FREEDOM

APPENDIX 1
BIOGRAPHIES OF USCIRF COMMISSIONERS
Dr. Robert P. George, Chairman
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence
and Director of the James Madison Program in
American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.
He has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law
School, and is a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution
at Stanford University.
He has served on the President’s Council on Bioethics
and as a presidential appointee to the United States
Commission on Civil Rights. He has also served on
UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific
Knowledge and Technology (COMEST), of which he
remains a corresponding member.
A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard
Law School, Professor George also earned a master’s
degree in theology from Harvard and a doctorate in
philosophy of law from Oxford University, which he
attended on a Knox Scholarship from Harvard. He holds
honorary doctorates of law, letters, science, ethics,
divinity, humane letters, civil law, and juridical science.
He is the author of Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties
and Public Morality and In Defense of Natural Law, among
other books. His articles and review essays have appeared
in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the
Columbia Law Review, the Review of Politics, the Review
of Metaphysics, the American Journal of Jurisprudence,
and Law and Philosophy. He has also written for the New
York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington
Post, First Things magazine, National Review, the Boston
Review, and the Times Literary Supplement.
Professor George is a former Judicial Fellow at the
Supreme Court of the United States, where he received
the Justice Tom C. Clark Award.
His other honors include the United States Presidential
Citizens Medal, the Honorific Medal for the
Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, the
Bradley Prize for Intellectual and Civic Achievement,
the Phillip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions
to the Liberal Arts of the American Council of Trustees
and Alumni, a Silver Gavel Award of the American Bar
Association, the Paul Bator Award of the Federalist Society
for Law and Public Policy, and the Canterbury Medal
of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations
and is Of Counsel to the law firm of Robinson & McElwee.
Dr. George was appointed to the Commission on
March 22, 2012 by Speaker of the House John Boehner
(R-OH) and was reappointed in 2014 for a second term.
Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, Vice Chair
M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D. is the President of the American
Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) based in Phoenix,
Arizona. A first generation American Muslim, Dr. Jasser’s
parents fled the oppressive Baath regime of Syria in
the mid-1960’s for American freedom. A devout Muslim,
he and his family have strong ties to the American Muslim
community having helped lead mosques in Wisconsin,
Arkansas, Virginia, and Arizona.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States,
Dr. Jasser and a group of American Muslims founded
AIFD which promotes Muslim voices for liberty and
freedom through the separation of mosque and state in
order to counter the root cause of Islamist terrorism--the
ideology of political Islam (Islamism) and a belief in the
supremacy of the Islamic state. AIFD’s primary projects
include the Muslim Liberty Project, the American
Islamic Leadership Coalition and Save Syria Now!
An internationally recognized expert on Islamism,
Dr. Jasser is widely published on domestic and foreign
issues related to Islam, Islamism, and modernity. He has
spoken at hundreds of national and international events
including testimony to the U.S. Congress on the centrality
of religious liberty in countering Muslim radicalization
within the “House of Islam”. He is a contributing
writer to a number of books and the author of The Battle
for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight
to Save His Faith (Simon & Schuster, 2012).
USCIRF | ANNUAL REPORT 2016 227