International Religious Freedom: Toward a Model of Transatlantic Cooperation, Private Sessions

Friday, October 9, 2015
9:00 a.m. - 4:00 a.m. EDT
Location: Copley Hall Copley Formal Lounge Map

Several European countries, the EU, and Canada have recently addressed religious freedom in their foreign policies. Given that US policy is already shaped by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) passed by Congress, the potential exists for transatlantic cooperation in promoting religious freedom. However, differences among Western democracies are significant. This dialogue—the first in a year-long series on IRFA policy—aimed to identify these differences and find ways to accommodate or overcome them in the urgent task of advancing international religious freedom.

The second day of the symposium featured private sessions and focused on the state of religious freedom outside of the West in areas including the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Asia.

This event was hosted by the Religious Freedom Project and was the second in a series of transatlantic dialogues sponsored by the British Council. It was generously sponsored by: the Institute for Studies of Religion; The Review of Faith & International Affairs; Institute on Culture, Religion & World Affairs; Center for Civil and Human Rights; University of Sussex; International Center for Law and Religion Studies; and Birks Forum on the World's Religions. The dialogue was also part of a semester-long exploration of the global future of governance, under the auspices of Georgetown University's Global Futures Initiative. Read more about the event and its sponsors here.

9:00-10:30 a.m. | The Broader Middle East and the Question of Violent Religious Extremism
Timur Kuran, Duke University (moderator)
Chris Seiple, Institute for Global Engagement
Nabil Fayyad, Syrian Delegation for Constitutional Reform
Farahnaz Ispahani, Woodrow Wilson Center

10:30-10:45 a.m. | Coffee Break 10:45-12:15 p.m. | India and the Far East
Rebecca Shah, Religious Freedom Project (moderator)
Faizan Mustafa, NALSAR University of Law
Liu Peng, Pu Shi Institute for Social Sciences
Mun’im Sirry, University of Notre Dame
Fenggang Yang, Purdue University

12:15-1:00 p.m. | Lunch 1:00-2:30 p.m. | Eastern Europe and Orthodoxy
Chris Seiple, Institute for Global Engagement (moderator)
Karrie Koesel, University of Notre Dame
Chris Marsh, US Army School of Advanced Military Studies
Viktor Yelensky, Member of Parliament of Ukraine

2:30-2:45 p.m. | Coffee Break

2:45-4:00 p.m. | Prospects for Transatlantic Cooperation: Policy Recommendations
Daniel Philpott, University of Notre Dame (moderator)
Cole Durham, International Center for Law and Religion Studies
Thomas Farr, Religious Freedom Project
Fabio Petito, University of Sussex
Knox Thames, US State Department Office of International Religious Freedom

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Participants

Cole Durham Toggle

About Cole Durham

W. Cole Durham, Jr. is emeritus professor of law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School of Brigham Young University, where he held the Susa Young Gates University Professorship. He is also founding director of the Clark Law School’s International Center for Law and Religion Studies (ICLRS) and president of the G20 Interfaith Association. He has been heavily involved in comparative law scholarship, with a special emphasis on comparative constitutional law, and is known for his contributions to protecting religious freedoms. He is co-editor of the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion and the Encyclopedia of Law and Religion (2016) and co-author of Law and Religion: National, International and Comparative Perspectives (second ed. 2019) and Religious Organizations and the Law (2024).

Cole Durham's Profile

Thomas Farr Toggle

About Thomas Farr

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.

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Mouhamad Nabil Fayyad Toggle

About Mouhamad Nabil Fayyad

Nabil Fayyad is a Syrian intellectual and journalist. His areas of study include languages, theology, pharmacy, and drug manufacturing. An expert in comparative religion and biblical criticism, he is the current chief of the Academic Center for Research. He has written over 25 books on comparative religion and worked on the short documentary “Fasting of Peoples” that premiered on the Syrian TV Station Sama.

Mouhamad Nabil Fayyad's Profile

Farahnaz Ispahani Toggle

About Farahnaz Ispahani

Farahnaz Ispahani has been a leading voice for women and religious minorities in Pakistan for over two decades, working as a journalist, member of Pakistan’s National Assembly, and most recently as a United States-based scholar. An advocate of Pakistan’s return to democracy during the military regime of Pervez Musharraf, she served as a spokesperson and international media coordinator for the Pakistan People’s Party, working alongside the late Benazir Bhutto. During her tenure in parliament (2008–2012), she was a member of the Foreign Affairs and Human Rights committees and the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus. In 2013 and 2014 she was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where she completed Purifying the Land of the Pure: Pakistan's Religious Minorities (2016), a book on the persecution of religious minorities in Pakistan. In 2012 she was listed among Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers, as well as Newsweek Pakistan’s Top 100 Women Who Matter.

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Karrie Koesel Toggle

About Karrie Koesel

Karrie J. Koesel is an associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. She previously taught at the University of Oregon. Koesel's expertise is in contemporary Chinese and Russian politics, authoritarianism, and religion and politics. She is the author of Religion and Authoritarianism: Cooperation, Conflict and the Consequences (2014), and her work has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, The China Quarterly, and Post-Soviet Affairs, among others. She has received grants from the John Templeton Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Fulbright program, International Research & Exchanges Board, Einaudi Center and East Asia Program at Cornell University, and the University of Oregon. Koesel was an associate scholar with the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project from 2014 to 2016. In 2009, she earned her Ph.D. from Cornell University and won the 2010 American Political Science Association Aaron Wildavsky Award for the best dissertation on religion and politics; she earned her M.A. from the University of Notre Dame and B.A. from Drake University.

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Timur Kuran Toggle

About Timur Kuran

Timur Kuran is Gorter Family Professor in Islamic Studies and professor of economics and political science at Duke University. Kuran’s research focuses on social change and the economic and political history and modernization of the Middle East. His books, which have been translated into several languages, include The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East (2010), Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism (2005), and Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification (1997). Kuran directs the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies and is a member of the executive committee of the International Economic Association. From 2014 to 2016, he was an associate scholar with the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project. After completing his secondary education in Turkey, Kuran received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and Ph.D. from Stanford University.

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Liu Peng Toggle

About Liu Peng

Liu Peng is the founder and director of the Beijing Pu Shi Institute for Social Sciences, a think tank created to foster the academic discussion of religion and rule of law in China. Liu has served vice chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Role of Faith.

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Christopher Marsh Toggle

About Christopher Marsh

Christopher Marsh is professor of National Security and Strategic Studies at the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies, where he teaches courses in the areas of operational art, counterinsurgency, international security and strategy, and morality and war. Previously, Marsh was a professor of political science and church-state studies at Baylor University, where he served as the director of Baylor’s J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies from 2006 to 2011. Marsh is the president of the Special Operations Research Association and editor of its professional journal, Special Operations Journal; he was also the past editor of the Journal of Church & State and an executive editor of Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization. Marsh is fluent in Chinese and Russian, and his research interests include religion and war, church-state relations, and Russian foreign and defense policy, particularly military cooperation between Russia and China.

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Related Publication

Report October 9, 2015

International Religious Freedom: Event Summary

This report summarizes an event examining U.S. foreign policy shaped by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), the possibility for transatlantic cooperation in promoting religious freedom, and how to identify and overcome religious freedom differences among Western democracies.