جلسة استماع بالكونغرس: خبراء أمريكيون ينتقدون غياب "الحرية الدينية" بالسعودية

Thomas Farr is President of the Religious Freedom Institute, a non-profit organization
committed to achieving religious liberty for everyone. Farr also directs the Religious Freedom
Research Project at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center. He is an associate Professor of the
Practice of Religion and World Affairs at Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign
Service.
Farr serves as a senior fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University, and at
the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, N.J. He received his B.A. in history from Mercer
University, and his Ph.D. in modern British and European history from the University of North
Carolina.
Dr. Farr served for 28 years in the U.S. Army and the U.S. Foreign Service. During those years
he was Adjutant General of the 4th Transportation Brigade in Germany; Assistant Professor of
History at West Point; Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Air Force Academy;
and a member of the U.S. negotiating team at the U.S.-Soviet arms control talks in Geneva. In
the 1990s Farr headed an interagency task force on verification provisions for the START II
Treaty.
In 1999 Farr became the first director of the State Department's Office of International Religious
Freedom. Responsible for establishing America’s new IRF policy, Farr held this position until
2003. He subsequently directed the Witherspoon Institute's International Religious Freedom
(IRF) Task Force, was a member of the Chicago World Affairs Council’s Task Force on
Religion and U.S. Foreign Policy, and served on the Secretary of State’s IRF working group.
Dr. Farr trains American diplomats at the Foreign Service Institute, and is a consultant to the
U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference. He serves on the administrative board of Aid to the Church in
Need; the boards of directors of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, Christian Solidarity
Worldwide-USA, and Saint John Paul the Great High School; and on the boards of advisors of
the Alexander Hamilton Society and the National Museum of American Religion.
Dr. Farr has testified on international religious freedom policy before the U.S. Congress and the
Canadian Parliament, and spoken at a wide variety of government agencies, think tanks, and
universities. He is a contributing editor for the Review of Faith and International Affairs, and
Providence: A Journal of Christianity and Foreign Policy. His major titles include World of
Faith and Freedom: Why International Religious Liberty is Vital to American National Security
(Oxford University Press, 2008); Religious Freedom and Gay Rights: Emerging Conflicts in
North America and Europe, co-edited with Timothy Shah and Jack Friedman (Cambridge
University Press, 2016); and U.S. Foreign Policy and International Religious Freedom:
Recommendations for the Trump Administration, with Dennis Hoover (Religious Freedom
Institute, 2017).
Farr is the recipient of the Jan Karski Wellspring of Freedom Award, presented by the Institute
on Religion and Public Policy; a lifetime achievement recognition presented by In Defense of
Christians; and the international award presented at the 15th annual Religious Liberty Dinner in
Washington DC, sponsored by the 7th Day Adventists. A Roman Catholic, he is married to
Margaret McPherson Farr. They have three daughters and 10 grandchildren.