Matt Cherry

Humanism -- the next generation

A new era in North American humanism began on August 9, 1996, with the launch of the Campus Freethought Alliance. Just four months after its launch, the Alliance is the largest humanist student movement in American history, with seventeen student groups, people working to start groups on more than 30 other campuses, and an e-mailing list of over 300 students. The Alliance has made a strong beginning in its bold aim of promoting secular humanism at college campuses across the USA. But it has already achieved a secondary goal: it has brought the next generation of activists into the humanist movement.

The Campus Freethought Alliance, a sub-group of the Council for Secular Humanism, was founded by university students attending a Centre for Inquiry Institute course, from August 6-11, 1996. The students created the Alliance in order to coordinate the activities of existing atheist and humanist student groups, to spark the formation of new freethought groups at colleges and universities, and to fight for the rights of non-religious students nationwide.

The group's founding statement, titled 'A Declaration of Necessity', attracted nationwide publicity. A widely syndicated New York Times column discussed the Campus Freethought Alliance, describing its creation as 'one of the more interesting news stories of the week.' Widespread coverage from campus media prompted many inquiries from freethinking students.

In early November, a dozen of the student leaders attended a Campus Freethought Alliance conference, on 'Patriotism and Secularism', at the Center for Inquiry. Over a weekend, in addition to exploring the conference theme and producing a statement and press release on 'Patriotism and Secularism', the students hammered out a constitution, produced an introductory pamphlet, and began work on an advice manual for starting and running a campus group.

The first annual assembly of the Campus Freethought Alliance will be held at the Center for Inquiry from May 30 to June 1, 1997. It will be part of a joint conference of the Council for Secular Humanism, Humanist Association of Canada, and Bertrand Russell Society, titled 'Humanism: The Next Generation'.

The Internet has been central to the development of the Alliance. Its members have made full use of the free Internet access that universities give their students. As well as maintaining two internet mailing lists for discussion and planning, the Alliance uses IRC (Internet Relay Chat) to hold real-time on-line committee meetings and discussion groups. The Alliance has an excellent website, at http://www.secularhumanism.org/cfa, with links to the websites of individual campus groups. Indeed the internet is such a fundamental element in student life that the student freethought groups usually establish their website before their first public meeting.

It seems likely that the pervasive role of the internet will result in a new style of organisational structure for the Alliance, with less reliance on the speakers that are the staple diet of most humanist groups. The use of the internet has also given the Alliance an international dimension that the students did not initially anticipate. Most groups are in the USA and Canada, but groups as far afield as New Zealand and the Ukraine have asked to join the Alliance.

In addition to college students, the Campus Freethought Alliance has recently received inquiries from several high school pupils. The Alliance is now assisting these students in setting up school groups for freethinkers. Already the Campus Freethought Alliance is cultivating its next generation ...