Berkley Center

Representative Ann Marie Buerkle was elected to the United State House of Representatives in 2010 to serve New York’s 25th Congressional District. She serves on the Committees on Oversight and Government Reform, Veterans’ Affairs, and Foreign Affairs. Through her work she seeks to lower taxes, reduce spending, and reduce government interference. Prior to serving in Congress, she served as the Assistant New York State Attorney General for thirteen years, and before this, worked at a private law firm and as a pro bono attorney for the Central New York Women’s Bar Association as an advocate for a shelter for victims of domestic violence. She graduated from St. Joseph’s Hospital School of Nursing as a Registered Nurse in 1972 and went to work in New York City’s Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. In 1994 she graduated from Syracuse University College of Law.

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.