intersection of law with marriage, parenting, non-marital households, and the First Amendment religion clauses. She previously worked in the Office of General Counsel and the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Rabbi Andrew Baker is director of international Jewish affairs for the American Jewish Committee. He has served as the personal representative on combating anti-Semitism of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Chairperson-in-Office since January 2009.

Elizabeth K. Cassidy is the director of international law and policy at the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), where she has worked since 2007. Before USCIRF, Cassidy was assistant executive director of UN Watch, a non-governmental organization in Geneva, Switzerland. She also worked as a legal consultant to several human rights NGOs in Windhoek, Namibia.

Thomas F. Farr is president emeritus of the Religious Freedom Institute, an NGO committed to achieving worldwide acceptance of religious liberty. Farr is also a senior fellow at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion. From 2006 to 2018 he was an associate professor of the practice of religion and world affairs at Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and senior fellow at the Berkley Center; during 2017 and 2018 he was director of the Religious Freedom Research Project and from 2011 to 2016 director of the Religious Freedom Project, both at the Berkley Center. After a distinguished career in the U.S. Army and the Foreign Service—which included teaching at West Point and the Air Force Academy, serving as an advisor during U.S.-Soviet arms control talks in Geneva, and leading an interagency task force on verification provisions for the START II Treaty—Farr served as the first director of the U.S. State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom from 1999 to 2003.

Richard T. Foltin is director of national and legislative affairs in the American Jewish Committee's Office of Government and International Affairs in Washington, DC. Foltin is responsible for directing AJC policy and legislative activities in the areas of religious liberty, civil rights, immigration, and combating anti-Israel boycott efforts and domestic anti-Semitism.

Brian Grim is president of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation and a leading expert on the socioeconomic impact of restrictions on religious freedom and international religious demography. Grim served as 2015-2016 chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Role of Faith and works closely with the Business for Peace platform of the United Nations Global Compact. From 2006 to 2014 Grim directed the largest social science effort to collect and analyze global data on religion at the Pew Research Center. He also worked for two decades as an educator in the former Soviet Union, China, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. He is author of numerous articles and books, including The Price of Freedom Denied (2010), and writes the Weekly Number blog. He was an associate scholar with the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project from 2014 to 2016. Grim holds a doctorate from the Pennsylvania State University.

Aisha Rahman is of counsel at the Baig Firm in Atlanta and president of Sugarlimb Consulting. From 2011 to 2017 she was executive director of KARAMAH: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights and the head of the organization’s Family Law Division.