Meet the CMI Team

Liza Ashley

Director

Liza Ashley is the Director of the Charles Malik Institute. She holds a B.A. in Humanities from The King’s College and an MLitt with Distinction in Terrorism and Political Violence from the University of St. Andrews. She earned the The Rt. Hon Lord Campbell of Pittenweem Prize for International Relations (2025) for the best master’s dissertation in the department. Before joining the Charles Malik Institute, she worked as a reporter covering topics in religion, ethics, and politics in a wide variety of publications including Newsweek, Religion News Service, and Religion Unplugged. During her tenure, she was awarded the Chandler Award from the Religion News Association, an EPPY Award from Editor&Publisher, as well as awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Associated Church Press, and others. She is an alumna of the Humanities at Hertog and the Philos Leadership Institute. You can find her ongoing work in numerous outlets including The Christian Post, Jewish News Syndicate, The Times of Israel, and The Jerusalem Post.

Habib Malik

SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW

Habib C. Malik is a Senior Research Fellow at The Philos Project, where his work focuses on mapping out Lebanon's current challenges and the best path forward for reform. He holds a BA degree in history from the American University of Beirut and a MA and doctorate from Harvard University in modern European intellectual history. He has taught in universities in Lebanon and in Washington, DC for over 3 decades; and is an Associate Professor of History at Lebanese American University (currently retired) where he taught history, cultural studies, and occasional graduate seminars in political science. Habib also researches his late father, Dr. Charles Malik’s archives at the Library of Congress in Washington and works on preparing for publication a massive unpublished diary by same.

Mary Ann Glendon

Board of Advisors Member

Mary Ann is a learned hand professor of law at Harvard Law School and a former United States Ambassador to the Holy See. She is also the author of several books, including A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse.

Jacob Wolf

Board of Advisors Member

Jacob Wolf is a founding faculty member of the University of Austin, where he is Assistant Professor of Politics in the Center for Economics, Politics, and History. He was previously Assistant Professor of Government in the Honors College and the College of Arts and Sciences at Regent University, where he also served as the Associate Director of the Lincoln Program in America's Founding Ideals. Before these positions, Jacob was the 2020-2021 John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Boston College in 2020, double majoring in political theory and American politics.

Tony Nasrallah

Board of Advisors Member

Tony Nasrallah is an Adjunct Faculty member at the Lebanese American University. He leads the Institute of Lebanese Thought at Notre Dame University (NDU) in Lebanon, where he has served since 2015 as the curator and archivist of the Charles Malik Collection. Tony has co-edited two books with Habib C. Malik on Charles Malik: the first was Charles Malik’s First Philosophical Treatises, which had remained a manuscript for 80 years before its publication in 2016; the second, On the Philosophical Thought of Charles Malik (NDU, 2018), features contributions by William Sweet, Majid Fakhri, and George Sabra. Tony also wrote a documentary film on Charles Malik, which premiered at the Library of Congress in 2021. The film has been screened at various international venues, including the Cedars House in Washington, D.C., in 2022, the Gregorian University in Rome in 2023, and the Australian Catholic University in Sydney. Tony earned his Ph.D. from Saint Joseph University in Beirut, graduating magna cum laude, with a dissertation on Charles Malik.

Joe Loconte

Board of Advisors Member

Joseph Loconte, PhD, is a Presidential Scholar in Residence at New College of Florida and the C.S. Lewis Scholar for Public Life at Grove City College. He also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-1918 (Harper Collins, 2015) Mr. Loconte previously served as an Associate Professor of History at the King’s College in New York City and as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. Mr. Loconte’s commentary on religion and public life appears in the nation’s leading journals and newspapers, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, National Affairs, the New Criterion, National Geographic, Law and Liberty, the National Interest, and National Review. For 10 years, he served as a commentator for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. He was the winner of the 2017 Best Article award from the Tolkien Society for his article How J.R.R. Tolkien Found Mordor on the Western Front.

Laurence Hemming

Board of Advisors Member

Laurence Hemming is Director of the Knapp Foundation, and an Honorary Professor at Lancaster University in the UK. He joined Lancaster University in 2008. Prior to that he held senior research positions in the University of London (UK) and at KU Leuven (Belgium). He holds a doctorate from Cambridge and other degrees from Oxford. Among his published works are: Heidegger’s Atheism (Notre Dame, 2002), Postmodernity’s Transcending (Notre Dame, 2005) and Heidegger and Marx: A Productive Dialogue over the Language of Humanism (Northwestern, 2013). With Bogdan Costea, in 2017 he published a translation of Ernst Jünger’s 1932 The Worker, and with Aaron Turner he is currently translating a volume of the later Heidegger’s lectures on the Anaximander Fragment. He has written and published mainly in German philosophy, but also Mediaeval theology and in Liturgy. He has edited and published numerous books and articles in academic journals in philosophy, theology, liturgy, politics and classics.

