Rep. Peter Roskam
Rep. Peter Roskam proudly represents the Sixth District of Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives and is the Chief Deputy Majority Whip, the fourth-ranking Republican leader in the House.
Peter has long fought for commonsense conservative solutions to the problems our nation faces, now doing so at the GOP leadership table. Considered a “Rising Star” by a variety of news outlets, Roskam serves on the Ways & Means Committee where he’s earned a reputation as a leader championing innovative conservative solutions on taxes, trade, and healthcare.
The Washington Post writes that “Roskam’s positions should debunk the notion that there is some gap between GOP leadership and the grass roots.”
In addition to being the party’s chief deputy whip, Roskam is the co-chair of the Republican Israel Caucus and the U.S. Korea Working Group, dedicated to increasing pro-American export policies. In 2010, Peter served as the vice-chair of America Speaking Out, the organization that created the GOP’s Pledge to America.
A lifelong Illinoisan, Peter’s roots run deep in Chicago’s western suburbs. He was born and raised in Glen Ellyn, graduating from Glenbard West High School as a varsity athlete and school leader. After graduating from the University of Illinois and then the Illinois Institute of Technology Law School, Peter worked on Capitol Hill for his predecessor, the legendary Congressman Henry Hyde.
Following that, Roskam ran a non-profit scholarship program for disadvantaged youth in Chicago, Educational Assistance Ltd.
Before his election to Congress in 2006, Roskam was a member of the Illinois Senate from 2000-2006, serving as the Republican Whip and Floor Leader. There he served alongside then-State Senator Barack Obama. He served in the Illinois House before that from 1993 to 1998. His work earned him awards from businesses, health care, and pro-family organizations and in 2005, Americans for Tax Reform named him a “Hero of the Taxpayer.”
Peter now lives in Wheaton with his wife of 23 years, Elizabeth, and their four children, Gracey, Frankie, Steve, and AJ.
Rep. Joe Walsh
Joe Walsh is a Member of the US House of Representatives from the 8th District of Illinois. Rep, Wash has dedicated his professional life to service and advocacy. He has advocated on behalf of a wide range of public policy issues and causes, most notably advancing market-based solutions to education reform and urban poverty.
Joe began his career with Jobs For Youth, working in inner-city Chicago teaching high school dropouts basic academic and job skills; he worked on state and local public policy issues with the Heartland Institute, a free market think tank; he ran the Daniel Murphy Scholarship Fund, a Chicago-based privately funded school voucher program which gives high school scholarships to low-income Chicago eighth graders; he helped launch the Legislative Education Action Drive and Americans for Limited Government, national organizations working to get fiscally conservative state legislators elected in targeted states and advance the causes of limited government; he raised funds for and helped advance the cause of school choice for two of the nation’s leading school choice organizations, the American Education Reform Council and the Milton & Rose Friedman Foundation; and he continues to build support for an international charity which uses education and micro-enterprise to deliver Nicaraguan children from poverty, the Fabretto Children’s Foundation.
For the past couple of years, Joe has worked with local groups focused on raising early stage investment capital for new and small businesses and entrepreneurs. He has also consulted with the United Republican Fund, an Illinois-based state PAC helping to elect Republican state legislators.
Joe has a BA in English from the University of Iowa and a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Chicago. He has taught American government and American history at the community college level for a number of years, at Oakton Community College and the Hebrew Theological College.
Joe has run spirited campaigns for elected office twice, first as a Republican candidate for the United States Congress in 1996 and then as a Republican candidate for the Illinois State House in 1998.
As a life-long advocate for limited government and a vibrant private sector, Joe is troubled by the recent rapid growth of government spending and involvement in our lives. This concern has convinced him to move back to McHenry, IL, and run for the U.S. Congress. He intends to be a loud, forceful voice against this expanding government which will stifle economic growth and bankrupt our children and grandchildren.
Joe was born and raised in the heart of the Eighth District, growing up in a family of nine children. He and his wife Helene together have five children.
Frank Gaffney
Frank Gaffney is the Founder and President of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. The Center is a not-for-profit, non-partisan educational corporation established in 1988. Under Mr. Gaffney’s leadership, the Center has been nationally and internationally recognized as a resource for timely, informed and penetrating analyses of foreign and defense policy matters.
Mr. Gaffney is the host of Secure Freedom Radio, a nationally-syndicated radio program heard weeknights throughout the country. On Secure Freedom Radio, Mr. Gaffney addresses current and emerging threats to national security, sovereignty and our ways of life. Featured guests have included Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, Donald Rumsfeld and many current and former policymakers and elected officials.
