Senior Fellow, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies
Dean Cheng currently a Senior Fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, specializing in the US relationship with China. Prior to being with the Potomac institute, he recently retired as the Senior Research Fellow for Chinese Political and Military Affairs at the Heritage Foundation. He is fluent in Chinese, and uses Chinese language materials regularly in his work. Previously, he worked with the China Studies Division (previously, Project Asia) at the Center for Naval Analysis, a Federally Funded Research and Development Center, where he specialized in Chinese military issues, with a focus on Chinese military doctrine and Chinese space capabilities. Before that, he worked for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and as an analyst with the US Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment in the International Security and Space Division.
His published work includes the volume Cyber Dragon: Inside China’s Information Warfare and Cyber Operations (Praeger Publishing, 2016). He has testified before Congress, and spoken at the National Space Symposium, the US National Defense University, the USSTRATCOM Deterrence Symposium, Harvard, and MIT. He has appeared frequently in print and broadcast media to discuss Chinese space and military activities.
General Counsel, TechFreedom
James Dunstan serves as the General Counsel to TechFreedom. Jim has served as a Senior Adjunct Fellow to TechFreedom since its inception. Jim has more than 37 years of private practice experience in a technology-focused practice, including telecommunications, media, computer game, and outer space law. Jim spent 17 years at the telecom boutique firm Haley Bader & Potts (10 years in management), and headed the Telecommunications and Information Technology Group at Garvey, Schubert & Barer from 2000-2006. Jim founded his own firm, Mobius Legal Group, in 2010; he continues that private practice (on matters not in conflict with TechFreedom’s work) while serving as TechFreedom’s General Counsel.
Jim’s career includes being on the legal team that won the first cellular radio license for MCI in 1984, writing the constitutional challenge to the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine that took down the Doctrine in Syracuse Peace Council v. FCC, 867 F.2d 654 (1989), and helping shape the FCC’s children’s television rules on behalf of a client which produces the majority of educational programming for the major television networks. He litigated the first “virtual property” case and drafted and negotiated the first lease for a manned space station (Mir) as well as writing the first contract that was actually executed in outer space.
At TechFreedom, Jim’s substantive portfolio includes FCC regulation, the Children’s Online Protection and Privacy Act (COPPA), and all things outer space. As General Counsel, he oversees the entire legal team, and participates in TechFreedom’s robust appellate litigation team.
Jim was the 1978 Harry S. Truman Scholar from Arizona, is a graduate of Claremont McKenna College (1980), and the Georgetown University Law Center (1983). He is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Virginia. Jim holds multiple patents for innovative computer input devices and has a number of patents pending in the field of computer game devices and methods. Jim is an avid musician, playing French horn in the Fairfax Wind Symphony, and with the Silver 5 Brass Quintet.
Senior Fellow, Asian Military Affairs, International Assessment and Strategy Center
Mr. Richard D. Fisher, Jr. is a Senior Fellow with the International Assessment and Strategy Center. He has previously worked with the Center for Security Policy, Jamestown Foundation China Brief, U.S. House of Representatives Republican Policy Committee, and The Heritage Foundation. Mr. Fisher has previously testified on aspects of China’s strategic challenge before the United States Senate, the House of Representatives and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He is the author of China’s Military Modernization, Building for Regional and Global Reach (Praeger, 2008, Stanford University Press, 2010, Taiwan Ministry of National Defense translation, 2012). His articles have been published in the Jane’s Intelligence Review, Jane’s Defence Weekly, Aviation Week and Space Technology, Armed Forces Journal, Far Eastern Economic Review, Asian Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, The Sankei Shimbun, World Airpower Review and Air Forces Monthly. He received a B.A. (Honors) in 1981 from Eisenhower College.
Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Margaret Harker litigates for a public interest law firm. She has significant experience in government investigations and litigation, having served in the three branches of our government. Previously, she led complex Congressional investigations for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform—including the only government-wide investigation into federal agencies’ strategy (or lack thereof) to counter Chinese Communist Party political warfare against America.
