Russell Berman is the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where he co-directs the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order. He holds a courtesy appointment at the Freeman Spogli Institute. He formerly served as Senior Advisor on the Policy Planning Staff of the United States Department of State and has been awarded a Mellon Faculty Fellowship at Harvard and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for research in Berlin; he has also been honored with the Bundesverdienstkreuz of the Federal Republic of Germany.

His books include The Rise of the Modern German Novel: Crisis and Charisma (1988) and Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture (1998), both of which won the Outstanding Book Award of the German Studies Association. Some of his other books include Anti-Americanism in Europe: A Cultural Problem (2004), Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007) and Freedom or Terror: Europe Faces Jihad (2010). In his books and many articles Berman has written widely on the cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, critical theory, and cultural dimensions of trans-Atlantic relations, as well as on topics between Europe and the Middle East. His commentary on current events has appeared in The New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times Internationale Politik, Telos, Daily Beast, the Los Angeles Review Books, die Welt, die Neue Zuercher Zeitung, die Weltwoche,  and American Greatness and elsewhere.

Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995 and served as FSI Director from 2015 to 2025. He is also an international affairs analyst for MSNOW.

McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).

McFaul has authored ten books and edited several others, including, most recently, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder, as well as From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, (a New York Times bestseller) Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.

He is a recipient of numerous awards, including an honorary PhD from Montana State University; the Order for Merits to Lithuania from President Gitanas Nausea of Lithuania; Order of Merit of Third Degree from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford University. In 2015, he was the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University.

McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991. 

Tim Josling is a Professor, Emeritus, at the (former) Food Research Institute at Stanford University; a Senior Fellow by courtesy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and a faculty member at FSI's Europe Center. His research focuses on agricultural policy and food policy in industrialized nations; international trade in agricultural and food products; and the development of the multilateral trade regime. His recent research topics include the reform of the agricultural trading system in the World Trade Organization; the treatment of agriculture in bilateral trade agreements; the use of geographical indications in food markets; the role of health and safety regulations in trade; the impact of climate change legislation on agricultural trade policies; and the treatment of biofuel subsidies in the WTO.

At Stanford, Josling teaches a course in the Economics and Political Economy of the Multilateral Trade System, in the International Relations program. Before coming to Stanford in 1978 Josling taught at the London School of Economics and the University of Reading, England.  His academic background includes a B.Sc. in Agriculture from the University of London (Wye College), a M.Sc. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Guelph, Canada, and a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University.

Josling is a member of the International Policy Council on Food and Agricultural Trade and former Chair of the Executive Committee of the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium. He holds a Visiting Professorship at the University of Kent, in the United Kingdom, and is a past President of the UK Agricultural Economics Association. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economics in Washington. In 2004 he was made a Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association.