Mr. Gaffney is the publisher and associate author of Shariah: The Threat to America (Center for Security Policy Press, 2010). With an introduction by former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, New York Times bestseller Andrew C. McCarthy and Lt. General Harry Soyster as well as contributions from the 19-member Team B II, this highly acclaimed report provides a comprehensive and articulate “second opinion” on the official characterizations and assessments of the threat of political Islam as put forward by the US Government. Shariah: The Threat draws upon the work of the Center for Security Policy and offers practical steps for mobilizing the our law enforcement, our elected officials and the American public to defend out country from those who would do us harm.
Mr. Gaffney also contributes actively to the security policy debate in his capacity as a weekly columnist for the Washington Times, TownHall.com, and Newsmax.com. He is a contributor to BigPeace.com and his columns also appear periodically in WorldNetDaily.com, and FrontPageMagazine.com. He is a featured weekly contributor to Lars Larson’s syndicated radio program as well as Greg Garrison’s show and a frequent guest on syndicated programs with hosts like: Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Hugh Hewitt, Janet Parshall, and Jim Bohannan. In addition, he appears often on national and international television networks such as Fox News, CNN and BBC. Over the years, his op.ed. articles have appeared in such publications as: The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Los Angeles Times, National Review, Newsday, American Legion Magazine, and Commentary.
In April 1987, Mr. Gaffney was nominated by President Reagan to become the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, the senior position in the Defense Department with responsibility for policies involving nuclear forces, arms control and U.S.-European defense relations. He acted in that capacity for seven months during which time, he was the Chairman of the prestigious High Level Group, NATO’s senior politico-military committee. He also represented the Secretary of Defense in key U.S.-Soviet negotiations and ministerial meetings.
From August 1983 until November 1987, Mr. Gaffney was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy under Assistant Secretary Richard Perle.
From February 1981 to August 1983, Mr. Gaffney was a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Senator John Tower (R-Texas). And, in the latter 1970’s, Mr. Gaffney served as an aide to the late Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson (D-Washington) in the areas of defense and foreign policy.
Mr. Gaffney holds a Master of Arts degree in International Studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
Mr. Gaffney’s leadership has been recognized by numerous organizations including: the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Award (1987), the U.S. Business and Industry Council’s Defender of the National Interest Award (1994), the Navy League of the United States’ “Alfred Thayer Mahan Literary Achievement Award” (1999), and the Zionist Organization of America’s “Louis Brandeis Award” (2003).
Mr. Gaffney was born in 1953 and resides in the Washington area.
Fred Grandy
Hon. Fred Grandy is the Executive Vice President at the Center for Security Policy.
He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University, a successful actor in Hollywood on the hit TV series, The Love Boat, and a four term Congressman from Iowa in the U.S. House of Representatives. Despite these influences he remains a solid conservative who for the past eight years has informed and entertained Washington, DC radio audiences on his popular daily morning show The Grandy Group.
In addition to his careers in show business and politics, Grandy has been a respected non-profit executive as President and CEO of the internationally known and respected health and human services organization, Goodwill Industries International. He has served as an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Affairs and holds a Master’s of Fine Arts Degree from George Washington University.
Cynthia Farahat
Cynthia Farahat is an Egyptian political activist, writer and researcher. She co-founded the Liberal Egyptian Party (2006-2008) and served as a member of its political committee. In 2008-2009, she was program coordinator and program officer at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty in Cairo, a multi-national free market think tank. She was a founder of the Masr El-Om (Mother Egypt) Party and was a member of its political committee (2004-2006). She has published in National Review, Middle East Quarterly, and in other publications in both English and Arabic. In December 2011, Ms. Farahat testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the US House of Representatives on the roots of the persecution of the Coptic Christian minority in her native Egypt. She is a fellow at the Middle East Forum and the Center for Security Policy.
Clare M. Lopez
Clare M. Lopez is a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on Middle East, homeland security, national defense, and counterterrorism issues. Lopez began her career as an operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), serving domestically and abroad for 20 years in a variety of assignments, acquiring extensive expertise in counterintelligence, counternarcotics, and counterproliferation issues with a career regional focus on the former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
Ms. Lopez is a Professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies. Formerly, she was Executive Director of the Iran Policy Committee, a Washington, DC think tank, from 2005-2006.
She has served as a Senior Scientific Researcher at the Battelle Memorial Institute; a Senior Intelligence Analyst, Subject Matter Expert, and Program Manager at HawkEye Systems, LLC.; and previously produced Technical Threat Assessments for U.S. Embassies at the Department of State, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, where she worked as a Senior Intelligence Analyst for Chugach Systems Integration. Ms. Lopez received a B.A. in Communications and French from Notre Dame College of Ohio and an M.A. in International Relations from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University.
