Providence Magazine‘s annual Christianity & National Security (CNS) conference will be held this year from midday on Thursday, October 16th to the evening of Friday, October 17th at the Army and Navy Club in Washington, DC. The two-day event will feature academics, journalists, think tank fellows, veterans of Capitol Hill and the White House, and other experts on the theory and practice of international relations. CNS serves as a unique space for thoughtful Christians to come together and discuss the meaningful and consistent application of Christian ethics to foreign policy/national security.
From St. Augustine in the 4th century to Reinhold Niebuhr in the 20th, Christians have long understood that the laws of government, including the use of force, must be judged according to the law of God. As threats from China, Russia, and Iran proliferate, educating young people on the Christian tradition of Just War Theory and the importance of American hard and soft power for global stability and prosperity is more important than ever. This year’s conference is open to students of all levels.
Hotel rooms and meals will be provided free of charge for the duration of the conference for students and professors. In order to attend the conference, a resume and brief statement of interest (250 words or less) should be sent to Providence‘s Managing Editor, James Diddams, at jdiddams@theird.org. Applications are now open and will be accepted on a rolling basis until October 1st.
Speakers and Times
October 16th
| Emilie Kao | 1:00 pm |
| Matthew Kroenig | 1:45 pm |
| Aaron MacLean | 2:30 pm |
| Marc LiVecche | 3:15 pm |
| Michael Sobolik | 4:00pm |
October 17th
| John Moolenaar | 9:00 am |
| Bill Drexel | 9:30 am |
| Judd Birdsall | 10:20 am |
| Paul Miller | 11:15 am |
| Peter Pham | 1:00 pm |
| Rebeccah Heinrichs | 1:45 pm |
| Olivia Enos | 2:30 pm |
| Megan Reiss | 3:15 pm |
| Eric Farnsworth | 4:00 pm |
CNS 2025 Speaker Bios
John Moolenaar
Congressman John Moolenaar represents the hardworking residents of Michigan’s Second Congressional District. He serves as Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. In this role, he leads efforts to stop the CCP’s economic and national security threats. Under his leadership, the committee has made significant strides in countering the CCP’s malign influence and raising awareness about the threats it poses to the American people.
Moolenaar brings years of leadership experience in the private and public sectors. He began his career as a chemist, after graduating from Hope College with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. Moolenaar then worked in business development, and as a school administrator. Moolenaar has a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University. From 2003-2008, he served in the Michigan House of Representatives, and in the Michigan State Senate from 2011-2014. Moolenaar and his wife, Amy, raised their family in Michigan and are blessed with six children and three grandchildren.
Matthew Kroenig
Matthew Kroenig (PhD, UC-Berkeley) is a Professor in the Department of Government and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Kroenig is also Vice President at the Atlantic Council, where he is the Senior Director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Kroenig was appointed by the US Congress in 2022 to serve as a commissioner on the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. He has served in several positions in the U.S. Department of Defense and the intelligence community during the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, including in the Strategy, Middle East, and Nuclear and Missile Defense offices in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the CIA’s Strategic Assessments Group.
Kroenig is the author or editor of eight books, including The Return of Great Power Rivalry: Democracy versus Autocracy from the Ancient World to the US and China, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy: Why Strategic Superiority Matters, and Exporting the Bomb: Technology Transfer and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons. His articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, Foreign Affairs, International Organization, International Security, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Strategic Studies, Politico, Security Studies, Strategic Studies Quarterly, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, among others. He is a columnist at Foreign Policy. Dr. Kroenig provides regular commentary for major media outlets, including PBS, CBS, BBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR, and C-SPAN.
Judd Birdsall
Judd Birdsall (PhD, University of Cambridge) is Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Previously, he served at the U.S. State Department in the Office of International Religious Freedom and on the Policy Planning Staff. Birdsall founded the Cambridge Institute on Religion & International Studies, and his commentary has appeared in The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Christianity Today, Providence, and other outlets.
Emilie Kao
Emilie Kao serves as senior counsel and vice president of advocacy strategy for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). In her role, she works on academic scholarship and coalitions of strategic partners. She previously served as director of the Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society where she co-edited Heritage’s “First Principles on International Human Rights” essay series. Kao also worked at the Office of International Religious Freedom at the U.S. Department of State, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and the United Nations in Geneva. She was an associate at the law firm of Latham and Watkins. She has testified on human rights before the U.S. Congress, at the U.S. Department of Justice and at the United Nations in Geneva and New York.
