Speakers
In celebration of our 10th anniversary, we are proud to have booked some amazing speakers, shown here. Our two keynote speakers, Fred Edwords and Elisabeth Cornwell, will be presenting on the outside stage. All other speakers will be in Classroom G, which has a limit of 100 occupants. Priority seating will be given to those who are supporting Freethought Day.
In addition to these speakers, we also have live entertainment, film screenings with Q&A, and the Leadership Track of workshops and presentations hosted by the Secular Student Alliance.
Fred Edwords, Coalition of Reason
Fred Edwords has a long history in organized humanism. For 15
years he was executive director of the American Humanist Association and for 12 years editor of the Humanist magazine. He is past president of Camp
Quest, a summer camp for freethinking children, and has served on the board of the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the founding board
of the National Center for Science Education. As a continuing voice for humanist ideas, he has, over the past thirty-five years, appeared on
national and local television in the United States and Canada, been interviewed on radio and for newspapers around the world, and has lectured in
North America, Europe, and India.
Today he serves as national director of the United Coalition of Reason, an organization founded in 2009 that works to foster cooperation among local groups in the community of reason and launch billboard and bus ad campaigns to raise the public profile of such groups. He also serves on the faculty of the Humanist Institute and is national director of the International Darwin Day Foundation.
Elisabeth Cornwell, Richard Dawkins Foundation
Robin Elisabeth Cornwell is the Executive Director of the
Richard Dawkins Foundation. Her contributions include originating and expanding the OUT
Campaign, pioneering the concept of vignettes, including the innovative "The Four Horsemen" discussion, and the filming of lecture events made
available on the RDnet website.
She has also worked to build up our excellent network of relationships with student secular organizations as well as local and national organizations. Elisabeth was instrumental in devising and organizing the Science Symposium at AAI in Burbank, and has been crucial in orchestrating Richard's media and events in the US.
As an evolutionary psychologist, her research has examined the underlying mechanisms of human mate selection, looking at such factors as hormones, pheromones, ageing, asymmetry, and facial features. More recently she has been conducting research at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, exploring the relationship of various psychological traits to religious belief, across the spectrum from strong theism to strong non-theism.
Dan Barker, Freedom From Religion Foundation
Dan Barker is co-president of the
Freedom From Religion Foundation. A former minister and evangelist, Dan became a freethinker in
1983. His books, Just Pretend: A Freethought Book for Children and Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher To Atheist are published by the Foundation.
His newest book, Godless: How An Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists, was published by Ulysses Press in 2008. A graduate of Azusa Pacific University with a degree in Religion, Dan now puts his knowledge of Christianity to effective freethought use. A professional pianist and composer, Dan performs freethought concerts and is featured in the Foundation's musical cassettes, "My Thoughts Are Free," "Reason's Greetings," "Dan Barker Salutes Freethought Then And Now," a 2-CD album "Friendly Neighborhood Atheist," and the CD "Beware of Dogma." He joined the Foundation staff in 1987 and served as public relations director. He was first elected co-president in November 2004.
Michael Newdow, FACTS Church
Dr. Michael Arthur Newdow is an attorney and emergency medicine
physician. He is best known for his efforts to have recitations of the current version of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools in the United
States declared unconstitutional because of its inclusion of the phrase "under God". He also filed and lost a lawsuit to stop the invocation prayer
at President Bush's second inauguration and, most recently, he filed a lawsuit to prevent references to God and religion from being part of
President Obama's inauguration.
In 1997, he started FACTS (First Atheist Church of True Science), which advocates strong separation of church and state in public institutions. He also serves on the Advisory Board of Secular Coalition for America. In 2002, Newdow was given the Freethinker of the Year award by the Freedom From Religion Foundation and in 2004, the American Humanist Association gave Newdow its Humanist Pioneer Award.
Glenn Branch, National Center for Science Education
Glenn Branch is Deputy Director of
NCSE. Formerly a graduate student in philosophy at UCLA, where he won prizes both for scholarship and
teaching, he is conversant with the philosophical debates surrounding creationism and "intelligent design"; he is also a long-time student of
pseudo-science.
Branch is co-editor, with Eugenie Scott, of Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools, and the author or coauthor of numerous articles on creationism and evolution in such publications as Scientific American, The American Biology Teacher, and Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics.
Follow the NCSE on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
Amanda Knief, Secular Coalition of America
Amanda Knief is the government relations manager for the
Secular Coalition for America. Amanda grew up in Iowa, a hotbed of atheism. She has a B.S. in
journalism with minors in biology and geology and a law degree--none of which matters to tea party legislators.
She spends most of her time trying to convince Congressional leaders of the merits of the separation of church and state. (Amanda believes she has ample job security.) Amanda previously worked in the nonpartisan division of Iowa Legislature, drafting legislation for both Republicans and Democrats in the areas of education, labor, tax, and immigration.
Amanda loves living in D.C., which is much, much warmer than Iowa.
Zack Kopplin
At the age of 16, Zack took on the misnamed and misguided
"Louisiana Science Education Act". In spring 2011, Senator Karen Carter Peterson courageously sponsored SB 70 on Zack's behalf to repeal the
Louisiana Science Education Act.
Zack has been organizing Louisianans in support of the repeal, including working with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest general science organization in the world, and secured the backing of over 40 Nobel Laureate scientists.
Zack has been on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, and is currently attending Rice University in Houston. Follow Zack on Twitter and his Blog.
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