Speakers & Presenters

Presenters and Honorees:

Richard Dawkins, biologist and author, The God Delusion

Christopher Hitchens, journalist, literary critic, and author of the acclaimed bestseller god is not Great
* Due to last-minute assignment to South America, Christopher Hitchens is unable to attend in person, but will appear in a provocative video interview made specially and exclusively for The Secular Society and Its Enemies. 

Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School

Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, author, Director of the Hayden Planetarium and host of NOVA scienceNOW

Ann Druyan, media producer, author, and writer (with her late husband Carl Sagan) of the television series Cosmos

Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of  Bioethics at Princeton University

Wendy Kaminer, lawyer, feminist writer, social critic, and co-founder of the Civil Liberties List

Rebecca Goldstein, philosopher, novelist, and author of Betraying Spinoza

Paul Kurtz, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo; founder and chairman of the Center for Inquiry, Transnational

Nat Hentoff, activist, historian, journalist and social critic

Susan Jacoby, writer, historian, author of Freethinkers.
photo: Chris Ramirez

Michelle Goldberg, author, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism

Damon Linker, journalist and author, The Theocons
 

Eugenie C. Scott, physical anthropologist, executive director of the National Center for Science Education

Victor Stenger, physicist, author of God: The Failed Hypothesis

Edward Tabash, lawyer, social activist, and champion of church-state separation

Nica Lalli, author, Nothing: Something to Believe In

Jennifer Michael Hecht, author, Doubt: A History

Tawfik Hamid, scholar, author, and dissident of Islamic fundamentalism

Paul Berman, author, journalist and political commentator

Matthew LaClair, high school student and courageous classroom whistleblower

Ibn Warraq, Islamic scholar and author, Why I Am Not a Muslim

Additional Presenters Include:

  • Mark-Anthony Smith, student leader and activist

  • Justin Trottier, Executive Director, CFI-Ontario
  • Sarah Stone, student leader and activist