We opened minds to the power of reason.
We led the fight against fake medicine.
We gave voice to lifesaving science.
Secular Rescue has been in existence since 2015. It was founded in the aftermath of the brutal murder by machete-wielding assassins in Bangladesh of atheist writer and CFI friend Avijit Roy and the severe wounding of his wife and fellow writer Bonya Ahmed.
Since then, Secular Rescue has assisted hundreds of atheist activists in mostly Muslim-dominated countries. Our helping hand comes in many forms, including moving at-risk activists to safer countries and providing living expenses, paying for visas and passports, providing letters of support for asylum claims, or simply helping closeted atheists connect with others for advice and emotional support.
Our team of Matt Cravatta and Kat Parker do a tremendous amount with the resources we have. (And a huge thank you to Frank Robinson for being Secular Rescue’s primary supporter.) But nothing could have prepared them for the fall of Kabul and the resulting chaos in Afghanistan.
Desperate requests came flooding in. Atheists in Afghanistan were being targeted by the Taliban through door-to-door searches. People were fleeing their homes just ahead of Taliban interrogators and execution squads—and some, we know, didn’t make it.
CFI Board member and Silicon Valley investor David Cowan was already organizing flights out of Afghanistan to save lives and save futures for girls wishing to be educated. We joined forces and launched the Afghan Rescue Fund to collect funds for this overarching effort. Thanks to Cowan and Richard Dawkins, hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised and have been put toward airlifts and ground escapes. We helped dozens of atheists and other at-risk Afghans escape the country, and we are still in the midst of that urgent work.
Secular Rescue is truly a life or death program. But CFI was deeply involved in another life-or-death endeavor and that, of course, is fighting against the misinformation surrounding COVID-19 and vaccinations.
From the start of the pandemic, CFI has been at the forefront of promoting vaccinations as the best possible way for society to emerge from the scourge of COVID-19. It has been heartbreaking to watch the push for vaccines become so fiercely politicized, so much so that you could predict the likelihood of a person being vaccinated based on their political affiliation.
In state after state, CFI opposed governors and lawmakers who sought to outlaw vaccine mandates voluntarily imposed by private businesses and universities to keep their campuses and workplaces safe and promote general public health. Azhar Majeed, CFI’s director of government affairs, kept on top of legislation in statehouses across the country. He organized citizen action on a host of bills, including those that would grant broad religious exemptions to vaccinations. Because no major religious faith objects to vaccinations, the people claiming these exemptions were making up their own tenets just to avoid getting vaccinated when they were medically able to do so.
Throughout 2021, CFI continued to act as an information gatekeeper, posting accurate information on coronavirus interventions and calling out quack cures, such as homeopathic coronavirus treatments. On multiple occasions, we featured preeminent virologist Dr. Paul Offit on our premier webinar series, Skeptical Inquirer Presents, to discuss the science behind the COVID-19 vaccines and clear up misconceptions.
CFI has been pushing back against baseless conspiracy theories and disinformation channels for more than forty years. But who could have foreseen a world where the most outlandish and irresponsible voices were the most amplified by social media algorithms that care nothing for the resulting impacts? Pushing back against this tidal wave of conjured, boosted outrage and lies is the battle of our time, and we are on the front lines.
But it’s not just fighting what we are against. CFI also aggressively promotes what we are for.
To remind the public of the vital role that science has played in bettering and lengthening lives, CFI partnered with the Stiefel Freethought Foundation to launch the ScienceSaves campaign. The idea was to promote a sense of gratitude for the benefits we all enjoy due to science. Julia Hassan, CFI’s multi-channel marketing associate, worked to encourage people to post video stories of science benefiting their lives. Bertha Vazquez, the director of the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science (TIES), became CFI’s overall director of education, and hit the ground running by launching more than a dozen new classroom-ready teaching modules for ScienceSaves. And despite the pandemic, TIES adjusted to the new conditions, giving dozens of workshops on how to teach evolution in virtual and live presentations.
CFI is the only organization in the country that stands at the crossroads of secularism and skepticism. We apply critical thinking and the scientific method to all claims about the true nature of reality, and we let the chips fall where they may. The same standards of truth-seeking we apply to a street corner fortune teller we apply to claims made by a corner church and a purveyor of healing crystals. Our science is not filtered through a tribal lens. It is not dependent on your political stripe.