Kao taught international human rights as an adjunct professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. She has published extensively on religious freedom and other human rights, including in Texas Review of Law and Politics, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy: Per Curiam, the Hill, Public Discourse, and National Review. Kao holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and an A.B. degree cum laude from Harvard-Radcliffe College. She is a member of the Supreme Court Bar and the bar associations of California and the District of Columbia. Enos has testified several times before Congress, including before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. She has also testified before the US Commission on International Religious Freedom and regularly briefs senior executive branch officials and members of Congress. Her commentary has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and elsewhere. She has also appeared on CNN, BBC, Fox News, and other news outlets.
Aaron MacLean
Aaron MacLean is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and host of the School of War podcast. He previously served as senior foreign policy advisor and legislative director for Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas). Before that, he spent seven years on active duty with the United States Marine Corps, including a deployment to Afghanistan as an infantry officer in 2009-2010. He also taught at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received the Apgar Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2013. Mr. MacLean holds a BA in philosophy and the history of math and science from St. John’s College, Annapolis, and an MPhil (with distinction) in Medieval Arabic Thought from the University of Oxford. He has been awarded a Boren Scholarship and a Marshall Scholarship. A Virginia native, he currently resides there.
Michael Sobolik
Michael Sobolik is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. He specializes in United States–China relations and great power competition with a focus on geopolitics, net assessments, and competitive strategies. He is the author of Countering China’s Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance (Naval Institute Press, 2024). He is also an advisory board member at the Vandenberg Coalition and a contributing editor at Providence: A Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy. Mr. Sobolik has offered testimony several times before Congress, including before the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the House Natural Resources Committee. His commentary has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Reuters, Foreign Policy, Wired, and The Free Press. He has also appeared on Fox News, ABC, BBC, and other outlets. Mr. Sobolik earned a master of international affairs from the Bush School of Government and Public Service and a bachelor of science in political science at Texas A&M University. He lives with his wife and son in Alexandria, Virginia. Koach has worked on issues of faith and public policy on behalf of the most vulnerable throughout his career. He has served on numerous boards and coalitions integrating his diverse experience in ministry, non-profit, and political settings. He was the director of public policy and advocacy for Food for the Hungry and served as an Anglican priest before being received into full communion with the Catholic Church. He currently serves as Senior Fellow with the Cardinal Newman Society. He holds an MA from Denver Seminary, a certificate in Catholic formative spirituality and graduated magna cum laude as an Honors Scholar in Government and International Studies from West Virginia Wesleyan. Koach lives in Northen Virginia with his wife and two children.
Marc LiVecche
Marc LiVecche (PhD, University of Chicago) is the McDonald Distinguished Scholar of Ethics, War, and Public Life at Providence. He is also a non-resident research fellow at the US Naval War College, in the College of Leadership and Ethics and adjunct professor of ethics at the US Naval Academy. His first book, The Good Kill: Just War & Moral Injury, was published in 2021 by Oxford University Press. He has co-edited, both with Eric Patterson, Responsibility and Restraint: James Turner Johnson and the Just War Tradition, published by Stone Tower Press and Military Necessity and Just War Statecraft, published by Routledge. Currently, he is finalizing Moral Horror: A Just War Defense of the Bombing of Hiroshima. Before all this academic stuff, Marc spent twelve years doing a variety of things in Central Europe—ranging from helping build sport and recreational leagues in post-communist communities, to lecturing on culture, moral philosophy, history, and theology at a study and research center, to leading seminars on history and ethics onsite at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp in Poland. This latter experience allowed him to continue his undergraduate study of the Shoah; a process which rendered him entirely ill-suited for pacifism..
