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.

David Taylor is an international affairs analyst with a particular focus on the Middle East. He spent 17 years in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, most of it focused on the Middle East and North Africa. He then spent 14 years as Middle East editor and deputy editor of the Daily Brief at Oxford Analytica. He now divides his time between editorial work for Oxford Analytica, the Lausanne Movement and other clients, and working with Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), the Religious Liberty Partnership and other NGOs on international religious freedom issues.