Berkley Center

Nathan J. Brown is a professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University and nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the author of Arguing Islam After the Revival of Arab Politics (2016) and When Victory Is Not an Option: Islamist Movements in Arab Politics (2012). His work focuses on religion, law, and politics in the Arab world.

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.

Robert W. Hefner is a professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. Hefner is a social theorist who specializes in the anthropology of religion, ethics and law (including sharia law), education and youth development, as well as the comparative study of gender, citizenship, globalization, and modernity. Hefner was also a part of the Christianity and Freedom Project headed by the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project.

M. Hakan Yavuz is a professor of political science at the Middle East Center at the University of Utah, where he has taught since 1998. He is author of Nostalgia for the Empire: The Politics of Neo-Ottomanism (2020), Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gülen Movement (2013), and Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey (2009), as well as numerous journal articles in both English and Turkish.