Jennifer Bryson

Dr. Jennifer S. Bryson is a Fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) in Washington, DC. An accomplished scholar, translator, and public intellectual, her work includes Catholic thought, the roles of men and women in society, and keeping activist causes out of sports. She lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Dr. Bryson is currently translating and studying works by 19th- and 20th-century Catholic authors, such as Ida Friederike Görres, Joseph Görres, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Augustin Rösler, and Oda Schneider. Bryson’s translations include Bread Grows in Winter, The Church in the Flesh, John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed, and What Binds Marriage Forever by Ida Görres. In 2026, as a Mickey Shapiro Free Speech Fellow via the Russell Kirk Center, she is researching Catholic use of satire in resistance to Nazi ideology.

Her professional background spans academia, government service, and policy research. She earned a B.A. in Political Science from Stanford University (including a semester studying Marxism-Leninism in former East Germany), an M.A. in medieval European intellectual history from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Greco-Arabic and Islamic Studies from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale. She has held fellowships including Earhart, Richard M. Weaver, Fulbright, and Claremont Institute Lincoln. She has had visiting positions at the Hochschule Heiligenkreuz in Austria, the Hudson Institute, and the U.S. Army War College.

From 2001–2008, Dr. Bryson worked as a civilian for the U.S. Department of Defense, including roles in strategic outreach in Egypt and Yemen, at the Defense Intelligence Agency, as an interrogator at Guantanamo Bay (2004–2006), and on the Office of the Secretary of Defense policy staff (2006–2008). She later worked at the Witherspoon Institute (2009–2014) and founded the Zephyr Institute (2014–2016).

Dr. Bryson advocates for keeping activist causes out of sports, as in her 2025 report Reclaim Team USA Sports from Activism, published by EPPC. She writes for outlets such as Catholic World Report, The Public Discourse, National Catholic Register, The Federalist, and others on topics including the Church, marriage and family, foreign policy, and cultural issues.

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