She completed Marine Corps Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Quantico, Virginia before declining a commission in order to join the CIA. Ms. Lopez is a member of the Advisory Board for the Intelligence Analysis and Research program and guest lecturer at her undergraduate alma mater, Notre Dame College of Ohio; she also has been a Visiting Researcher and guest lecturer on counterterrorism, national defense, and international relations at Georgetown University.
Ms. Lopez is a regular contributor to print and broadcast media on subjects related to Iran and the Middle East and the co-author of two published books on Iran. She is the author of an acclaimed paper for the Center, The Rise of the Iran Lobby.
Paul Marshall
Paul Marshall is Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, Washington, D.C.
He has spoken on religious freedom, international relations, and radical Islam before Congressional committees, the U.S. State Department, the Helsinki Commission, INS and DHS Asylum Bureaus, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. He has also lectured in Canada, England, Israel, Cyprus, Austria, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Greece, India, Switzerland, Spain, Lebanon, Korea, Nigeria, Belarus, Australia, South Africa, Malaysia, Thailand, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
In November, 2011, Oxford University press published his Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide co-authored with Nina Shea
His co-edited work Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion, was published by Oxford in early 2009 and was awarded the Wilbur Prize by the Religious Communicators’ Council and given the “Book of the Year 2009” Awardfrom the Religious Communication Association.
Marshall is the author of the best-selling survey of religious persecution Their Blood Cries Out (1997). In speeches introducing the International Religious Freedom Act in the U.S. Senate, Senator Nickles described the book as “a powerful and persuasive analysis” and an “exhaustive survey,” “which simply cannot be ignored” and Senator Lieberman described it as “the manifesto of the religious freedom movement.”
He is also the General Editor of Religious Freedom in the World (2008), the most comprehensive survey of religious freedom available in English. His Radical Islam’s Rules: the Worldwide Spread of Extreme Sharia Law was released in 2005. Other recent books include Islam at the Crossroads: Understanding its Beliefs, History and Conflicts (2002), and God and the Constitution: Christianity and American Politics (2002).
Marshall is the author and editor of twenty other books and booklets, including Just Politics (1998), and A Kind of Life Imposed on Man: Vocation and Social Order from Tyndale to Locke (1996). He has published eighty scholarly articles, twenty briefs to government bodies, and hundreds of popular articles (for a listing of some recent articles see https://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?fuseaction=staff_bio&eid=MarsPaul. His writings have been translated into Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. His lecture on “Keeping the Faith: Religion, Freedom and International Affairs” was published in “America’s Representative Speeches 1998-1999,” a compendium of the best speeches of the year.
He is a frequent demand for lectures and media appearances including interviews on ABC Evening News; CBS Evening News; CNN; PBS; Fox News; the BBC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation; Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; South African Broadcasting Corporation; Al-Jazeera; NHK, the Japanese Public Broadcasting Company, and several thousand radio stations. His work has been published in or the subject of articles in the New York Times, Wall St. Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, Christian Science Monitor, Commentary, First Things, Weekly Standard, New Republic, Globe and Mail, American Teacher, a nd several hundred other newspapers and magazines.
Previous professorships include Fuller Theological Seminary; Regent College, Vancouver; University of Toronto; the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto; Catholic University, Washington D.C.; the Faculties of Law and of Philosophy of the Free University, Amsterdam; the European University for the Humanities, Minsk, Belarus; J. Omar Good Distinguished Visiting Professor, Juniata College; adjunct Professor in the Graduate Program in Philosophy at Rutgers University; and Visiting Professor, School of Law. Pepperdine University. He has taught political science, law, philosophy and theology.
Marshall holds a B.Sc. (Geology) from the University of Manchester, an M.Sc.(Geochemistry) from the University of Western Ontario, an M.Phil. (Philosophy) from the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, and an M.A. and Ph.D. (Political Science) from York University, with further studies in international human rights law at the University of Strasbourg and theology and jurisprudence at Oxford University.
He has also been a Senior Fellow at the Institute on Religion and Democracy; Overseas Research Fellow for the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa; columnist for News Network International; exploration geologist in the Canadian Arctic; forest fire fighter in British Columbia and an advisor to the Council of Yukon Indians.
He is an Advisor to the World Evangelical Fellowship, a member of the Advisory Board of Harvard University’s project on “Religion and Global Politics,” a member of the Religious Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations, and of the Council for America’s First Freedom.
His hobbies include shark diving and photography.