That is what makes us stand apart. We stand for science. We stand for secularism as the best possible way to order society. And we stand for the truth.
Thank you for standing with us.
With warmest regards,
Robyn Blumner
The truth has had a difficult few years. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, when the media landscape became overwhelmed with misinformation, a new age had already dawned for pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, religious zealotry, medical quackery, and plain old lies.
It was no accident. One of the chief architects of the misinformation age, Steve Bannon, confessed as much back in 2018. His true enemy, he said, was not political opposition, but the truth. His strategy? To “flood the zone” with a euphemism for excrement; to saturate all media with lies and disinformation; and to wallow in the resulting sludge. When no one can trust anything they hear, they will believe what they want, regardless of whether it’s true.
We have been gearing up for this fight since the beginning.
For more than four decades, the Center for Inquiry has stood as a beacon of truth in a storm of lies, advancing reason over fantasy and science over myth. In 2021, CFI—a transnational organization encompassing a dynamic array of programs to advance a secular society based on reason, science, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values—met this crucial moment in human history with a renewed emphasis on what it does best: producing good ideas.
Over the past year, the Center for Inquiry has expanded and re-energized its content creation, building on its foundational publications such as Skeptical Inquirer magazine, Free Inquiry magazine, and the podcast Point of Inquiry, and branching out into new mediums and platforms, while bringing new voices to larger audiences than ever before.
The masters of misinformation pose a serious threat to so much of what we hold dear. But they don’t scare us. Try as they might, we are gathering up the candles in the dark first sparked by heroes of reason such as Carl Sagan, and with the support of this exceptional community, we will flood the zone with light.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
– Carl Sagan, one of the founders of what would become the Center for Inquiry, from The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)
Throughout the pandemic, hucksters have been convincing consumers to throw away their money and risk their health on false cures and unproven treatments, and included among the horse dewormers and televangelist-endorsed colloidal silvers is lowest of all the snake oils, homeopathy, a literally useless form of “alternative medicine.” Despite the obvious fraud of homeopathy, the industries that profit from it have enjoyed little to no regulatory oversight, and only one organization is doing something about it: the Center for Inquiry.
CFI is taking on homeopathy from every available angle, including:
To help explain our lawsuits and what motivates our efforts to expose homeopathy as snake oil, CFI created a short animated video: “CFI’s Battle Against Fake Medicine.”
Science has improved human life in countless ways, and its importance has perhaps never been more apparent than it is right now. Nonetheless, trust in science is relentlessly undermined by a wide array of forces that stand to profit from the confusion and denial.
In 2021, in partnership with freethought leader and philanthropist Todd Stiefel, CFI launched #ScienceSaves, a long-term, multifaceted campaign to promote the innumerable ways that science has made our lives longer, healthier, easier, and more fulfilling.
The Center for Inquiry brings the leading lights of reason and science into the homes and onto the screens of thousands of viewers with Skeptical Inquirer Presents, a series of free live online talks from a wide array of experts in science, investigation, medicine, media, communication, and advocacy—all devoted to the cause of advancing science over pseudoscience, media literacy over conspiracy theories, and critical thinking over magical thinking.
Launched in 2020 as a way to keep the skeptic activist community connected during a time of lockdowns, Skeptical Inquirer Presents has blossomed into a true phenomenon unto itself, reaching audiences who might otherwise never have thought of attending a “skeptic event.” Hosted by comedian Leighann Lord (herself a newly-anointed Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry), Skeptical Inquirer Presents featured a truly impressive roster of distinguished presenters in 2021.
Many more talks are slated for additional events throughout 2022. Learn more.
