The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is an independent, bipartisan commission created by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) that monitors religious freedom violations abroad and makes policy recommendations to the U.S. federal government.

Mehdi Khalaji is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy specializing in Shiʿa politics and Iran’s religious establishment. 

Lindsay Rodriguez is Director of Development & Advocacy at Coptic Solidarity.

International Christian Concern (ICC) is a Washington, D.C.-based, interdenominational human rights organization founded in 1995 that assists Christians they say are facing persecution worldwide. Press contact is Alex Finch.

Erika Gault is Director of the Center for the Study of African American Religious Life and the Lilly Endowment Curator of African American Religious History at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and  Culture. Her work focuses on the intersection of religious history, technology and urban black life in post-industrial America.

The Center for the Study of African American Religious Life (CSAARL) is part of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Media inquiries, interview requests, and press passes for the center should be directed through the NMAAHC Office of Public Affairs.

Kevin Goldberg a vice president and First Amendment expert at Freedom Forum, where he works to educate the public on the importance of the First Amendment and oversees Freedom Forum’s network of experts on issues of free expression and its relation to religious and other forms of speech.

Tad Stahnke directs the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s international educational outreach as well as its Initiative on Holocaust Denial and Antisemitism. He is also an expert in international human rights law with a focus on religion-state issues and freedom of religion or belief.

Cynthia Miller-Idriss is the founding director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University. Miller-Idriss regularly testifies before the U.S. Congress or briefs policy, security, education and intelligence agencies in the U.S., the United Nations and other countries on trends in domestic violent extremism and strategies for prevention and disengagement. To […]