Berkley Center

David J. Collins, S.J., is associate professor and Haub Director of Catholic Studies at Georgetown University. Prof. Collins is an intellectual and cultural historian of the late Middle Ages. He has published extensively on the cult of the saints, Renaissance humanism, and learned magic, especially in Germany. Prof. Collins entered the Society of Jesus (the Jesuit Order) in 1987 and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1998. He previously taught a class supported through the Berkley Center's Doyle Seminars project.

Carolyn Forché is the former director of the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice and is a University Professor in the Department of English at Georgetown University. She is most recently the author of the memoir What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance (2019). She is the author of four books of poetry and has been a human rights activist for thirty years.

Rev. David Hollenbach, S.J., is the Pedro Arrupe Distinguished Research Professor in the Walsh School of Foreign Service; a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs; and an affiliated professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University. His teaching and research deal with human rights, religious and ethical responses to humanitarian crises, and religion in political life from the standpoint of Catholic social thought, theology, and the social sciences. His books include Human Rights in a Divided World: Catholicism as a Living Tradition (2024), Humanity in Crisis: Ethical and Religious Response to Refugees (2019), Driven from Home: Protecting the Rights of Forced Migrants (2010) The Global Face of Public Faith: Politics, Human Rights, and Christian Ethics (2003), and The Common Good and Christian Ethics (2002). He has taught often at Hekima University College in Nairobi, Kenya, and he collaborates with Jesuit Refugee Service. From 2020 to 2022 he is a distinguished research associate with the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Hollenbach is also a research associate with the Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection in Zambia. Hollenbach is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Congressman Jim McGovern represents the 2nd district of Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is chairman of the House Rules Committee, a senior member of the House Committee on Agriculture’s Subcommittee on Nutrition and Oversight, chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and is the Democratic co-chair of the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.

Abel Nuñez is executive director of CARECEN, an organization dedicated to fostering the comprehensive development of the Latino population in Washington D.C. and facilitating the process of transition for immigrants. Mr. Nuñez has a well-rounded background in nonprofit management and fundraising, as well as a history of community activism.

Congressman Juan Vargas represents the 51st district of California in the U.S. House of Representatives. For years as a Jesuit scholastic, his work focused on the health and welfare of children and issues of social justice, including orphaned children and internally displaced people in the jungles of El Salvador. Currently serving his fourth term in Congress, Juan serves on the Committee on Financial Services and the Committee on Foreign Affairs.