Berkley Center

David Saperstein is a rabbi, lawyer, and diplomat who was the U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom from January 2015 to January 2017. He is a senior research fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, where he is a member of the Strategic Religious Engagement Hub Advisory Board and was previously affiliated with the Religious Freedom Research Project. Saperstein taught First Amendment church-state law and Jewish law for 38 years at Georgetown University, where he has been an adjunct professor with the Center for Jewish Civilization. An ordained rabbi, he served for several decades as the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, representing the public policy positions of the Reform Jewish Movement, the largest segment of American Jewry, to the U.S. government. Among numerous leadership positions he has held in the NGO world, he currently chairs the Word Faiths Development Dialogue and co-chairs the Multi-Faith Neighbors Network, as well as the Word Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on “Faith in Action.” His numerous articles have appeared in publications ranging from the Washington Post and New York Times to the Harvard Law Review.