Prior to her time on Capitol Hill, Harker served in the U.S. Department of Justice. She was an Assistant United States Attorney in both the Eastern District of Tennessee and the Eastern District of Virginia. She was a Trial Attorney in the National Security Division, Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, with an emphasis on the administration and enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Harker clerked for the Honorable Henry E. Hudson, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia and the Honorable Randolph A. Beales, Court of Appeals of Virginia.
Earlier in her career, she studied in Beijing, China, and worked at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s China Center.
James Madison Distinguished Professor of Law and Class of 1941 Research Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Professor John C. Harrison is the James Madison Distinguished Professor of Law and Class of 1941 Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He joined the faculty at University of Virginia in 1993 as an associate professor of law after a distinguished career with the U.S. Department of Justice. His teaching subjects include constitutional history, federal courts, remedies, corporations, civil procedure, legislation and property. In 2008 he was on leave from the Law School to serve as counselor on international law in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State.
A 1977 graduate of the University of Virginia, Harrison earned his law degree in 1980 at Yale, where he served as editor of the Yale Law Journal and editor and articles editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order. He was an associate at Patton Boggs & Blow in Washington, D.C., and clerked for Judge Robert Bork on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He worked with the Department of Justice from 1983-93, serving in numerous capacities, including deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel (1990-93).
Professor Emeritus of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jeremy A. Rabkin is a Professor Emeritus of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Before joining the faculty in June 2007, he was for over two decades a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Professor Rabkin serves on the board of directors of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was a board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the board of academic advisors of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Rabkin’s books include Law Without Nations? (Princeton University Press, 2005). He authored “If You Need a Friend, Don’t Call a Cosmopolitan,” a chapter in Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Sigal R. Ben-Porath & Rogers M. Smith eds., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). His articles have appeared in major law reviews and political science journals and his journalistic contributions in a range of magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Thomas Smith Senior Research Fellow, The Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also the Thomas Smith Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War; Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare; and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
He is a co-author of volumes 1 and 2 of R. Rossum, G. Tarr, V. Munoz & J. Yoo American Constitution Law (Routledge, 2026), and a co-editor of the eight-volume series on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, We Hold These Truths, with Yuval Levin and Adam White of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Civic Leadership, Seoul National University, the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Keio University, Trento University, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of Founding Forward, the Washington Legal Foundation, the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Ulysses Grant Institute, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Originalism Lectureship.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Senior Counsel - Civil Rights Division, US Department of Justice
Andrew Darlington was appointed in 2025 to serve as Senior Counsel to the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. He graduated the US Naval Academy in May, 2010 and was commissioned into the United States Marine Corps. He deployed twice to Afghanistan as an infantry officer. For his actions, he was awarded the Purple Heart and other personal combat awards. He later graduated Fordham University School of Law, and has since served as a prosecutor and in private practice. He joined the Florida Department of State in 2022 and was appointed Director of the Office of Election Crimes and Security in March, 2023. He is a member of the Madison Club, the National Security and International Law Practice Group, and the Washington, DC, Chapter.
Professor of Law, Widener University Commonwealth Law School
Assistant Professor of Law, George Mason University, Antonin Scalia Law School
Robert Leider is an Assistant Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. His scholarly interests are in criminal law, criminal procedure, and constitutional law, especially concerning questions about the use of force and the rule of law. He has written on the law of self-defense, the constitutional allocation of military power, and gun control. Among other places, he has published in the Florida Law Review (forthcoming), the Indiana Law Journal, and the Wall Street Journal.
Before joining Antonin Scalia Law School, Professor Leider was at Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC. He was previously with Mayer Brown LLP and was an Olin-Searle-Smith Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has clerked for Judge Diane S. Sykes, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and Justice Clarence Thomas. Professor Leider earned a BA, summa cum laude, from The George Washington University, a JD from Yale Law School, and a PhD in Philosophy (dissertation defended with distinction) from Georgetown University. While at Yale, he served as an articles editor for the Yale Law Journal.
