Humanist Education Center Advisory Committee

Ms. Helen Bennett is a former high school and university English teacher, children’s librarian and editor. She has served as a teacher of adults in the Unitarian Universalist Friendship Fellowship in Pineda, FL and leads the AHA chapter, the Humanists of Brevard. She is perhaps best known for authoring the outstanding children’s book, Humanism, What’s That? A Book for Curious Kids published in 2005 by Prometheus Books. Ms. Bennett also has taught a course to retirees in “Ethics and Human Rights” and has prepared an annotated bibliography on that topic, resources on the history of human rights and landmarks in the modern human rights movement, and a list of 20 “Ethical Will/Commandments.” Each term she has taught different subject areas. Her teaching materials are available for review and use.

Ms. Paula Fraser has been a teacher of highly capable students in Bellevue, Washington for over 26 years. She also has taught a social studies methods course for teachers at the University of Washington. Ms. Fraser places special emphasis on teaching ethical and critical reasoning within democratic citizenship education across subject disciplines. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Christa McAuliffe Award for Excellence in Education in Washington State, the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Teaching, WA State Council for the Social Studies Teacher of the Year, Northwest Association for Biomedical Research Teacher of the Year Award for Incorporating Ethics in Biology courses, and the American Bar Association Law-related Elementary Teacher of the Year.

Dr. Stan Friedland of Syosset, NY has been a teacher, guidance counselor, high school principal, and adjunct college professor during his 34 year career in public education. He has conducted over 350 workshops and presentations and has authored three books and numerous articles on all aspects of education. For the past 24 years he has been president of his own educational consulting company and is currently engaged in consulting in both pre-service and in-service teacher education programs. He also has had his won television program on education for the past eight years.

Dr. David J. Gross is a particle physicist and string theorist. Along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of asymptotic freedom. He currently is the director and holder of the Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Gross was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University and a Professor at Princeton University until 1997. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1987 and the Dirac Medal in 1988. The Dirac Prize is the name of three prominent awards in the field of theoretical physics, computational chemistry, and mathematics, awarded by different organizations.

Dr. R. Joseph Hoffmann, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and the University of Oxford, has had a distinguished career which includes teaching at the University of Michigan, Cal State Sacramento, American University of Beirut, Wells College, and holding the position of Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Church History at Westminster College, Oxford. He also was Senior Vice President of the Center for Inquiry. He serves on the faculty of both Goddard College (Vermont) and the State University of New York honors college at Geneseo. His most recent book is an edited volume entitled Just War and Jihad: Violence in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (2006) and his new book, Sources of the Jesus Tradition: Separating History and Myth, will be released in August, 2010.

Sir Harry Kroto, co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, teaches at Florida State University where he is the Francis Eppes Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Prior to this he taught at the University of Sussex in England for 37 years. Dr. Kroto gives a popular series of lectures, visiting schools to promote science education. Through the Vega Science Trust website, he aims to create a broadcast platform for the science, engineering and technology communities to communicate using TV and the Internet. The Trust is a United Kingdom educational charity to create high quality science films including lectures and discussion, interviews with Nobel Laureates, and teaching resources. In 2001, he won the Royal Society's Michael Faraday Award given annually to a scientist who has done the most to further public communication of science, engineering or technology in the UK.

Dr, Howard Radest is Dean Emeritus of The Humanist Institute. He has had an extensive career as an Ethical Culture leader, director of the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, executive director of the American Ethical Union, co-chair of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, college professor and author. He also has served on a number of boards and committees in health and welfare-related organizations and as ethics consultant to several hospitals and the ethics committee of the South Carolina Medical Association. Dr. Radest also has developed a course for the Continuum of Humanist Education: “The Curious Mind: Philosophy and the Humanist Connection” which uses philosophic thinking to analyze humanism and find out how what humanists believe stands up to philosophic criticism.

Dr. Robert Tapp is Professor Emeritus of Humanities, Religious Studies, and South Asian Studies at the University of Minnesota and Dean and Faculty Chair Emeritus of The Humanist Institute. He also is on the faculty of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Minnesota. His prior appointments were at the University of Chicago, University of California -- Scripps College, and St. Lawrence University. He is a Distinguished Fellow, Center For Inquiry, and the recipient of the AHA’s Horace Mann Humanist Education Award in 2005. He has served on the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.  Dr. Tapp also was Managing Editor of Zygon, Journal of Religion and Science.

Dr. Stephen F. Uhl is a former Roman Catholic priest whose personal journey from theism to atheism is truly inspiring. Now a retired psychologist, he is podcasting his message of guilt-free, positive atheism in a serialized audio book. “No Gods, No Guilt” is a free weekly internet audio program featuring his reading. Each week, Dr. Uhl reads an installment of his memoir which follows his personal transformation from a devout priest to and atheist psychologist. The podcast is an audio version of his book, Imagine No Superstition: The Power to Enjoy Life With No Guilt, No Shame, No Blame (now published as Out Of God’s Closet: This Priest Psychologist Chooses Friendly Atheism). The books include “Ten Commandments for the Twenty-First Century” which “… can be posted, taught, and observed anywhere without violating conscience or Constitution”.

Dr. James D. Watson, a molecular biologist, is best known as co-discoverers of the structure of DNA with Francis Crick in 1953. Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this breakthrough work. Dr. Watson studied at the University of Chicago and Indiana University and subsequently worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory in England. In 1956, he became a member of Harvard University's Biological Laboratories promoting research in molecular biology. He also served as director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. There he shifted his research emphasis to the study of cancer. In 1994, he became its president and subsequently its chancellor until 2007. Between 1988 and 1992, he was associated with the National Institutes of Health, helping to establish the Human Genome Project. Dr. Watson has written many books including the seminal textbook The Molecular Biology of the Gene and The Double Helix about the DNA structure discovery.

Dr. Edward O. Wilson is a biologist, researcher, theorist, naturalist and author. His biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants. He is Pellegrino University Research Professor in Entomology for the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism. A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction, he is known for his career as a scientist, his advocacy for environmentalism, and his secular humanism. Wilson coined the phrase scientific humanism as "the only worldview compatible with science's growing knowledge of the real world and the laws of nature". His many honors include the U.S. National Medal of Science, the International Prize for Biology, the Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science, and the AHA’s 1999 Humanist of the Year.