Seminar Leader:
Dr. Jennifer Bryson studied Political Science as an undergraduate at Stanford, medieval European intellectual history for an MA in History at Yale, and Greco-Arabic and Islamic studies for a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale. She has worked in journalism and for the Department of Defense. For the Department of Defense she has provided outreach to and analysis about Egyptian Islamic newspapers, as well as outreach in Yemen to media, madrasas, and civil society institutions. She managed a counter-terrorism research team for two years for the Department of Defense and for this work twice received the Defense Civilian Meritorious Service Award. She most recently worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense where she was the lead Action Officer for countering ideological support to terrorism in the Office of Support to Public Diplomacy. Dr. Bryson has near-native fluency in German, professional-fluency in Arabic, and has reading knowledge of Latin, Greek, Syriac, French, and Persian.

Seminar Faculty:
Thomas F. Farr is the Director of the Task Force on International Religious Liberty of the Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution. A former U.S. diplomat, he is Visiting Associate Professor of Religion and World Affairs, and Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University. During his career in the Foreign Service, Dr. Farr specialized in strategic military policy, political affairs, and religious freedom. During the Cold War he helped develop U.S. strategic nuclear policy, and was part of the U.S. negotiating team in the U.S.-Soviet arms control talks in Geneva. In the 1990s he served in Bonn, negotiated the value of U.S. military bases being returned to Germany, and focused on Greek-Turkish-Cyprus relations. During the last four years of his career, Farr served as the first director of the State Department's office of international religious freedom. In that capacity he traveled worldwide to engage governments and religious communities on the subject of religious freedom. Dr. Farr has taught history at the U.S. Military Academy and international relations at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He has written widely on America's international religious freedom policy and U.S. national security, as well as on the development of the Catholic doctrine of religious liberty.

Abdullah Saeed is a leading scholar of Islam and religious freedom. He is currently the Sultan of Oman Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where he is also Director, National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies, and Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Law. He holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Melbourne, Australia, an MA in Applied Linguistics, University of Melbourne, Australia. He earned his BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the Islamic University in Medina, Saudi Arabia. He has also studied in Pakistan. Prof. Saeed's research includes approaches to the interpretation of the Quran today, reform of classical Islamic law, and Islam and human rights, including religious freedom. He is involved in both Muslim-Christian and Muslim-Jewish inter-faith dialogue. His publications include Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam, co-authored with his brother Hassan Saeed (2004), and Interpreting the Qur'an: Towards a contemporary approach (2006). For further information and a bibliography of Abdullah Saeed's extensive list of publications see www.abdullahsaeed.org.

Asma T. Uddin is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of www.altmuslimah.com. She is also an attorney, with several years of experience practicing commercial litigation at prestigious national law firms. Currently she works on international religious freedom matters with The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C. As an editor, Asma has worked with Dr. Umar F. Abd-Allah on a number of articles for scholarly journals on Islamic Law. She also helped edit the manuscript of Dr. Abd-Allah's A Muslim in Victorian America, published in 2007 by Oxford University Press. As Associate Editor and legal columnist for Islamica Magazine, Asma focused her writings on how American Muslims can rethink their social position within the American legal framework. Asma's writing has also appeared in Muslim Girl Magazine, altmuslim, beliefnet, and in the Guardian's "Comment is Free." She is an expert panelist for the Washington Post/Newsweek blog On Faith. Her more scholarly work has been published in the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion and The Review of Faith & International Affairs. Asma, selected in 2009 as a "Muslim Leader of Tomorrow," has traveled throughout Europe and to various Muslim-majority countries to meet with Muslim and other minority groups as well as politicians, journalists, and anti-discrimination organizations. Asma is a 2005 graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, where she was a member The University of Chicago Law Review.

Guest Speakers:

Abdullah bin Hamid Ali began his study of Arabic as a teenager in Philadelphia and then studied as an undergraduate with Dr. Khalid Blankinship at Temple University. He studied Arabic, Qur'anic recitation (tajwid) and memorization (hifz), and other introductory topics with Imam Anwar bin Nafea Muhaimin and his brother Anas. Next he studied Islamic sciences at the University of Qarawiyyin of Fes, Morocco, graduating in 2001 with a license from the Faculty of Shariah to teach the Islamic Sciences (al-ijazah al-'ulya). He specializes in the Islamic sciences of Fiqh (jurisprudence), Usul-ul Fiqh (legal theory) and Aqeeda (Islamic doctrine). He is author of articles on various Islamic topics (www.lamppostproductions.com), as well as an instructor, and he translated and annotated The Attributes of God (Amal Press). He served for five years as chaplain with the State Correctional Institution of Chester, Pennsylvania. Currently he is a resident scholar at the Zaytuna Institute. He lives with his wife and daughter in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Robert P. George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and founding Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and the Herbert W. Vaughan Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute. He is a member of the Presidents Council on Bioethics, and formerly served as a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Professor George was a Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States. His books include Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality and The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School, he holds a doctorate in legal philosophy from Oxford University.

Paul Marshall is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in the Center for Religious Freedom. Prior to joining Hudson he was a Senior Fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House. He has held several professorships, including at the University of Toronto and the Free University of Amsterdam. He has taught political science, law, philosophy, and theology. He holds a B.Sc. (Geology) from the University of Manchester, an M.Sc. (Geochemistry) from the University of Western Ontario, an M.Phil. (Philosophy) from the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, and an M.A. and Ph.D. (Political Science) from York University, with further studies in international human rights law at the University of Strasbourg and theology at Oxford University. Marshall is the author and editor of over twenty books on religion and politics, especially religious freedom, including Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion (2009), Religious Freedom in the World (2008), The Rise of Hindu Extremism (2003), and Islam at the Crossroads (2002).

Louay Safi is an associate faculty at the Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI) and a fellow of the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU). Author of eleven books, including: The Quranic Narrative (Praeger 2008), Tensions and Transitions in the Muslim World, (University Press of America, 2003), Peace and the Limits of War (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2001), The Challenge of Modernity (University Press of America, 1994), and Truth and Reform (The Open Press, 1998). Founding member and former board member of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) (1999-2007), he served as communications and leadership development director (2009) and executive director of the Leadership Development Center (2004-08) of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). He also Served as the Executive Director (1995-97) and Director of Research (1999-2003) of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), Editor of the Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (1999-2003), and President of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (1999-2003).