Berkley Center

Rebecca Linder Blachly is the director of government relations for the Episcopal Church. She previously served as senior policy advisor for Africa in the U.S. Department of State's Office of Religion and Global Affairs, advising the secretary of state and State Department officials on religious dynamics, the role of religious leaders, and communities in Africa.

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.

E.J. Dionne is a senior research fellow at the Berkley Center, University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture teaching in Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy and Government Department, and a leading scholar and commentator on religion in U.S. politics. In addition, since fall 2017 he has been William H. Bloomberg Visiting Professor at Harvard Divinity School and the Harvard Kennedy School. The W. Averell Harriman Chair and senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution, Dionne writes a column for the Washington Post that is syndicated in over 200 outlets nationally and abroad. His books include One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported (2017, with Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann); Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism: From Goldwater to Trump and Beyond (2016); Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent (2012); Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right (2008); Stand Up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge (2004); They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate The Next Political Era (1996); and Why Americans Hate Politics (1991), which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a National Book Award nominee.

Eric Patterson is president and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and is a research fellow with the Georgetown University Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. He previously served as president of the Religious Freedom Institute, dean of the School of Government at Regent University, and before that, as associate director at the Berkley Center. He is an expert in two overlapping areas: the ethics of war and peace, and global religious trends and religious freedom policy. These two areas routinely intersect, such as in building post-conflict systems that represent diverse ethnoreligious factions, understanding the religious factors in conflict, and measuring U.S. democracy promotion efforts. His government experience includes time at the U.S. State Department, service as a White House Fellow, and over 20 years as an Air National Guard commander. He is the author or editor of 20 books, including Politics in a Religious World: Toward a Religious Informed U.S. Foreign Policy (2011).

Clyde Wilcox is a professor in Georgetown University's Government Department, where he has taught since 1987. Wilcox taught at Georgetown University in Qatar during the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 academic years. Wilcox also taught a class supported through the Berkley Center's Doyle Seminars project. His research and teaching interests center on the United States, including religion and politics, gender politics, interest groups, public opinion and electoral behavior, campaign finance, and science fiction and politics. Wilcox has published more than 30 books, including Women and Elective Office: Past, Present, and Future (2014, co-edited with Sue Thomas); Onward Christian Soldiers: The Christian Right in American Politics (2010, fourth edition); The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage (2007, co-edited with Craig Rimmerman); and The Values Campaign: The Christian Right in the 2004 Elections (2006, co-edited with John Green and Mark Rozell). Wilcox holds a B.A. from West Virginia University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Ohio State University.