Berkley Center

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.

Ambassador Touqir Hussain is a research fellow at George Washington University and adjunct professor at Georgetown University and University of Virginia. Hussain is a former senior diplomat from Pakistan, with expertise on issues including South Asian security, political Islam, terrorism, and U.S. relations with the Islamic world. Hussain held senior positions in the Pakistani Foreign Office, and served as the diplomatic advisor to the Pakistani Prime Minister from 1996 to 1998. He then served as Ambassador to Brazil (1990-1993), Spain (1993-1995), and Japan (1998-2003). He also served as a Senior Fellow at the US Institute of Peace from 2004 to 2005.

Katherine Marshall, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, leads the center’s work on religion and global development. She is also a professor of the practice of development, conflict, and religion in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, teaching diverse courses on the ethics of development work and mentoring students at many levels. She helped to create and now serves as the executive director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, an NGO that works to enhance bridges between different sectors and institutions. In September 2022, she was appointed as a member of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Marshall has five decades of experience on a variety of development issues in Africa, Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East, particularly those facing the world’s poorest countries. She was a World Bank officer from 1971 to 2006, and she led the World Bank’s faith and ethics initiative between 2000 and 2006. Marshall is a member of the Working Group on Child Rights and Family Values and the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, both part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Eric Patterson serves as president of the Religious Freedom Institute and is a research fellow with the Georgetown University Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. He previously served as dean of the School of Government at Regent University, and before that, as associate director at the Berkley Center. He is an expert in two overlapping areas: the ethics of war and peace, and global religious trends and religious freedom policy. These two areas routinely intersect, such as in building post-conflict systems that represent diverse ethnoreligious factions, understanding the religious factors in conflict, and measuring U.S. democracy promotion efforts. His government experience includes time at the U.S. State Department, service as a White House Fellow, and over 20 years as an Air National Guard commander. He is the author or editor of 20 books, including Politics in a Religious World: Toward a Religious Informed U.S. Foreign Policy (2011).

Professor Pillar is Director of Graduate Studies and a core faculty member of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown’s Center for Peace and Security Studies. He retired in 2005 from a 28-year career in the U.S. intelligence community. His last position was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. He served as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. He has been Executive Assistant to CIA's Deputy Director for Intelligence and Executive Assistant to Director of Central Intelligence William Webster, headed the Assessments and Information Group of the DCI Counterterrorist Center, and was deputy chief of the center. He was a Federal Executive Fellow at the Brookings Institution in 1999-2000. Professor Pillar is a retired officer in the U.S. Army Reserve and served on active duty in 1971-1973, including a tour of duty in Vietnam.