David Copperfield and Richard Wiseman on the history of magic and its role in skepticism
Carolyn Porco, leader of the imaging team for the Cassini mission to Saturn, on the commercialization of space
Neil deGrasse Tyson on space, science communication, and the skeptic movement
Naomi Oreskes, science historian and coauthor of Merchants of Doubt, on Americans’ trust in science
Nick Tiller on pseudoscience in the sports, fitness, and wellness industries
Seth Shostak on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the UFO craze
Michael Mann, pioneering climate scientist, with a battle plan on how to save the planet
Nina Burleigh, bestselling author and journalist, on the shocking behind-the-scenes story of the failed response to COVID-19
Jeff Hawkins, scientist and entrepreneur, founder of Palm Computing, Handspring, and Numenta, on how the brain understands the world around it
Paul Offit, renowned virologist and immunologist, answering audience questions about the COVID-19 vaccines
Maria Konnikova, celebrated journalist and author, on what poker can teach about the role of chance and the control we have over our own destinies
Stephanie Kemmerer on the medieval roots of the QAnon conspiracy theory
Mike Rothschild on how QAnon is changing and adapting to seep into all corners of society
Mick West, skeptical investigator, on “escaping the rabbit hole” of conspiracy theories
John Cook on using “gamification” to counter misinformation and false beliefs
Candice Basterfield and Shauna Bowes on why smart people get things wrong
Stuart Vyse on the power and persistence of superstitious beliefs
Anna Reser and Leila McNeill, of Lady Science magazine, on the forgotten history of the women who changed science
Lee McIntyre on how to talk to a science denier
Andy Norman, humanist philosopher, on developing an “immune response” to the “mind-parasites” of misinformation
Dr. Odaelys Walwyn-Pollard on how COVID-19 revealed the cracks in a broken health system
David Robert Grimes on motivated reasoning and the existential importance of critical thinking
Krishana Sankar, Science Advisor for ScienceUpFirst, on encouraging “vaccine confidence” in a global pandemic
Guy P. Harrison on “the captivating power of reality” in a time of rampant unreason
Skeptical Inquirer Presents most live event attendees
(Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Skeptical Inquirer Presents live attendees
CFI Websites 2021 Total Pageviews
581,000 Average Monthly Pageviews
RDFRS Website 2021 Total Pageviews
660,000 Average Monthly Pageviews
Total Organization Pageviews in 2021
Online articles published
Web columns/columnists
Skepticism is having, as they say, a moment. They also say that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone, and people are feeling a palpable lack of reason and rationality in the world today.
The Center for Inquiry is uniquely positioned, more than any other organization, to be a voice of reason and an amplifier for those most precious of resources: truths, facts, and critical thinking. The growing skeptic community, with Skeptical Inquirer as its home base, is experiencing a rebirth. And this renaissance of reason is led by the Center for Inquiry.
Upholding a legacy that goes back more than forty years, when the minds of luminaries such as Paul Kurtz, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, and James Randi first met to confront an age of unreason, today Skeptical Inquirer magazine is the flagship of the reality-based community. Throughout the year’s blizzard of misinformation, pseudoscience, paranormal claims, and conspiracy theories, no publication from any organization was better suited to meet this moment. In a media landscape mired in confusion and credulity, Skeptical Inquirer stood tall.
Highlights from Skeptical Inquirer in 2021:
Skeptical Inquirer circulation (print, digital, and newsstand)
In 2021 Skeptical Inquirer introduced new voices and new approaches to the investigation of extraordinary claims, including a new column dedicated to sports and fitness pseudoscience; a new video series focused on technology and the paranormal; and head-spinning tales of demonic possession!
Dr. Nick Tiller: The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science. Physiologist Nick Tiller takes a critical look at the enormous influence of pseudoscience in the sports, wellness, and fitness industries. In 2021, Tiller took on topics such as cryotherapy, lung-training, detox delusions, and New Year’s fad diets.
Kenny Biddle: Ghosts in the Machine. For several years, Kenny Biddle has been bringing his passions for technology and skeptical investigation to Skeptical Inquirer, digging into footage and photographs of paranormal activity, dispelling myths about haunted objects, and unmasking the personalities behind the claims. In 2021, Biddle began sharing his investigations in a whole new way, with the original video series Ghosts in the Machine.
JD Sword: Devils in the Details. Even in our modern era, influential figures in religion, media, and even medicine assert the malevolent power of evil spirits to inhabit our world, our bodies, and even our gadgets! JD Sword shares his investigations into claims of possessions and exorcisms. His Skeptical Inquirer piece on the identity of the boy that inspired the Exorcist franchise was a major hit and really sent the media’s head spinning.
