Speakers: Ambassador David Saperstein, Dr. Gregory Stanton, Gurvinder Singh, Dr. Mary Ann Thompson-Frenk and Dr. Mike Ghouse
To be posted
David Nathan Saperstein |
is an American rabbi, lawyer, and Jewish community leader who served as United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom.[1][2] He previously served as the director and chief legal counsel at the Union for Reform Judaism‘s Religious Action Center for more than 30 years.[3]
On July 28, 2014, President Obama nominated Saperstein to be the first non-Christian to hold the post of United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom.[1] In December 2014 Saperstein’s appointment to the post won U.S. Senate confirmation.[6][7]
He has co-chaired the Coalition to Preserve Religious Liberty,[8] and serves on the boards of the NAACP, Common Cause, and People For the American Way.[citation needed] In 1999, Saperstein was elected as the first Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.[9]
On August 28, 2008, Saperstein delivered the invocation at the Democratic National Convention’s final session, before Senator Barack Obama accepted the party’s nomination for president.[10]
In February 2009, he was named to President Obama’s Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.[11] In 2009 Newsweek named him # 1 on its list of “50 Influential Rabbis.”[12]
Saperstein is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center.[13]
Gregory H. Stanton
Gregory Stanton a former Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at George Mason University in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. He is best known for his work in the area of genocide studies. He is the founder and president of Genocide Watch,[1] the founder and director of the Cambodian Genocide Project,[2][3], and the Chair of the Alliance Against Genocide. From 2007 to 2009 he was the President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
In 1994, Dr. Stanton won the American Foreign Service Association’s prestigious W. Averell Harriman Award for “extraordinary contributions to the practice of diplomacy exemplifying intellectual courage,” based on his dissent of U.S. policy on the Rwandan genocide. He wrote the State Department options paper on ways to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice in Cambodia.
After leaving the State Department in 1999 to found Genocide Watch, Dr. Stanton was deeply involved in the U.N.-Cambodian government negotiations that brought about the creation of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, for which he drafted that court’s internal rules of procedure.
Dr. Stanton Spoke about India two years ago in our 15th Annual Holocaust and Genocides program and had predicted the impending genocide in India.
Nadine Maenza
Nadine Maenza is a noted speaker, writer, and policy expert with more than two decades of experience as an advocate for working families and a champion for international religious freedom.
Since June 2021, Nadine has served as the Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, having been re-appointed by the White House in May of 2020 to a second two-year term. She served as Vice-Chair in 2019. She has represented USCIRF in delegations to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Bahrain, Indonesia, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Thailand, Taiwan, and Uzbekistan. She has traveled in her own personal capacity to better understand religious freedom conditions in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Bangladesh as well as recently spending a month in northeast Syria. She is most honored to have met with persecuted communities of various faiths from around the world.
More at USCIRF.GOV
Mary Ann Thompson-Frenk
President/Co-Founder of Memnosyne Institute; Sculptor, Writer, Public Speaker, Humanitarian & Organizational Psychology. I have known MaryAnn for nearly 20 years now and I am amazed at her energy to bring people together. She has brought many native American nations together which was considered a difficult and impossible task. She organized a big event in Dallas in 2004-5 bringing 40 plus faith traditions in a 3day conference. She is concerned about the plight of Native Americans and I was a witness to a grand opening of a medicine garden on a few acres in the Yucatan Peninsula for the Mayans. MaryAnn is a recipient of the Pluralist Award about ten years ago in Dallas.
Gurvinder Singh
Gurvinder Singh is the Finance Director and International Humanitarian Director for UNITED SIKHS. In his long association with UNITED SIKHS, he has responded to and been deployed to multiple disasters worldwide, including tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, typhoons, and earthquakes.
He has also led many humanitarian aid projects, including the massive global Covid-19 response in which over 5 million meals have been served, Guru Nanak food pantry in Kenya, food banks and drive-by food pantries in the United States, vocational training schools in South Asia, and a charity shop in the UK.
He has spoken at our event on the Native American Genocide.
Herb Levy
Mike Ghouse