Advisory Board

Chair:

Woody Kaplan - civil liberties advocate and political activist

Members:

  • Robert Boston - writer and spokesperson on the Religious Right and First Amendment issues

  • Richard Dawkins, D.Sc., FRS - evolutionary biologist and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University

  • Daniel Dennett, D.Phil. - philosopher whose research intersects with cognitive science and evolutionary biology

  • Bruce Flamm, M.D. - medical doctor and writer who exposed a fraudulent Columbia University study linking prayer with pregnancy in infertile women

  • Sam Harris - author on the dangers of religion to modern society

  • Jeff Hawkins - entrepreneur and inventor

  • Christopher Hitchens - author, journalist and literary critic

  • Susan Jacoby - author and independent scholar

  • Wendy Kaminer - author and social critic on civil liberties, religion and popular culture

  • Michael Newdow, M.D. - attorney, medical doctor and litigant in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow which attempted to remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance

  • Massimo Pigliucci, Ph.D. - evolutionary biologist and author / debater on the evolution - creationism controversy

  • Steven Pinker, Ph.D. - psychologist, writer and Humanist Laureate

  • Salman Rushdie - novelist

  • Ellery Schempp, Ph.D. - litigant in Abington School District v. Schempp, the 1963 Supreme Court ruling that public school-sponsored Bible readings were unconstitutional

  • Todd Stiefel - former Chief Strategy Officer for Stiefel Laboratories and co-leader of the team that sold Stiefel Laboratories to GlaxoSmithKline

  • Julia Sweeney - actor best known for her androgynous character Pat on "Saturday Night Live" and her critically acclaimed one-woman monologue, "God Said, Ha!"