Berkley Center

Ari Cohn is a Chicago-based attorney specializing in First Amendment, defamation, and intermediary liability law. As lead counsel for tech policy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Cohn advocates before legislators, regulators, the courts, and the public to defend expressive rights in the digital age and promote policies that will allow new and emerging technologies to continue democratizing speech and knowledge to the benefit of humanity.

Daniel Dale is a senior reporter in CNN’s Washington Bureau, where he fact-checks political claims. During the 2024 and 2020 election cycles, he has fact-checked President Joe Biden, President Donald Trump, Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, and other lawmakers. Prior to joining CNN in 2019, Dale spent over a decade at the Toronto Star, including as Washington bureau chief from 2015 to 2019, where he was the first journalist to fact-check every false statement from President Trump.

Tom Gjelten is a veteran journalist who was most recently religion and belief correspondent at National Public Radio (NPR), reporting on the changing religious landscape in America, the formation of personal identity, the role of religion in politics, and social and cultural conflict arising from religious differences. During spring 2025 he was the Sakka Family Religion and International Journalism Fellow at Georgetown University, a tenure which concluded in June of that year. Gjelten’s nearly four-decade NPR career included overseas reporting in Central and South America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He later covered U.S. diplomacy and military affairs from the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon. He is the author of, among others, Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege (1996), Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause (2008), and A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story (2015). He is the recipient of two Overseas Press Club Awards, a George Polk Award, a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and a National Headliner Award. Gjelten is currently a contributing writer at Moment Magazine, where in 2022 he earned the “Religion Story of the Year” award from the Religion News Association. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Anna Johnson is the Associated Press' Washington bureau chief, where she oversees coverage of U.S. elections and politics and America’s federal government, including foreign and domestic policy. Prior to moving to Washington, DC, in 2022, she was AP’s news director for Europe and Africa based in London. Johnson also held various editing and reporting roles and was based in Phoenix, Chicago and Cairo, Egypt, earlier in her AP career.

Peter Wehner is a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times and a contributing writer for The Atlantic, as well as a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum. Wehner served in three presidential administrations, including as deputy director of presidential speechwriting for President George W. Bush. Later, he served as the director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives. He is editor or author of six books, including The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump (2021).