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The New Humanism

April 20-22, 2007

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We have had many requests for details about the program of “The New Humanism” conference at Harvard, in honor of the 30th anniversary of the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University, April 20-22. This is the first of a few messages explaining the themes the conference will touch on. Please keep in mind we have already had to move two main conference venues due to lack of space, and there is a chance the current (and final) venues will also fill up, so please register as soon as possible here.

Our conference is designed to demonstrate that Humanism is a multi-cultural and multi-national world movement that best represents the otherwise unrepresented, under-appreciated 1.1 billion non-religious people on Earth.

To this end, among many other things (click here for a fuller list of our speakers, including E.O. Wilson, Steven Pinker, Dar Williams, Ned Lamont, and others):

*Novelist Salman Rushdie will speak on “Humanistic Islam.”
*Nobel Prize winning Philosopher and Economist Amartya Sen will speak on “Indian Humanism.”
*Harvard-Yenching Institute Director Tu Weiming, among the world’s greatest living Chinese philosophers, will speak on “Confucian Humanism.”
*Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine, 2003 American Humanist of the Year and one of the world’s greatest Humanist orators, will speak on “Humanistic Judaism,” the international movement he founded over 40 years ago.
*The Reverend Dr. William R. Murry, former Dean and President of Meadville Lombard Theological School at the University of Chicago, will speak on “Unitarian Universalist Humanism and Christian Cultural Roots.”

(We are proud that these remarks will continue a theme begun in December when noted author and Professor Anthony Pinn of Rice University inspiringly delivered the 13th Annual Alexander Lincoln Lecture at Harvard, “Doing Humanism: Reflections on the Nature and Practice of African American Humanism” as Harvard’s “Humanist of the Year ” for 2006.

Additionally, we will host senior leaders flying in from many of the leading Humanist organizations around the world to help us demonstrate that the new Humanism of the 21st century can and will mobilize a generation of people to transcend their national boundaries and build a more peaceful world together.

We will host senior representatives from, among others:

*The International Humanist and Ethical Union, serving Humanists, rationalists, secularists, atheists and freethinkers across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and beyond;
*The African Transhumanist Association
*The British Humanist Association;
*The Humanist Association of Norway;
*The Humanist Association of Ireland;
*The Humanist Association of Canada;