Professor Leider teaches criminal law and torts.
Federal Special Master, US District Court For The District Of Columbia
Julian McCarthy has had a distinguished career in both military and civilian legal service. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1977 and served as a Surface Warfare Officer aboard the USS Dale (CG-19) from 1977 to 1980. Following his military service at sea, he pursued legal studies, earning his Juris Doctor with honors from Duke University School of Law in 1983.
McCarthy began his legal career as a Trial Counsel at the Naval Legal Service Office in Jacksonville, Florida, from 1983 to 1986. He then served as the Staff Judge Advocate at Subic Bay, Republic of the Philippines, from 1986 to 1990. In 1991, he earned a Master of Laws degree with highest honors from The George Washington University Law School. He subsequently served as Executive Assistant to the Navy Judge Advocate General from 1991 to 1992 and as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy from 1992 to 1998. He later commanded the Trial Service Office Southeast from 1998 to 2002, before retiring as a Captain in the United States Navy.
Following his military career, McCarthy continued his service in the legal profession and public sector. He practiced law at Holland & Knight before becoming the Director of Military Affairs, Veterans Services, and Disabled Services for the City of Jacksonville. He later served as the Chief Assistant State Attorney for Florida’s Fourth Judicial Circuit. McCarthy also worked as the Director of Special Programs for the Wounded Warrior Project and served as the Marshal of Florida’s First District Court of Appeal.
Currently, he serves as a Federal Special Master, where he continues his commitment to justice and public service.
Director, Americas Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Ryan C. Berg is director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also an adjunct professor at the Catholic University of America and a course coordinator at the United States Foreign Service Institute. His research focuses on U.S.-Latin America relations, strategic competition and defense policy, authoritarian regimes, armed conflict and transnational organized crime, and trade and development issues. Previously, Dr. Berg was a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he helped lead its Latin America Studies Program, as well as visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Changing Character of War Programme. Dr. Berg was a Fulbright scholar in Brazil and is a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member. He has been published in a variety of peer-reviewed academic and policy-oriented journals, including The Lancet, Migration and Development, the SAIS Review of International Affairs, and the Georgetown Security Studies Review. His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, CNN.com, Los Angeles Times, and World Politics Review, among other outlets. He routinely testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Dr. Berg obtained a PhD and an MPhil in political science and an MSc in global governance and diplomacy from the University of Oxford, where he was a Senior Hulme Fellow. Earlier, he obtained a BA in government and theology from Georgetown University. He is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and is conversational in Slovenian.
CEO & Chairman of the Board, NeWay Capital and Próspera
Erick started his career in investment banking at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co, before working as an M&A advisor for AG Edwards & Sons (now Wells Fargo). He then joined Ernst & Young’s London advisory practice. After that, he led the creation of multiple business units as CFO of LATAM at the Borealis Group, and as an entrepreneur in the financial services industry. Erick is a member of the Society for International Development, in Washington DC.
Executive Director, Center for a Secure Free Society
Joseph M. Humire is a national security expert, specialized in analyzing Transregional Threat Networks in the Western Hemisphere. Mr. Humire provides regular briefings on countering China, Russia, and Iran’s authoritarian influence in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as combating the convergence of international terrorism and transnational organized crime. Mr. Humire has testified numerous times before the U.S. Congress as well as the European and Canadian Parliament and in 2023 was awarded an Order of Defense Merit Medial from the Colombian Armed Forces.
Mr. Humire is a regular national security commentator and contributor for a variety of English and Spanish language media and has a regular weekly radio segment called the #NewWorldReport on the nationally syndicated show and podcast CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor and is the host of the Border Wars Podcast available on all digital platforms. Mr. Humire has published in both languages for various newspapers and academic journals across the Americas and released his first book in 2014 titled Iran’s Strategic Penetration of Latin America, published by Lexington Books. More recently, in 2019, he wrote the foreword for the latest book by Dr. Max G. Manwaring, titled Confronting the Evolving Global Security Landscape published by Praeger Security International.
