Berkley Center

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory University, where he focuses on cross-cultural human rights issues, with an emphasis on Islam. He is also a faculty member of the Emory College of Arts and Sciences and the Emory University Center for Ethics. He directs projects on women and land in Africa and Islamic family law. During the fall 2009 semester he was a visiting professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at Georgetown University, where he taught "The Future of Islamic Law," and a senior fellow at the Berkley Center. He is the author of African Constitutionalism and the Role of Islam (2006), Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari‘a (2008), and What is an American Muslim? Embracing Faith and Citizenship (2014). An-Na'im holds LL.B. degrees from the University of Khartoum and the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in law from the University of Edinburgh.

John L. Esposito is a University Professor, professor of religion and international affairs, professor of Islamic studies, and the founding director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. He served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies; he is currently a member of the High Level Group of the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations, a body of 20 international leaders that guides the alliance's work. He has written over 30 books, including Islamophobia: The Challenges of Pluralism in the 21st Century (2011, with Ibrahim Kalin), Who Speaks for Islam? (2007, with Dalia Mogahed), Islam: The Straight Path (2004), and Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (2002). Esposito received the American Academy of Religion’s 2005 Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion.

Sherman A. Jackson is the King Faisal Chair in Islamic Thought and Culture and professor of religion and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. His research interests extend from classical Islamic studies, such as law and theology, to modern conversations on race, democracy, and pluralism.

Jane McAuliffe is a distinguished senior research fellow at the Berkley Center. A member of the Scholars Council convened by the Librarian of Congress, she previously was director of the John W. Kluge Center (where she was a distinguished visiting scholar during 2013-2014) and inaugural director of national and international outreach at the Library of Congress. She was president of Bryn Mawr College from 2008 to 2013 and is a former dean of Georgetown University’s College of Arts and Sciences. McAuliffe has taught at the University of Toronto and Emory University, serving as associate dean for the Candler School of Theology. McAuliffe is general editor of the six-volume Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an, the first major reference work for the Qur’an in Western languages. Her publications include the Norton Anthology of World Religions (2015) and Norton Critical Edition of the Qur’an (2017); The Cambridge Companion to the Qur'an (2006); With Reverence for the Word (2010); and Qur’anic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and Modern Exegesis (1991/2007). She is past president of the American Academy of Religion and a member of the American Philosophical Society and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Ebrahim Moosa is professor of Islamic studies at the University of Notre Dame, with appointments in the Department of History and the Kroc Institute for International Studies in the Keough School of Global Affairs. He co-directs, with Scott Appleby and Atalia Omer, the Contending Modernities project. His research and teaching span both classical and modern Islamic thought, with a special focus on Islamic law, history, ethics, and theology. He was a professor of religious and Islamic studies at Duke University from 2001 to 2014; Moosa previously taught at the University of Capetown and Stanford University and was named Carnegie Scholar in 2005. His publications include What is a Madrasa? (2015), The African Renaissance and the Afro-Arab Spring: A Season of Rebirth? (2015, edited with Charles Villa-Vicencio and Erik Doxtader), Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination (2005), and Fazlur Rahman's Revival and Reform in Islam (2000, ed.). Before entering academia Moosa worked as a journalist in South Africa and the United Kingdom. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Cape Town.