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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. Walsh School of Foreign Service. A former American diplomat and leading authority on international religious freedom, Farr has published widely, including "Diplomacy in an Age of Faith" in Foreign Affairs (March/April 2008), and World of Faith and Freedom: Why International Religious Liberty is Vital to American National Security (Oxford University Press, 2008). Farr received his BA in history from Mercer University, and his Ph.D. in modern British and European history from the University of North Carolina.

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 scientist specializing in the relationship between religion and political freedom in theory, history, and contemporary practice. Shah is author, with Monica Duffy Toft and Daniel Philpott, of God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics (W.W. Norton, 2011) and is editor of an Oxford University Press series on “Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in the Global South” that has so far generated three volumes. His articles on religion and global politics have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Journal of Democracy, the Review of Politics, and elsewhere.

ASSOCIATE SCHOLARS

José Casanova

José Casanova is one of the world's top scholars in the sociology of religion. He is a professor at the Department of Sociology at Georgetown University, and heads the Berkley Center's Program on Globalization, Religion and the Secular. He has published works in a broad range of subjects, including religion and globalization, migration and religious pluralism, transnational religions, and sociological theory. His best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World (1994), has become a modern classic in the field and has been translated into five languages, including Arabic and Indonesian. In 2012, Casanova was awarded the Theology Prize from the Salzburger Hochschulwochen in recognition of life-long achievement in the field of theology.

Jean Bethke Elshtain

Jean Bethke Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she also has appointments in Political Science and the Committee on International Relations. Her works have focused on the intersections of religious ethics, war, the family, feminist theory, democracy, and modern political thought. Before arriving at Chicago in 1996, she taught at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Vanderbilt University, with visiting professor positions at Oberlin College, Yale University, and Harvard University. Among her hundreds of publications are Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (2003) and Who Are We? Critical Reflections, Hopeful Possibilities (2000); her 2006 Gifford lectures were published under the title Sovereignties: God, State, and Self (2008). Elshtain earned her BA and MA from Colorado State University and a PhD in politics from Brandeis University in 1973.

William Inboden

William Inboden is Assistant Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Distinguished Scholar at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas-Austin. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Previously he served as Senior Vice President of the Legatum Institute and as Senior Director for Strategic Planning on the National Security Council at the White House. Inboden also worked at the Department of State as a Member of the Policy Planning Staff and a Special Advisor in the Office of International Religious Freedom. He is the author of Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960: The Soul of Containment (2008) and a contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine. Inboden received his PhD, MPhil, and MA degrees in history from Yale University, and his AB from Stanford University.

David Novak

David Novak holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies as Professor of the Study of Religion and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto since 1997. He is a member of The Centre for Ethics, a part of the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University College. From 1997 to 2002 he also was Director of the Jewish Studies Programme. In 2006 he received the Dean's Award for Excellence. From 1989 to 1997 he was the Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia. Previously he taught at Oklahoma City University, Old Dominion University, the New School for Social Research, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Baruch College of the City University of New York. From 1966 to 1969 he was Jewish Chaplain to St. Elizabeth's Hospital, National Institute of Mental Health, in Washington, D.C. From 1966 to 1989 he served as a pulpit rabbi in several communities in the United States.

Daniel Philpott

Daniel Philpott is exploring Catholic and Protestant contributions to democracy from the years 1800-2000 for the Christianity and Freedom Project. Dr. Philpott is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Philpott is the author of Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations (Princeton 2001) and a range of articles on religion and international affairs, sovereignty, religious freedom and foreign policy, and the ethics of self-determination. He is currently working on a book titled Just and Unjust Peace: A Political Ethic of Reconciliation that proposes a set of ethics for countries dealing with past injustices. As a Senior Associate at the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy in Washington, DC, he has sought to promote faith-based reconciliation in Kashmir since 2000.

Mona Siddiqui

Mona Siddiqui is OBE is Professor of Islamic and Inter-religious Studies and Assistant Principal for Religion and Society at the University of Edinburgh. She researches classical Islamic law, contemporary law and ethics, and Christian-Muslim relations. Siddiqui is the chair of the BBC's Scottish Religious Advisory Committee and is a regular broadcaster and commentator on radio and other media. She is a member of the Commission on Scottish Devolution and the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Islam-West Dialogue. Her publications include How to Read the Qur’an (2007), Islam (2010), The Good Muslim (2012), and Christians, Muslims and Jesus (2013), as well as numerous articles, essays, and opinion pieces. Siddiqui received her PhD from the University of Manchester in 1992 and holds three honorary doctorates.

Monica Duffy Toft

Monica Duffy Toft is Associate Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Director of the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Political Science and Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Santa Barbara, summa cum laude. Professor Toft was a research intern at the RAND Corporation and served in the U.S. Army in southern Germany as a Russian linguist for four years. She was the assistant director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies from 1999-2006. Her research interests include international relations, religion, nationalism and ethnic conflict, civil and interstate wars, the relationship between demography and national security, and military and strategic planning.

Roger Trigg

Roger Trigg, of St Cross College, Oxford, is Senior Research Fellow in the Ian Ramsey Centre, University of Oxford, and a member of both the University's Faculties of Philosophy and of Theology and Religion. From 2007 to 2011, he served as principal investigator (with Justin Barrett) in a major research project on the cognitive science of religion, based in Oxford. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. Trigg has been President of the British Society for Philosophy of Religion (1993-6) and chaired the National Committee for Philosophy (1997-2003) and its successor organization, the British Philosophical Association (2003-4). He was also President of the European Society for Philosophy of Religion from 2008-10. In addition, he holds membership in the Council of the European Society for Science and Religion and International Society for Science and Religion. His recent publications include Morality Matters (2004), Religion in Public Life: Must Faith be Privatized? (2007), and Equality, Freedom and Religion (2011); he is also the author of a 2010 report “Free to Believe? Religious Freedom in a Liberal Society,” published by Theos. His most recent book on 'Religious Diversity: Philosophical and Political Dimensions' is soon to be published by Cambridge University Press.

PROJECT STAFF

A.J. Nolte

A.J. Nolte joined the RFP at the beginning of October 2012, after two years as a research assistant at the Center for Complex Operations, National Defense University. Previously, he worked for Ideal Innovations, a defense contracting firm based in Arlington, Virginia. Currently a Ph.D. candidate in World Politics at the Catholic University of America (CUA), A.J. obtained his M.A. from CUA in 2009. He received a B.A. in Politics from Messiah College in 2006 and studied at Oxford University’s Wycliffe Hall while at Messiah.

Kyle Vander Meulen

Kyle Vander Meulen joined the Berkley Center in January 2011. Before coming to the Center, he completed his master's studies in Divinity at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Kyle has interned for former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and for three years worked as an assistant to Michael Novak at the American Enterprise Institute. He holds a B.A. in Religion with a Secondary Field in Public Health from the George Washington University.