Ashraf Ramelah
Ashraf Ramelah is the founder and President of Voice of the Copts, a human rights organization with offices in Italy and the United States. He is dedicated to the Coptic cause and believes that this life’s mission is to speak up for the oppressed Copts who cannot speak up for themselves, hence the name, Voice of the Copts.
When he is not meeting with political figures and policy makers, Dr. Ramelah spends his time travelling throughout the country giving talks about the Coptic issue and explaining to the West the oppression against the Copts in Egypt. Dr. Ramelah was invited to address the European Parliament (2010) and to be the keynote speaker in the Italian Parliament (2011) on the issue of Coptic persecution in Egypt. He has done various interviews with Italian newspapers and appears frequently in the Italian and Arab Media. Dr. Ramelah is a featured author at American Thinker.com, Family Security Matters.com, and Canada Free Press.com.
Dr. Ramelah is well known to the Egyptian government due to his advocacy for the Egyptian Copts as well as for Voice of the Copts’ lawsuit against them on behalf of Muslim convert to Christianity Mr. Hegazy and his family in 2009-2010. Ashraf Ramelah also appears as an entry in the Coptic History Encyclopedia.
Dr. Ramelah, himself a Copt, was born in Cairo, Egypt. At the age of 17, he travelled to Italy to study architecture. He graduated with a doctorate in architecture from La Sapienza – Universita’ Degli Studi di Roma,Italy. His special study is restoration of old monuments and history of architecture.
His career as an architect took him to work and live in Italy, Saudi Arabia, Gabon and the USA. His personal interests are Egyptology and Coptic history in the period after the Arab invasion of Egypt in 651 AD.
Voice of the Copts is dedicated to bringing fair, correct and balanced information to the entire world regarding Copts and Christians in countries with an Arab-Muslim majority.
Dr. Ramelah is managing editor of a website in both English and Italian with the same name
Juliana Taimoorazy
Juliana Taimoorazy is the founder and President of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, an organization that raises awareness about the persecuted church in Iraq and helps Assyrian Christians resettle in Illinois, Michigan, Massachusetts and Arizona. Through her activism and media appearances, Taimoorazy has worked tirelessly to promote the cause of Assyrian Christians in the U.S. While volunteering for Catholic Charities, she has mentored young women arriving in the U.S. She has also volunteered with Operation Homefront in Illinois, an organization that provides emergency financial and other assistance to the families of our service members and wounded warriors.
Taimoorazy was smuggled into Switzerland in 1989 to avoid religious persecution in her native Iran. After spending seven days in a monastery in Zurich, she was smuggled into Germany where she sought asylum in the U.S embassy. In 1990 she immigrated to the U.S with the refugee status. As an Assyrian Christian living in Iran, Taimoorazy learned to be multi-lingual at a young age, and is fluent in English, Farsi, and Assyrian. She obtained her Masters degree in Instructional Design from Northeastern Illinois University. In addition to being an entrepreneur, she has also worked as a journalist for a local television station in Chicago. As a child, she would take her sister’s hairbrush and stand in front of the mirror and act as a news reporter – even before she learned how to read and write. She currently is a radio host for Nineveh Radio.
Very Rev. Keith Roderick
Father Roderick has served as Secretary General of the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights (CDHR) since 1993. The Coalition is a consortium of over fifty-five organizations working together to champion the rights of minorities living in Islamic countries. Members of the Coalition include Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Assyrians, Armenians, Bahai, Copts, Lebanese, Indonesians, Iranians, Pakistanis, Indians, Sudanese, Nigerians, and others. He has testified to the Senate and House of Representatives on the issue of religious freedom and human rights concerns of non-Muslim minorities in Islamic countries. He has been interviewed and published articles on minorities in the Middle East for national and international media. Father Roderick continues to work with leaders of the minority communities in the Middle East to promote security and equality.
Formerly he was the Director of Spoon River College in Macomb, Illinois and taught religion and philosophy for fifteen years. He founded the Society of St. Stephen in 1982 that worked on behalf of religious prisoners of conscience and their families in the former Soviet Union. He served as Christian Solidarity International’s Representative in Washington, D.C. until 2009. He served as the Co-Director of the International Task Force, formerly The Task Force on Soviet Jewry, Executive Director of the Sudan Campaign, Co-Chairs the Coalition to Save Iraq’s Christians and Other Defenseless Minorities. Is on the Board of Directors/Advisors of the Damanga Coalition for Freedom and Democracy (Darfur), Religious Freedom Coalition (Washington, D.C.), Institut de l’Europe Libre (Paris), International Christian Union, and Middle East Concern (Cyprus) and International Christian Union.
He is an Episcopal priest of the Diocese of Springfield, presently serving as Dean and Rector of St. Andrew’s Church in Carbondale.