For Immediate Release
Contact:
Merrill Miller, 202-238-9088 ext. 105, merrillmiller@americanhumanist.org
(Washington, D.C., Sept. 3, 2015)—The American Humanist Association is pleased to announce that prominent writer, philosopher, and humanist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein will receive the 2014 National Humanities Medal, the country’s highest honor in the humanities.
The American Humanist Association honored Goldstein with the Humanist of the Year Award in 2011. She is the author of six novels, including Thirty-Six Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, publishedin 2010, and three nonfiction works, the latest being Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away (2014), a cogent and creative argument for the continued relevance of philosophy. Her writing also appears in the Humanist, the American Humanist Association’s award-winning magazine.
“Rebecca Goldstein’s eloquent writing is profoundly impacting the humanist movement and the fields of literature and philosophy,” said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association. “Her work resonates with the positive humanist values of reason and empathy, and the world is richer for her contributions.”
“If you believe in the integrity of your conclusions, then you must show them to the world, making the case for them not only by the arguments you hash out in the privacy of your own mind but by the life that you publicly lead,” Goldstein writes in her introduction to Roy Speckhardt’s Creating Change Through Humanism, published by Humanist Press in July.
“In scholarship, Dr. Goldstein has elucidated the ideas of Spinoza and Gödel, while in fiction, she deploys wit and drama to help us understand the great human conflict between thought and feeling,” the White House lauded Goldstein in a statement.
As one of ten recipients of the 2014 National Humanities Medals, Goldstein will be honored by President Barack Obama at an awards ceremony on September 10, 2015, at the White House. More information can be found at the National Endowment for the Humanities website.
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Founded in 1941 and headquartered in Washington, DC, the American Humanist Association (AHA) works to protect the rights of humanists, atheists, and other nontheistic Americans. The AHA advances the ethical and life-affirming philosophy of humanism, which—without beliefs in any gods or other supernatural forces—encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good of humanity.