Ambassador J. Peter Pham
Ambassador J. Peter Pham (PhD, Gregorian University) is a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He has served as the first-ever U.S. Special Envoy for the Sahel Region (2020–2021)
and previously as Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Africa (2018–2020), both with the personal rank of Ambassador. Before his envoy roles, he was Vice President for Research and Regional Initiatives and Director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council. Earlier in his career he was a tenured associate professor of justice studies, political science, and Africana studies at James Madison University. Today, in addition to his fellowship at the Atlantic Council, Ambassador Pham is Senior Advisor at the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue, Non-Executive Chairman of High Power Exploration (HPX), Non-Executive Director of Africell Global
Holdings and Rainbow Rare Earths, and a strategic advisor to several companies including dClimate. He is the author of more than 300 essays, reviews, and over a dozen books focused on African politics, security, and development; he has also been honored with state recognitions from multiple African countries and was elected in 2022 to the American Academy of Diplomacy.
Paul D. Miller
Paul D. Miller (PhD, Georgetown) is Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where he co-chairs the Global Politics & Security concentration. A former White House staffer, he served as Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan on the National Security Council, with over a decade of government service that also includes work as an intelligence analyst for the CIA and as a military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army. Miller taught at The University of Texas at Austin and the National Defense University and worked at the RAND Corporation prior to his arrival at Georgetown. Dr. Miller is the author of several books, including American Power and Liberal Order, Just War and Ordered Liberty, and The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong With Christian Nationalism. His most recent book is Choosing Defeat: The Twenty-Year Saga of How America Lost Afghanistan (2025).
Bill Drexel
Bill Drexel is a fellow at Hudson Institute, focusing on United States–India relations, artificial intelligence competition with China, and technology in American grand strategy. Previously, Mr. Drexel worked on technology and national security at the Center for a New American Security, humanitarian innovation at the United Nations, and on Indo-Pacific affairs at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Drexel’s field experience includes serving as a rescue boat driver during Libya’s migration crisis, conducting investigative research in the surveillance state of Xinjiang, China, and supporting humanitarian data efforts across wartime Ukraine. Mr. Drexel’s opinion is regularly sought out by outlets like The Economist, TIME, and CNN, and his writings have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and Politico. Mr. Drexel holds a BA from Yale University and an MPhil from Cambridge University. He was awarded the Schwarzman Scholarship to Tsinghua University, Beijing, and the Fox Fellowship to Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Rebeccah L. Heinrichs
Rebeccah L. Heinrichs (PhD, Missouri State University) is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and the director of its Keystone Defense Initiative. She specializes in US national defense policy with a focus on strategic deterrence. Dr. Heinrichs served as a commissioner on the bipartisan Strategic Posture Commission, which was created in the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act. She also serves on the US Strategic Command Advisory Group and the National Independent Panel on Military Service and Readiness. She is an adjunct professor at the Institute of World Politics, where she teaches nuclear deterrence theory, and is also a contributing editor of Providence: A Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy. Dr. Heinrichs earned her doctorate in defense and strategic studies from Missouri State University, where she graduated with distinction. She received her MA in national security and strategic studies from the US Naval War College and graduated with highest distinction from its College of Naval Command and Staff, receiving the Director’s Award for academic excellence. She earned her BA in history and political science from Ashland University in Ohio, was an Ashbrook Scholar, and currently serves as a member of the University’s Board of Trustees. She lives in Virginia with her husband and their five children.
Olivia Enos
Olivia Enos is Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, specializing in human rights and national security challenges in Asia. Her work spans China, North Korea, Hong Kong, Burma, Cambodia, and other parts of the region, covering issues of democracy and governance, religious freedom, refugees, and transnational crime. She is also an adjunct professor in the Democracy and Governance Program at Georgetown University, where she teaches a course on countering authoritarianism in Asia, and a contributor at Forbes. She previously served as Washington Director for the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation and before that as Senior Policy Analyst in the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation. Ms. Enos has testified before Congress multiple times (including the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission), and she regularly briefs senior executive branch officials and members of Congress. Her commentary has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, among other outlets.
Meg Reiss
Meg Reiss (PhD, UT-Austin) is Founder and CEO of SolidIntel Inc., a company focused on applying generative AI to de-risk supply chains and intelligence for the U.S. government and commercial sector. She is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the GeoStrategy Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, a Visiting Fellow at the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, and a Schmidt Futures International Strategy Fellow. Reiss most recently served as National Security Policy Advisor to U.S. Senator Mitt Romney. Her earlier roles include Senior National Security Fellow at the R Street Institute, Senior Editor at Lawfare, Visiting Fellow at the National Security Institute, and Senior National Security Fellow for Senator Ben Sasse.
