Berkley Center

Shaun Casey is a senior fellow with the Luce Project on Religion and Its Publics at the University of Virginia and a Pulaski Institution non-resident fellow. He served as director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and professor of the practice in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University from 2017 to 2021. He previously was U.S. special representative for religion and global affairs and director of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs. He has also served as professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC, and held positions at the Center for American Progress and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Casey has written on the ethics of the war in Iraq, as well the role of religion in American presidential politics. He is the author of The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960 (2009) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Political Theology (forthcoming, with Michael Kessler); he is writing a book on ethics and international politics tentatively titled Niebuhr’s Children. Casey holds a B.A. from Abilene Christian University, MPA from Harvard Kennedy School, and M.Div. and Th.D. in religion and society from Harvard Divinity School.

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad is Professor of the History of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding in Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Haddad's fields of expertise include twentieth-century Islam; intellectual, social and political history in the Arab world; and Islam in North America and the West. Haddad's most recent research focuses on Muslims in the West and Islamic revolutionary movements. She previously taught a class supported through the Berkley Center's Doyle Seminars project. Haddad is author or editor of numerous books, including Becoming American? The Forging of Arab and Muslim Identity in Pluralist America (2011), Muslim Women in America: The Challenge of Islamic Identity Today (2006/2011), Muslim Minorities in the West: Visible and Invisible (2002), and Islam, Gender and Social Change (1998, ed. with John Esposito). She holds a B.A. from Beirut College For Women, MRE from Boston University, M.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Ph.D. from Hartford Seminary.

Paul L. Heck is a professor of Islamic studies in Georgetown University’s Department of Theology and the founding director of the Study of Religions Across Civilizations. His scholarly interests focus on the history of skepticism in Islam, mysticism and the role of spirituality in Muslim society, views on martyrdom in the three monotheist traditions, the phenomenon of theo-humanism, the emergent field of comparative scripture, and issues in political theology. Heck previously taught a class supported through the Berkley Center's Doyle Seminars project. He is the author of Political Theology and Islam: From the Rise of Empire to the Modern State (2023); Skepticism in Classical Islam: Moments of Confusion (2013); and Common Ground: Islam, Christianity and Religious Pluralism (2009). Heck received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Imam Yayha Hendi is the Muslim chaplain at Georgetown University, the first American university to hire a full-time Muslim chaplain. A consistent advocate for interfaith understanding, Hendi is the founder and president of Clergy Beyond Borders and Imams for Universe, Dignity, Human Rights and Dialogue. He holds a master's degree in comparative religions from Hartford Seminary and is currently working on his Ph.D. in comparative religion at Georgetown.

Rev. David Hollenbach, S.J., is the Pedro Arrupe Distinguished Research Professor in the Walsh School of Foreign Service; a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs; and an affiliated professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University. His teaching and research deal with human rights, religious and ethical responses to humanitarian crises, and religion in political life from the standpoint of Catholic social thought, theology, and the social sciences. His books include Human Rights in a Divided World: Catholicism as a Living Tradition (2024), Humanity in Crisis: Ethical and Religious Response to Refugees (2019), Driven from Home: Protecting the Rights of Forced Migrants (2010) The Global Face of Public Faith: Politics, Human Rights, and Christian Ethics (2003), and The Common Good and Christian Ethics (2002). He has taught often at Hekima University College in Nairobi, Kenya, and he collaborates with Jesuit Refugee Service. From 2020 to 2022 he is a distinguished research associate with the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Hollenbach is also a research associate with the Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection in Zambia. Hollenbach is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Azza Karam is a member of the United Nations’ Secretary General High Level Advisory Board on Multilateralism and president and CEO of Lead Integrity. She is secretary general emerita of Religions for Peace International and previously was a professor of religion and development at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. She served for nearly two decades in the United Nations (in UNDP and UNFPA), where she coordinated the Arab Human Development Reports, co-founded and chaired the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Religion (with over 20 UN system bodies), and founded and convened its Multi-Faith Advisory Council. Karam created and facilitated the peer-to-peer “Strategic Learning Exchanges” on religion, development, and diplomacy. Karam is a member of the Working Group on Child Rights and Family Values, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Zia Makhdoom serves as founder and executive director of MakeSpace, an Islamic cultural hub and learning center in Washington, D.C. The main focus of his work has been to make the message of Islam relevant and practical to youth, young professionals, and others in the community. Makhdoom has served the Muslim community of the Washington metropolitan area as an imam, khatib, teacher, community organizer, and youth counselor for more than a decade. Prior to this, Makhdoom studied Islam and the Qur’an in Pakistan and received a degree in computer science from George Mason University.

Peter Mandaville is a professor of international affairs at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, where he also serves as the director of the AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies. He was a Berkley Center senior research fellow from April 2018 to April 2024 and from 2022 to 2024 served as a senior advisor on religion and inclusive societies at the United States Institute of Peace. Previous government experience includes serving as a member of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Staff (2011-2012) and as a senior advisor in the department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs (2015-2016). He has also been a visiting senior fellow at the Pew Research Center. His research focuses on the intersection of religion and international affairs, with a primary focus on Islam and the Muslim world. His publications include, among others, The Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power: How States Use Religion in Foreign Policy (2023),  Wahhabism and the World (2022), Islam and Politics (2014, 2020), Global Political Islam (2007), and Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma (2001). He holds degrees from the University of St. Andrews and the University of Kent and has studied at the American University in Cairo.