Behavior & Belief: Psychologist Stuart Vyse, an expert on irrational behavior, addresses a wide range of issues in science and skepticism, with a particular focus on the impact and origins of superstitious beliefs.
Guerrilla Skepticism: The driving force behind Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia, 2019 Balles Prize winner Susan Gerbic chronicles her dogged efforts to expose tricks and machinations of celebrity psychics and mediums.
A Closer Look: The skeptic community’s unofficial chief inspector of gadgets, Kenny Biddle investigates how technology is used to make claims about detection of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs, and other paranormal experiences.
SkepDoc’s Corner: No health fad, wellness pseudoscience, or medical quackery can escape the critical eye of retired U.S. Air Force physician and flight surgeon Harriet Hall.
The Well-Known Skeptic: Providing opportunities to get to know his fellow well-known skeptics, Rob Palmer’s 2021 column included an interview with Star Trek actor and champion of secularism John de Lancie.
But What Do I Know: The insatiably curious Ada McVean takes us through whimsical explorations of the things we’ve taken for granted and busts the myths we never even knew needed busting.
Letter to America: Profiles of skeptic leaders and activities on the other side of the Atlantic by the founder of The Skeptic magazine, Wendy M. Grossman.
Politicians and the news media became suddenly obsessed with UFOs in 2021 as the Pentagon prepared to release a report on so-called UAPs, or “unidentified aerial phenomena.” Anticipating what was sure to be an avalanche of overblown reporting and wishful thinking, CFI's Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (publisher of Skeptical Inquirer magazine) released a handy "tip sheet" for journalists and other members of the media to help them process and accurately communicate the facts about what we do and do not know about unidentified flying objects.
Several CFI staff, Fellows, columnists, and contributors were sought by the mainstream media to bring a skeptical, reality-based perspective to a topic that was ripe with speculation and over-interpretation. CFI-affiliated experts appeared in outlets, such as Religion News Service, The New Yorker, Reuters, The Guardian, NBCNews.com, The Hill, Boston Review, Wired, and the Virginian-Pilot.
Dr. Stephen Barrett founded the groundbreaking truth-telling website Quackwatch in 1996, establishing an institution that would prove to be a reliable and frequently cited resource for protecting consumers from the fraud of health-related pseudoscience and fake medicine. In 2020, Quackwatch became a part of the Center for Inquiry, and it turned out to be a perfect fit.
In 2021, the Quackwatch website is better than ever, housing decades of research and information for medical professionals, consumers, and the media. Every week, Dr. William London publishes Quackwatch’s Consumer Health Digest newsletter, and the site regularly features original articles and exposés on the latest health scams, snake oil, and pseudoscience.
When the COVID-19 crisis began, few could have predicted that a variety of safe and effective vaccines would become publicly available and as quickly as they have—a true testament to the power of science. Yet despite this incredible advancement, we face a deluge of misinformation that has caused millions of Americans to reject those life-saving vaccines.
In 2020, the Center for Inquiry established the CFI Coronavirus Resource Center to serve as a one-stop shop on the internet for fact-based news, information, and reality checks about COVID-19, vaccines, and the many myths surrounding it all. As 2021 came and went, the need for such a resource did not diminish. The CFI Coronavirus Resource Center offered an easy way for anyone to discover and share news and information from reliable sources to push back against the propaganda, snake oil, and disinformation.
The CFI Investigations Group (CFIIG) is the largest paranormal investigation organization in the world, with allied groups and field investigators in several countries, offering $250,000—the largest active prize of this nature on the planet—to anyone who can prove under scientific testing conditions they have paranormal superpowers.
In February, OneZero (the primary technology publication of Medium.com) published a major story on CFIIG and one of its aspiring applicants, “Hex Factor: Inside the Group Offering $250,000 for Proof of Superpowers.” This kicked off a deluge of coverage about the group from local news sites and outlets.
In November, CFIIG Director Jim Underdown delighted the hosts and crew of WGN Morning News in Chicago as he debunked paranormal claims and recounted highlights of CFIIG’s investigations.
In 2022, the CFIIG will launch a series of videos that address a widespread paranormal or pseudoscientific belief. Each video will show how the notion can be tested and how well-established scientific principles debunk it.