Mr. Humire currently serves as the executive director of the national security think tank—Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS)—based in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Prior to SFS, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps with a combat tour in Iraq and a multinational training exercise UNITAS in Latin America and the Caribbean. After leaving the military, he graduated from George Mason University with a degree in Economics and Global Affairs. Mr. Humire began building SFS’s global network of more than 100 security scholars in almost 30 countries worldwide as the Director of Institute Relations at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. He is currently a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security and a visiting professor-of-practice at Florida International University’s Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom.
R. B. Price and Isabelle Wade & Paul C. Lyda Professor Emeritus of Law, University of Missouri School of Law
Carl H. Esbeck is R.B. Price Professor and Isabelle Wade & Paul C. Lyda Professor of Law emeritus at the University of Missouri. After attending Cornell University School of Law where he served as an editor on the Cornell Law Review, he held a judicial clerkship with the Honorable Howard C. Bratton, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in New Mexico.
Professor Esbeck publishes widely in the area of religious liberty and church-state relations. He is recognized as the progenitor of "Charitable Choice," an integral part of the 1996 Federal Welfare Reform Act, later made a part of the faith-based initiative and equal-treatment regulations under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In addition, he has taken the lead in recognizing that the modern Supreme Court has applied the Establishment Clause not as a personal right, but as a structural limit on the government's authority in disputes involving church governance. While on leave from 1999 to 2002, Professor Esbeck directed the Center for Law & Religious Freedom (CLRF) and later served as Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. While directing the CLRF, Professor Esbeck was a central part of the congressional advocacy behind the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA). While at the Department of Justice one of his duties was to direct a task force to remove barriers to the equal-treatment of faith-based organizations applying for social service grants. He is the author of Disestablishment and Religious Dissent: Church-State Relations in the New American States, 1776 - 1833 (U. of MO Press, 2019).
Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy, Univ. of Maryland Baltimore County
George R. La Noue is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He has served as a trial expert in twenty cases involving public procurement preferences. For thirty years, he was Director of the Project on Civil Rights and Public Contracts at UMBC which recently contributed 289 public contracting disparity studies to the Library of Congress. He has been a consultant to nine governments and trial expert in thirty cases where the validity of disparity studies was at issue.
Prof. La Noue can be reached by email at glanoue@umbc.edu.
Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Sadanand Dhume writes about South Asian political economy, foreign policy, business, and society, with a focus on India and Pakistan. He is also a South Asia columnist for the Wall Street Journal. He has worked as a foreign correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review in India and Indonesia and was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the Asia Society in Washington, D.C. His political travelogue about the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia, My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with a Radical Islamist, has been published in four countries.
Professor, University of Miami
June Teufel Dreyer is Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, where she teaches courses on China, U.S. defense policy, and international relations. Professor Dreyer has lectured to, and taught a course for, National Security Agency analysts, consults for organizations including the National Geographic and Centra Technology. She is a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a member of International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Formerly senior Far East specialist at the Library of Congress, Dr. Dreyer has also served as Asia policy advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations and as commissioner of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission established by the U.S. Congress. Dr Dreyer’s most recent book, Middle Kingdom and Empire of the Rising Sun: Sino-Japanese Relations Past and Present, was published by Oxford University Press in 2016. The tenth edition of her China’s Political System: Modernization and Tradition, is scheduled for publication in 2018. Professor Dreyer received her BA from Wellesley College and her MA and PhD from Harvard, and has lived in China and Japan and paid numerous visits to Taiwan. She has served as a United States Information Agency lecturer, speaking in fourteen Asia-Pacific states. Professor Dreyer has published widely on the Chinese military, Asian-Pacific security issues, China-Taiwan relations, Sino-Japanese relations, ethnic minorities in China, and Chinese foreign policy. In 2017, she received the University of Miami’s faculty senate award as Distinguished Research Professor.