Peter Petkoff

Board of Advisors Member

Peter Petkoff is a Tutorial Law Fellow and a Director of the Law and Religion Oxford, a research centre based at Regent's Park College, Oxford, and Managing Editor of the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion. He is Legal Consultant on Media Freedom and Freedom of Expression for the Representative on Freedom of the Media at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Peter is involved in cutting edge research on the relationship between religion and politics and law and religion. In his capacity as Director of the Law and Religion Oxford at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, he brings together lawyers, policy makers, theologians, philosophers, social and political scientists and aims to develop innovative interdisciplinary strategies for studying law, religion and international relations from legal and theological perspectives.

Todd Thompson

Board of Advisors Member

Todd M. Thompson is Associate Professor of History at Torrey Honors College, Biola University. Before coming to Biola, Todd completed his Ph.D. in history at the University of Cambridge and spent four years teaching at Qatar University in the Middle East. As a practitioner of Socratic education in a "great books" program, he finds himself reflecting constantly on the difference Christianity makes to liberal arts education, and as a researcher he is fascinated by the human quest for the transcendent in the by-ways and alley-ways of human culture. He has written on the history of Christian engagement with Islam and the cultural history of democracy.

Aniss G. E. Cham

Board of Advisors Member

Dr. Aniss G. E. Chami is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Vitex Pharmaceuticals, Australia's leading contract manufacturer of solid-dose listed medicines. With an impressive educational background, Dr. Chami holds a Bachelor of Medical Science (Honours) from Macquarie University, a Master of Pharmacy from the University of Sydney, and a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Notre Dame Australia. He also earned a Master of Financial Management and a Master of Business Administration from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management. Under his leadership, Vitex has grown into one of the few remaining Australian-owned pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities, earning Dr. Chami recognition from health authorities across Asia and the Middle East as a staunch advocate for Australian-made products. In 2021, he was awarded the prestigious ‘Executive of the Year Award in the Australian Manufacturing Industry’ by CEO Magazine. Dr. Chami is currently overseeing the operation of Vitex's new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Sydney and is spearheading the development of Oceania's largest contract manufacturing facility for solid-dose registered medicine. His forward-thinking initiatives also include constructing Australia’s first innovation center for medicines manufacturing, which will feature a training college to prepare future professionals for the pharmaceutical industry. A passionate advocate for returning medicine manufacturing to Australia, Dr. Chami combines integrity and business acumen to drive growth while fostering innovation and upholding Australian manufacturing standards.

Shane Geha

Board of Advisors Member

Shane attended and completed Sydney Grammar school in 1985 and graduated from the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Sydney in 1989. In the same year he finished university, Shane started his property career in Canberra where he developed nine buildings including the Garden City Motor Inn. In 1993, Shane started Granada Developments, a development company which managed sites across Sydney including Sutherland, Parramatta, Mosman and Burwood. Granada Developments, in partnership with another firm, carried out a successful 65-unit development in North Randwick and won five development and industry awards including the Royal Australia Institute of Architecture Award for Best Apartment Building Nationally. Shane, with Adam Geha and Dr Michael Easson AM, founded EG Group in 1999, a multidisciplinary property advisory, investment, and funds management company. The company started with a mere two clients and one staff member but over the years has grown into a thriving advisory and investment firm boasting offices in Australia and America. In the year 2000, EG raised $36 million for a $72 million fund which purchased land around new train stations being developed across Sydney. Today, EG currently employs over 120 staff members, has rezoned more than $22 billion worth of property, owns a 50% stake in architectural services firm Willow Inc and has a managed funds business valued at more than $3 billion. EG also operates a property syndication business and a $25 million EG USA fund. EG has a successful track record of engagement with government referral bodies, statutory authorities and utility companies such as roads, environment, water and heritage authorities, all which play crucial roles in the rezoning process. EG also works with many institutional companies in the rezoning space. Shane has become one of the leading rezoning experts in Australia and his knowledge of planning and property is one of a kind. Shane bears overall responsibility for all EG’s rezoning projects and has extensive experience in managing large teams to bring EG's value creation concepts to fruition.