Nina Shea has served as an international human-rights lawyer for
over twenty years. She joined the Hudson Institute as a senior
fellow in November 2006, where she directs the Center for
Religious Freedom. For the ten years prior to joining Hudson,
she worked at Freedom House, where she directed the Center for
Religious Freedom, which she founded in 1986. Since 1999, Shea
has served as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom, an independent federal agency.
She has been appointed as a U.S. delegate to the United Nation’s
main human rights body by both Republican and Democratic
administrations. She recently spoke with Religion & Liberty’s
managing editor Ray Nothstine. Religion and Liberty: There are
many anniversaries related to the fall of communism in Eastern
Europe this year. Those countries were appropriately referred to
as the “Captive Nations.” What thoughts do you have as you look
back at that time and remember some of the great figures who
toiled for political and religi