Harvard Conference Brings 1000+ "New Humanists" Together

HumanistNetworkNews.org
April 25, 2007

The Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy 30th Anniversary conference was an exceptional coming together of the diverse strands of humanism.

About 1100 people came to the opening event with Salman Rushdie on Friday night. Almost 600 attended the rest of the conference, titled "The New Humanism." Dozens more tried to book after registration had closed. The conference had a youthful feel thanks to the more than 200 students who came as part of the Secular Student Alliance (SSA) annual conference held in conjunction with Humanist Chaplaincy celebrations.

The novelist Salman Rushdie spoke at two different events. The opening meeting at, of all places, the Harvard Memorial Church, saw him receive the first Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism. Looking at his religious surroundings, Rushdie welcomed everyone to this "little black Sabbath." He gave an entertaining talk about the importance of creating a sense of community for the non-religious and then gave some readings from his latest novel, Shalimar the Clown. His answers to questions were funny and insightful.

Rushdie is most famous for the Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa calling for his execution for writing The Satanic Verses. He is often lionized by freethinkers for standing up against murderous religious intolerance, but I think he is uncomfortable being praised for something so terrible that he neither chose nor relished. He is clearly much happier talking about his literature than about the fatwa and his resulting celebrity victim status.

Born and raised in a secular Muslim family in Bombay, India, Rushdie moved with his family to Pakistan, before completing his education in England. It is no surprise then that his tales often focus on people caught between cultures. Often categorized as "magical realism", Rushdie's stories avoid both literary realism and easy answers.

Yet even when Rushdie's characters slip their moorings from the solid ground of reality their journeys always seem to bring them back to the same universal characteristics of the human condition -- the search for love and community and understanding as we create our own meaning in a universe without purpose.

Rushdie's impressive body of work made him an excellent choice for the first award for "cultural humanism."

The conference was also addressed by biologist E.O. Wilson and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker. Ned Lamont, who unsuccessfully ran for Senate last year, gave a great speech about his uncle, the humanist philosopher Corliss Lamont (video is available here.)

Celebrity law professor Allan Dershowitz dropped by for a secular student event. Singer-songwriter Dar Williams gave a private concert. And IHS staffers Duncan Crary, Jes Constantine and I conducted humanist activist workshops and panels.

During the conference, Duncan, Jes and I interviewed more than a dozen people for our HNN podcast. Stay tuned for future shows with in-depth interviews with the likes of Rushdie, Dershowitz, Williams and Wilson, as well as humanists from Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Quebec. We even got a couple of people, including Rushdie, to ask questions for our humanist advice columnist, Sweet Reason! The first podcast featuring materials recorded during the conference will be released next Wednesday.

The conference was a tremendous achievement for Greg Epstein, the new Humanist Chaplain at Harvard. He organized a diverse conference full of famous and outstanding speakers without any professional staff or experience at conference-planning. And he attracted one of the largest American freethought audiences ever, despite not having a list of members or subscribers to whom he could promote the meeting.

I think Epstein's attitude of inclusiveness played a big role in attracting so many people. The conference included activists from many different humanist and freethought groups and gave them all a platform to promote their groups and ideas. A humanist group expo for two hours on Saturday was a nice feature, allowing conference-goers to learn about a dozen or more different humanist groups. It also enabled the IHS staff to meet many supporters.

Not surprisingly at conference celebrating a humanist "chaplaincy", the events included a noticeable strand of "religious humanism." Religious humanists don't believe in a god but they are comfortable with a more "congregational" style and structure for their meetings. Epstein is ordained as a secular humanistic Rabbi and there were some inspirational presentations, and even a benediction, from other humanist rabbis. These moments of humanist reverence did not appeal to everyone however, and some of the blogs by conference-goers have picked up on that.

In the panel I chaired on "The Next Generation of Humanism" there was a much more irreverent approach, poking fun at the form as well as the content of religion. The next generation of humanists discussed some very successful new strategies that have attracted tens of thousands of freethinkers to connect, communicate and organize.

As a humanist I consider myself completely non-religious. But I believe that differences of style should not prevent all humanists and freethinkers -- ranging from religious humanists to confrontational atheists -- from working together on the substantive agenda that we all share. If that’s all we learn from this "New Humanism" conference, then it will have been a lesson of huge value.

Matt Cherry is the executive director of the Institute for Humanist Studies. He is the author of Introduction to Humanism at the Continuum of Humanist Education, the online school of the Institute for Humanist Studies.