Berkley Center

Asma Afsaruddin is a professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, Bloomington. She specializes in the religious and political thought of Islam, Qur’an and hadith, Islamic intellectual history, and gender. In addition to numerous articles, her books include Contemporary Issues in Islam (2015); Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought and Praxis (2013); Islam, the State and Political Authority: Medieval Issues and Modern Concerns (2011); and The First Muslims: History and Memory (2008). Afsaruddin is a member of the academic council of Georgetown's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and of the American Academy of Liberal Education's board of trustees. She has received research funding from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York, which named her a Carnegie Scholar in 2005. Afsaruddin earned her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University and previously taught at the University of Notre Dame and Harvard University.

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.

Philip H. Gordon is Mary and David Boies Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. His areas of expertise include counterterrorism, the Middle East, Europe, and security alliances. Gordon was special assistant to the president and White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region from 2013 to 2015.

William Inboden is executive director of the William P. Clements, Jr. Center for National Security, associate professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and distinguished scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas-Austin. Inboden is a non-resident fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States and senior advisor with Avascent International. Previously he served as the Legatum Institute's senior vice president and senior director for the White House’s Strategic Planning on the National Security Council. Inboden also worked at the Department of State as a member of the Policy Planning Staff and special advisor in the Office of International Religious Freedom. He is the author of Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960: The Soul of Containment (2008) and Foreign Policy magazine contributing editor. From 2014 to 2016, he was an associate scholar with the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project. Inboden received his Ph.D., M.Phil., and M.A. degrees from Yale University and A.B. from Stanford University.

Ambassador David T. Killion is currently a foreign affairs and human rights consultant following his retirement from a long career in U.S. public service. He was senior staff for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs from 2001 to 2009, U.S. ambassador to UNESCO (2009-2014), and chief of staff for the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (2013-2017).

Radwan A. Masmoudi is founding president of the Center of the Study of Islam & Democracy, a Washington-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting freedom, democracy, and good governance in the Arab and Muslim world, as well as improving relations between the United States and the Muslim world. 

Walter Russell Mead is the James Clark Chase Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College. From 1997 to 2010 he was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mead’s chief intellectual interests involve the development of the current international system and its consequences. He received his B.A. from Yale University.

Joshua Muravchik is a distinguished fellow at the World Affairs Institute. A U.S. foreign policy expert, his work has addressed the United Nations, neoconservatism, the history of socialism and communism, the Arab-Israeli conflict, global democracy, and terrorism. Muravchik holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University.