Founder, Libertas-West Project
Karen Lugo is a constitutional law consultant and national security analyst. She was Director of the Center for Tenth Amendment at Texas Public Policy Foundation from 2013 to 2015. When living in California, she was Co-Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence Center. From 2005 – 2012, she was a clinical visiting and adjunct professor at Chapman University School of Law where she co-taught the advanced Constitutional Law Clinic. Karen has co-authored and written circuit-level and Supreme Court amicus briefs on such issues as FISA Surveillance, Healthcare Reform, Arizona’s Border Security, Gay Marriage, The Ten Commandments, Eminent Domain, Christian Clubs on University Campuses, and Material Support for Terrorists.
Karen is the founder of the Libertas-West Project, a center for study Islamic integration and radicalization issues. In this capacity, she consulted with the Center for Security Policy to write a book on local over-watch of mosque construction and community engagement called: Mosques in America: A Guide to Accountable Permit Hearings and Continuing Citizen Oversight.
Karen writes and speaks for European and American groups on the importance of basing assimilation efforts on principles of Western exceptionalism. She presented a policy brief to the French Conseil d’Etat analyzing the legal implications of banning the burqa. Ms. Lugo has written one of the most comprehensive overviews of sharia law in American courts, American Family Law and Sharia-Compliant Marriages, for the Federalist Society law journal, Engage. She has written several white papers on the American Law for American Courts legislation and sharia tribunals in America.
Ms. Lugo was an appointee to the California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She also taught a Human Rights law course on the contrast between French and English Enlightenment theories in Strasbourg, France.
Until moving from California, Ms. Lugo was a member of the David Horowitz Freedom Center Board of Directors. She was also a regular guest on the Orange County PBS local issues debate program, Inside OC, and she is a contributor to Pajamas Media, National Review Online, City Journal, American Spectator, American Greatness, Townhall.com, American Thinker, Daily Caller, and Family Security Matters. She has been interviewed by dozens of radio hosts and has spoken for civic groups on constitutional and cultural concerns.
Race to a Moon Base—And Frontiers Beyond
Dean Cheng, James Dunstan, Richard D. Fisher, Margaret Harker
As Artemis II navigated around the far side of the moon, setting a new human...
The Return of the Monroe Doctrine? Venezuela, Ecuador, and American Foreign Policy
John C. Harrison, Jeremy A. Rabkin, John C. Yoo
Nearly two centuries after President James Monroe announced a landmark foreign-policy principle in his 1823 address to...
In Memoriam: Professor John S. Baker Jr. (1946–2025)
It is with deep sadness that we share the passing on September 6, 2025, of...
Political Speech of Retired Admirals & Generals
Andrew Darlington, Michael R. Dimino, Robert Leider, J. Daniel McCarthy
What constitutional protections exist for retired admirals and generals commenting on political candidates, campaigns, and sitting presidents?...
A Hemisphere at Stake: China, Cartels, and the Path Forward for U.S. Policy
Ryan C. Berg, Erick A. Brimen, Joseph M. Humire
As China deepens its presence in Latin America by owning nearly 40 ports—including a...
Topics
Vaello Madero, Fitisemanu, and the Future of Citizenship
Though United States v. Vaello Madero did not make waves for its 8-1 majority or...
An Extended Essay on Church Autonomy
Carl H. Esbeck
The doctrine of church autonomy[1] is distinct from the two more familiar lines of cases...
The Race Card in ARPA’s Food Supply Deck
George R. La Noue
It is an old aphorism that a prudent person should not watch the making of...
Topics
Groundhog Day: President Biden's China Strategy
On February 2, as Americans observed the quasi-holiday Groundhog Day, the Arleigh-Burke class guided-missile destroyer...
China: Hegemonic Gambits and Asymetrical Adventurism
International & National Security Law Practice Group Teleforum
Teleforum