Board of Advisors

David Silverman

Advisory Board Chair
David Silverman has been an atheist activist for 28 years, serving as President of American Atheists and Executive Director of Atheist Alliance International. During his tenure, he brought national attention to the movement via “War on Xmas” billboards and TV appearances on Fox News, CNN, and many others. Silverman created the Reason Rally in 2012, the largest atheist gathering in history, and his book Fighting God: An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World, was rated the “Best Atheist Book of the Year”. Since leaving the world of activism, Silverman has also left Progressivism and Feminism, while still clinging to the fair, compassionate and egalitarian views. His video channel is “FirebrandForGood” and he speaks on truth, data, and Humanism.

Jillian Becker

Jillian Becker writes both fiction and non-fiction. Her first novel, The Keep, is now a Penguin Modern Classic. Her best known work of non-fiction is Hitler’s Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang, an international best-seller and Newsweek (Europe) Book of the Year 1977. She was Director of the London-based Institute for the Study of Terrorism 1985-1990, and on the subject of terrorism contributed to TV and radio current affairs programs in Britain, the US, Canada, and Germany. Among her published studies of terrorism is The PLO: the Rise and Fall of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Her articles on various subjects have been published in newspapers and periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic, among them Commentary, The New Criterion, City Journal (US); The Wall Street Journal (Europe); Encounter, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The Telegraph Magazine, The Salisbury Review, Standpoint(UK). She was born in South Africa but made her home in London. All her early books were banned or embargoed in the land of her birth while it was under an all-white government. In 2007 she moved to California to be near two of her three daughters and four of her six grandchildren. Her website is www.theatheistconservative.com.

Craig Biddle

Craig is editor in chief of The Objective Standard, director of education and programs at Objective Standard Institute, and executive director of Prometheus Foundation. He is the author of several books, including Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It and Rational Egoism: The Morality for Human Flourishing. His book-in-progress is on thinking in principles. Learn more and join his mailing list at CraigBiddle.com.

Russell Blackford

Russell Blackford is an Australian philosopher and author. He is Conjoint Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Newcastle, NSW. His most recent books are The Tyranny of Opinion: Conformity and the Future of Liberalism (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) and At the Dawn of a Great Transition: The Question of Radical Enhancement (Schwabe Verlag, 2021). With Udo Schuklenk, he has co-edited 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) and co-authored 50 Great Myths About Atheism (Wiley-Blackwell, 2103).

Peter Boghossian, PhD

Peter Boghossian is a Founding Faculty member at the University of Austin and the director of National Progress Alliance. Peter has a teaching pedigree spanning more than 25 years that focuses on the Socratic method, scientific skepticism, and critical thinking. Peter’s dissertation explored increasing the moral reasoning of prison inmates and aiding their resistance to crime. His most recent book is How to Have Impossible Conversations, and his writing can be found in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Time Magazine, National Review, and elsewhere. His work is centered on bringing the tools of professional philosophers to a wide variety of contexts to help people think through what seem to be intractable problems.

Melissa Chen

Melissa Chen is a board member and co-founder of Ideas Beyond Borders, which makes inaccessible ideas freely accessible to those who speak Arabic, Farsi and Kurdish. She works as VP + investor relations for Strategy Risks, a Spectator contributing editor, and she serves as Editor at Global Conversations. Her past appearances have included: Joe Rogan Experience, Oslo Freedom Forum, Rubin Report, Fox Nation, Triggernometry, MythCon, and more. She studied Computational Biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Computational Biology at Boston University, and worked at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Joseph Ford Cotto

Joseph Ford Cotto, 1st Baron Cotto, GCCCR (DBA) is the host of 'Dr. Cotto's Reports,' an online current events program in two editions—one focusing on business and economics, the other on news and culture. During 2014, HLM King Kigeli V of Rwanda bestowed a hereditary knighthood upon him. It was followed by a barony the next year. Aside from being an enthusiastic student of history, Cotto enjoys adventuring, photography, and music. He holds a doctorate in business administration.

Gary Greenberg

Gary Greenberg is a pivotal early figure in the libertarian movement. Co-founder of the New York Libertarian Association (NYLA), he organized influential scholars' conferences at Columbia University, expanding the movement's reach. Greenberg co-founded the New York State Branch of the Libertarian Party, ran for various offices, and served four terms as the New York State Chairman. A retired attorney with a notable legal career, he handled diverse cases, featured in documentaries on the NYC criminal justice system. An accomplished author, Greenberg challenges established narratives in books like ``101 Myths of the Bible`` and ``The Judas Brief.``

William Irwin

William Irwin is a Professor of Philosophy at King’s College in Pennsylvania. He is the author of several books including The Free Market Existentialist and God Is a Question, Not an Answer. In addition, he is the General Editor of the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series. Irwin’s most recent book, published in April 2022, is The Meaning of Metallica.

Razib Khan

Razib Khan is a co-founder and CXO of GenRAIT, a deep tech company that deploys a platform for the life sciences. With over ten years in the genomics space, he has helped developed ancestry algorithms for Gene By Gene, National Geographic and Insitome. Razib was also one of the first employees at Embark Veterinary. He has also written for publications that include The New York Times, City Journal, National Review, Slate, Unherd, Quillette and Nautilus.

