The Cost of Conscience—The Hidden Challenges of Dissent in the Workplace

Former US Air Force interrogator Matthew Alexander is a leading advocate for noncoercive methods of interrogation and a forceful critic of the use of torture against detainees. As an Open Society Fellow, Alexander, who conducted or supervised nearly 1,300 interrogations in Iraq, wrote a supplement to the interrogation manual to complement the Army Field Manual and monitored the Obama administration’s detainee policy. The supplement he wrote outlines effective interrogation techniques used to build a relationship of trust with a detainee, the most vital element of cooperation.

Alexander is a fellow at UCLA's Burkle Center for International Relations. He is the author of Kill or Capture: How a Special Operations Task Force Took Down a Notorious al-Qaeda Terrorist (St. Martin’s, 2011), and How to Break a Terrorist: The US Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq (Free Press, 2008). He has written for the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times, among other publications. He is a regular guest on TV news shows and has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, CNN, Fox News, and the CBS Evening News.

Richard Cizik is president and co-founder of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, an organization committed to a holistic and moral vision for evangelical engagement. As an Open Society Fellow, Cizik worked to bring evangelicals, policymakers, and activists together to address climate change, immigration, and criminal justice challenges.

From 2008-2010, he served as co-chair of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Taskforce on Religion and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy, whose mission is to advance understanding of the role of religion in world affairs. Cizik served for ten years as vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, a post he left in 2008 after expressing support for civil unions. A participant in Climate Forum 2002, at Oxford, England, which produced the "Oxford Declaration" on global warming, Cizik was instrumental in creating the Evangelical Climate Initiative. In 2008 he was named to Time Magazine's list of the "Time 100" most influential people, and in 2006, Fast Company placed him on its list of "Most Creative Minds."

Cizik has written over 100 articles and editorials and is the author and editor of The High Cost of Indifference (Regal Books).

Elizabeth MacKenzie Biedell, a former intelligence analyst, is researching a book on how classified intelligence can undermine checks and balances in political decision making. MacKenzie Biedell wrote daily briefings for the White House and senior cabinet leaders during the buildup to the Iraq war. As an Open Society Fellow, she is proposing methods to enable the US Congress, journalists, and the public to evaluate a future rationale for war from a president acting on the basis of classified information.

MacKenzie Biedell argues that in the sometimes chaotic buildup to military action, Congress may miss opportunities to perform its duty to ensure that intelligence analysis is sound. For this reason, stronger checks should be built into the system of intelligence briefings, and the media need to be better prepared to hold both Congress and the President accountable for the intelligence they use to justify war.

MacKenzie Biedell worked at the Central Intelligence Agency and the US State Department before starting her fellowship project. She was based in Europe and the Middle East during her government service and holds a master's degree in international peace and conflict resolution from American University and a master’s degree in theology from Wesley Seminary.

Senior Advisor
OSI-Washington, D.C.

Morton H. Halperin is a senior advisor to the Open Society Foundations. In this capacity, he provides strategic guidance on U.S. and international issues. Halperin previously served as director of U.S. Advocacy for the Foundations.

Halperin has a distinguished career in federal government, having served in the Clinton, Nixon, and Johnson administrations. In the Clinton administration, Halperin was director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State (1998-2001), special assistant to the president and senior director for democracy at the National Security Council (1994-1996), and consultant to the secretary of defense and the under secretary of defense for policy (1993). He was nominated by the president for the position of assistant secretary of defense for democracy and peacekeeping. During the first nine months of the Nixon administration, Halperin was a senior staff member of the National Security Council staff with responsibility for National Security Planning (1969). In the Johnson administration, Halperin worked in the Department of Defense where he served as deputy assistant secretary of defense (International Security Affairs), responsible for political-military planning and arms control (1966-1969).

Halperin also has a long record as a Washington advocate on national and international issues. He spent many years at the America Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), serving as the director of the Washington office from 1984 to 1992, where he was responsible for the national legislative program as well as the activities of the ACLU Foundation based in the Washington office. Halperin also served as the director of the Center for National Security Studies from 1975 to 1992, where he focused on issues affecting both civil liberties and national security.

Halperin has been associated with a number of universities and think tanks including Harvard University where he taught for six years (1960-66), the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for American Progress (CAP). He has been widely published in newspapers and magazines across the world, and has authored, coauthored, and edited more than a dozen books.

The recipient of numerous awards, he serves on the boards of the Center for Democracy and Technology, Disability Rights International, J Street, ONE, the Partnership for a Secure America, and The Constitution Project.  He is also the chair of the advisory board of the Center for National Security Studies.

Halperin holds a PhD in International Relations from Yale University. He received his BA from Columbia College.