Joseph Loconte

Joseph Loconte, PhD, is an Associate Professor of History at The King’s College in New York City, where he teaches Western Civilization and American Foreign Policy.Loconte previously served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University, where he taught on religion and public policy. He was a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and from 1999-2006 he held the first chair in religion as the William E. Simon Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.Loconte is the author of The Searchers: A Quest for Faith in the Valley of Doubt (Thomas Nelson, 2012) and God, Locke, and Liberty: The Struggle for Religious Freedom in the West (Lexington Books, 2014). His other books are The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler’s Gathering Storm (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004) and Seducing the Samaritan: How Government Contracts Are Reshaping Social Services (The Pioneer Institute, 1997). His commentary on religion and democracy, human rights, and international religious freedom appears in the nation’s leading media outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, and National Public Radio. He is also a regular contributor to the London-based Standpoint Magazine and Italy’s La Stampa.Loconte has testified before Congress on international human rights and served as a human rights expert on the 2005 Congressional Task Force on the United Nations, contributing to its final report, “American Interests and U.N. Reform.” He was an informal advisor/speechwriter for British MP Andrew Mitchell, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development. From 2001-2003, he was an informal advisor to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He now serves as a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum and as an affiliated scholar at the John Jay Institute.A native of Brooklyn, NY, Loconte divides his time between New York City and the Washington, D.C. area.