James Lindsay, PhD

Dr. James Lindsay is an author, mathematician, and political commentator, who has written seven books spanning a range of subjects including religion, the philosophy of science, and postmodern theory — notably the 2020 book Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody. He is the co-founder of New Discourses, a media and educational resource which works in the spirit of free inquiry, free speech, and free association—without guilt—to elucidate the ways by which the Critical Social Justice movement seeks to define and control our discourses. He led the Grievance Studies Affair which made international headlines in 2018, including the front page of the New York Times. His essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Philosophers’ Magazine, Scientific American, and Time.

Ronald A. Lindsay, JD, PhD

Dr. Ronald A. Lindsay was a lawyer with the national law firm of Seyfarth Shaw LLP for twenty-six years before joining the Center for Inquiry (CFI) as its general counsel and then, from 2008 until 2016, its president & CEO. During his tenure, he helped to oversee the merger of the Richard Dawkins Foundation into CFI. Lindsay’s PhD was in philosophy, with a concentration in ethics, he has written three nonfiction books, Future Bioethics, The Necessity of Secularism, and Against the New Politics of Identity, and numerous articles, including essays in college textbooks and publications in noted academic journals, including the American Journal of Bioethics, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, and the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics. He is the author of the entry on “Euthanasia” in the International Encyclopedia of Ethics. He has also written a novel, The Lost Song of Goliath, which retells the David-Goliath myth through the eyes of Goliath. He is disappointed that the novel has not sold enough copies for him to be accused of cultural appropriation. Lindsay is a fierce advocate for free speech and a relentless opponent of dogma of any sort, whether religious or ideological.

Faisal Saeed Al Mutar

Born in Babylon, Raised in Baghdad, Faisal Saeed Al Mutar experienced the villainy of extremism and authoritarian regimes firsthand. He survived the Iraq Civil War, the murder of his brother, and several kidnapping attempts before becoming a refugee in the United States in 2013. A practitioner of countering extremism and misinformation on an international scale, he’s traveled to conferences and spoken on campuses across the globe on his experiences working to create an alternative positive change in the region. He founded the organization Ideas Beyond Borders, a non-profit dedicated to empowering people across the globe with access to new ideas and fresh perspectives. Faisal received the “President’s Volunteer Service Award” from the white house in 2015 and is a Fellow at the Elevate Prize Foundation.

Yasmine Mohammed

Yasmine Mohammed is an Arab-Canadian university educator, activist, and author who advocates for the rights of women living in Islamic majority countries, as well as those who struggle under religious fundamentalism. She is the founder of Free Hearts Free Minds, which provides psychological support for freethinkers living in Muslim majority countries–where the state sanctioned punishment for leaving Islam is death. She also serves as an advisor at the AHA Foundation. Her book, Unveiled, is a memoir/polemic that recalls her experiences growing up in a fundamentalist Islamic household and her arranged marriage to a member of Al-Qaeda. She has spoken in Canadian parliament and has been featured in many mainstream media publications such as: CNN, CBC, BBC, ABC Australia, Al Jazeera, New York Times and many others. She has spoken in Ivy League universities such as Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth and for many organizations including: The Freedom From Religion Foundation, AHA Foundation, Ayn Rand Institute, and Think Inc.

Robert Price, PHD

Robert M. Price, born in Jackson, MS, in 1954, holds earned Ph.D. degrees from Drew University, in Systematic Theology (1981) and New Testament (1993). He has taught at Montclair State College, Bergen Community College, Drew University, Mount Olive College, and the Unification Theological Seminary. He has been active as a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar and is the founding editor of The Journal of Higher Criticism. His published works include Beyond Born Again, Inerrant the Wind, Deconstructing Jesus and many more. Price is the host of The Bible Geek podcast and a leading advocate of the Christ Myth theory.. He is a frequent debater and interviewee.

Gad Saad, PhD

Dr. Gad Saad, Professor of Marketing at Concordia University in Montreal, has pioneered the use of evolutionary psychology in marketing and consumer behavior. His works include 'The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature'; 'The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption'; and 'Evolutionary Psychology in the Business Sciences'. Dr. Saad has published 75+ scientific papers at the intersection of evolutionary psychology and a broad range of disciplines including consumer behavior, marketing, advertising, psychology, medicine, and economics. His Psychology Today blog 'Homo Consumericus' and YouTube channel 'The Saad Truth' have garnered 6.4+ million and 19.7+ million total views respectively.In addition to his scientific work, Dr. Saad is a leading public intellectual who often writes and speaks about idea pathogens that are destroying logic, science, reason, and common sense. His recent book is titled 'The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.'

Michael Sherlock

Michael Sherlock is a rationalist and long-time human rights activist. He has a controversial profile because he calls out irrationality in all of its forms. He is the former Executive Director of Atheist Alliance International and has had 7 books published by traditional publishing houses. He has a Master’s Degree in Religion, he hates religion but defends the human right to freedom of religion and expression.

Michael Shermer, PhD

Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the podcast The Michael Shermer Show, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, The Moral Arc, Heavens on Earth, and Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist.

Colin Wright, PhD

Dr. Colin Wright is an evolutionary biologist, the Founding Editor of Reality's Last Stand, and a Contributing Editor of Quillette magazine. He is an Academic Advisor for the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM). He is interested in the sex and gender debate, and has essays published in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Times, Quillette, and elsewhere. He is a strong proponent of secular humanism, freethought, free speech, and academic freedom.