Senior Fellows
| Partner, Lead Integrity
| Former President & CEO of The International Center for Religion & Diplomacy
James Patton is a Partner at Lead Integrity and the former President and CEO of The International Center for Religion & Diplomacy (ICRD). He has conducted international development, conflict transformation, and social reconciliation in complex environments for 25 years, building collaborative networks and programs with the entire spectrum of social and political stakeholders. James is a Lifetime Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Senior Visiting Fellow at Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institution, and co-author, with Rev. David Steele, of the U.S. Institute of Peace publication, Religion and Conflict Guide Series: Religion and Reconciliation. He holds a Master of Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University and a Master of Divinity (MDiv) from Harvard Divinity School.
Merylann “Mimi” J. Schuttloffel, Ph.D.
| Professor Emerita & Brother Patrick Ellis Chair, Department of Education, The Catholic University of America
Merylann “Mimi” J. Schuttloffel is a distinguished scholar with extensive expertise in Catholic education and leadership. She currently serves as Professor Emerita and Brother Patrick Ellis Chair in the Department of Education at The Catholic University of America. Previously, she was a Professor of Catholic Education and the Director of the Institute for Catholic School Leadership at The Seminaries of Saint Paul, Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity, University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Dr. Schuttloffel’s research focuses on Catholic identity in schools, leadership, education policy, and international education. Her notable publications include Contemplative Leadership Practice: The Influences of Character on Catholic School Leadership, Traditional Catholic Schooling in the USA, and The American Catholic Identity or the Catholic American Identity.
Tamara Sonn, Ph.D.
| Professor Emerita of History of Islam and the Former Director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU), Georgetown University
Tamara Sonn is Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in the History of Islam and the former director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Her most recent books include Overcoming Orientalism: Essays in Honor of John L. Esposito (Oxford, 2021), Islam and Democracy After the Arab Spring (with John L. Esposito and John O. Voll; Oxford, 2016), Islam: History, Religion, and Politics (Wiley Blackwell, 2016), and Is Islam an Enemy of the West? (Polity, 2016). She is Founding Editor-In-Chief of Oxford Bibliographies Online–Islamic Studies and of Wiley-Blackwell’s online journal of Religious Studies Religion Compass. She served as Senior Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Islam (2003), and Associate Editor of Oxford’s Encyclopedia of the Islamic World Past and Present (2004).
| Michael E. Paul Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Affairs, U.S. Naval Academy
Qamar-ul Huda is the Michael E. Paul Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Affairs at the United States Naval Academy. Previously, he was an associate adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Department of Government. Dr. Huda co-founded and was the Vice President of the Center for Global Policy (CGP). This nonpartisan think-tank focuses on U.S. security and foreign policies in the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, and East Asia. Dr. Huda was a Senior Policy Advisor for the U.S. Department of State Secretary’s Office for Religion and Global Affairs (S/RGA), focusing on civil society, religious communities, and diplomacy with non-government organizations. His focus areas were civil society organizations, education, multilateral affairs, and mitigating conflict and violent extremism.
Paul Marshall, Ph.D.
| Wilson Professor of Religious Freedom and Research Professor at the Department of Political Science, Baylor University
| Director of South & Southeast Asia Action Team, Religious Freedom Institute
Paul Marshall is the Director of South and Southeast Asia Action Team at Religious Freedom Institute, Wilson Professor of Religious Freedom at Baylor University, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, and Senior Fellow at the Leimena Institute, Jakarta. He is the author and editor of more than twenty books on religion and politics, especially religious freedom, including recently Persecuted (Thomas Nelson, 2013), Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (Oxford University Press, 2011), Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion (Oxford University Press, 2009), Religious Freedom in the World (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008).
| Distinguished Professor Emeritus, The University of California, Santa Barbara
| Distinguished Fellow and Professor, Claremont McKenna College
Mark Juergensmeyer is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Global Studies, Sociology, and an affiliate of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was the founding director of the Global and International Studies Program and the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies. He is also William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellow and Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College. He is an expert on religious violence, conflict resolution, and South Asian religion and politics, and has published more than three hundred articles and thirty books, including When God Stops Fighting: How Religious Violence Ends (University of California Press, 2022), God at War: A Meditation on Religion and Warfare (Oxford, 2021) and Terror in the Mind of God (University of California Press, Ed. 2017).
| Visiting Professor, Religion, Violence, & Peacebuilding, Harvard Divinity School
| Professor, Religion and Politics, University of Birmingham
Jocelyne Cesari holds the Chair of Religion and Politics at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. At Georgetown University, she is a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Since 2018, she has been the T. J. Dermot Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding at Harvard Divinity School. President-elect of the European Academy of Religion (2018-19), her work on religion and politics has garnered recognition and awards: 2020 Distinguished Scholar of the religion section of the International Studies Association, Distinguished Fellow of the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs and the Royal Society for Arts in the UK. Her most recent publications are: We God’s People: Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism in the World of Nations (Cambridge University Press 2022) and What is Political Islam? (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2018).