Quick Facts
Biography
Jennifer S. Bryson is Director of Operations and Development at the Center for Islam and Religious Freedom. She previously worked at the Witherspoon Institute and spent the years 2004–2006 as an interrogator at the Guantanamo Bay detention camps. Bryson's PhD was in Arabic and Islamic studies, from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.
Bryson has written in favor of humane, rapport-building interrogation, and against the use of torture.
Education
| B.A. | Political Science | Stanford University |
| M.A. | medieval European intellectual history | Yale University |
| PhD | Greco-Arabic and Islamic studies | Yale University |
Bryson spent two years in Egypt learning the Arabic language in between her M.A. and Ph.D.
Bryson is a member of the Phi Alpha Theta honor society.
Careers
Bryson has described fruitless job searches, following earning her PhD, in the late 1990s, only to find that al Qaeda's attacks on September 11, 2001 put her skills in demand.
Television career
According to an article from the October 29, 2001 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Bryson started working for as a television journalist and researcher in 2000. She worked for the PBS NewsHour and CBS's 48 Hours.
Embassy work
Bryson worked at the U.S. Embassies in Egypt and Yemen in 2002.
Career at the Department of Defense
Bryson served as an interrogator in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, from 2004–2006. She managed a counter-terrorism analysis team. Her last position with the DoD was as the lead Action Officer for countering ideological support to terrorism within the Office of the Secretary of Defense in Support to Public Diplomacy.
Academic career
After her public service Bryson became the Director of the Islam and Civil Society Project at the Witherspoon Institute. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Global Engagement. In August 2010 the Washington Post published an op-ed by Bryson, counseling tolerance for Muslims, after a Florida pastor had called on Americans to burn Qurans.
The Christian Post described Bryson as a "Christian scholar". In 2009 Bryson was on a panelist in a dialogue between evangelicals and Muslims.
In September 2011 Bryson was a presenter at a conference on the role of non-Muslim scholars in Islamic Studies.