Knox Thames on Meeting the Challenge of Global Religious Persecution

Pepperdine University Senior Fellow Knox Thames spoke on October 31, 2024 at IRD’s annual Christianity and National Security Conference in Washington, D.C. Video of his presentation is below from the Providence YouTube channel.

Thames (JD, MA, American University) is an international human rights lawyer, advocate, and author. Thames spent 20 years working for the U.S. government, serving in the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations and in the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki Commission), the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), AmeriCorps VISTA, and the U.S. Army War College as an Adjunct Research Professor. In addition, from 2004-2012, he was a State Department appointee to the OSCE Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief.

He directs Pepperdine’s Program on Global Faith and Inclusive Societies and is also a non-resident Senior Visiting Expert at the United States Institute of Peace and was a finalist to serve as the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief.

He has spoken before the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, the European Parliament, the Organization of American States, the OSCE, the Atlantic Council, Wilton Park, the Foreign Service Institute, and U.S. military war colleges. He has written for USA Today, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, TIME, CNN, Newsweek, RealClearPolitics, the Times of London, the Harvard Human Rights Journal, the Yale Journal of International Affairs, the Small Wars Journal, and others. He was the lead author of International Religious Freedom Advocacy: A Guide to Organizations, Law and NGOs and his new book, Ending Persecution: Charting the Path to Global Religious Freedom, was released in September 2024.