In a time of misinformation, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories, the role of the public skeptic has never been more critical. Those at the forefront for the advancement of science, reason, and critical thinking are indispensable. It is those champions of reality who we honor as Fellows of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
In 2021, fourteen remarkable men and women were newly elected to join the ranks of distinguished scientists, scholars, activists, authors, and creators, such as Richard Dawkins, Ann Druyan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jill Tarter, Elizabeth Loftus, Bill Nye, and Steven Pinker.
Meet the new Fellows:
Each year, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry honors the creators of the published work that best communicates the importance of skepticism and empirical science with the Balles Prize in Critical Thinking. Normally presented at CSICon conferences, the prizes for 2019 and 2020 had gone unawarded.
Finally, the long-overdue Balles Prizes for 2019 and 2020 were bestowed during special Skeptical Inquirer Presents events in 2022.
For 2019: Susan Gerbic, skeptic activist, for her meticulously crafted operations to expose the fraud of so-called psychics and mediums and her tireless organization of the Guerilla Skeptics on Wikipedia project.
For 2020: Timothy Caulfield, science communicator, for his role as the happy warrior of reason and science throughout the infodemic, using multiple media platforms to advance an inclusive, affirming, and fun approach to countering misinformation and advancing the role of science.
On August 23, 2021, the world lost a towering figure of the freethought movement, and the Center for Inquiry lost a dear friend and colleague, when Tom Flynn died suddenly at age sixty-six.
Tom held numerous leadership roles throughout his more than thirty years with the Center for Inquiry, most recently as the visionary editor of Free Inquiry magazine, director of the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum and the Freethought Trail, and former executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism.
He was the beating heart of American freethought. In a special tribute issue of Free Inquiry dedicated to his memory, renowned journalist Susan Jacoby dubbed Tom the “memory keeper” for his passionate devotion to keeping alive the history and values of secular humanism and radical reform movements. He was also beloved for his encyclopedic intelligence, his prolific scholarship, and his cantankerous wit. As CFI Board Chair Eddie Tabash put it, Tom was “our conscience against irrational action and thought.”
Upon his death, the Center for Inquiry invited friends, colleagues, and all those who appreciated Tom’s lifetime of work to share their thoughts and memories on our website at the Tom Flynn Remembrance Wall.
Through its Secular Rescue program, CFI works to save the lives of atheist activists who face threats of harm or death due to their expressions about religion or nonbelief. In September, CFI began a partnership with Silicon Valley entrepreneur and CFI Board Member David Cowan to respond to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan, as the Taliban rapidly took control of the country, curtailing even basic freedoms and endangering countless lives.
Our Afghan Rescue Fund raised over $300,000, which was put directly toward extracting dozens of Afghan atheists whose lives were immediately threatened. Also, with Cowan’s help, hundreds more Afghans who simply wanted to live free of religious extremism and oppression were flown to freedom on a charter flight out of the country.
“This is a time to look beyond our national identities and embrace the opportunity to help our fellow human beings. An entire nation collapsing under the weight of theocratic oppression is a moral emergency, and all of us—atheist and religious alike—are called to action. Our community will answer that call.” — Richard Dawkins, CFI Board Member, founder of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science
Since 2015, the Center for Inquiry’s Secular Rescue program has been striving to provide emergency assistance to atheist writers, bloggers, publishers, and activists in high-risk countries who face threats due to their beliefs or expressions regarding religion. The global pandemic, the resulting economic fallout, and increased tensions and violence over blasphemy and apostasy—from both governments and angry mobs—has made the work of Secular Rescue all the more necessary.
From its inception, Secular Rescue has helped dozens of individuals and families from places such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, and Sri Lanka, with financial, logistical, and even psychological support. Requests are thoroughly vetted for validity, and CFI works directly with the applicant and other aid agencies to help bring individuals to safety.
Secular Rescue fielded an overwhelming number of requests for help in 2021. And amid all the turmoil, there were some truly inspiring successes—stories of real people in mortal danger with nowhere else to turn, now safe and free.
Zee: An Egyptian journalist, poet, and activist, Zee relocated to the United States after perilous circumstances as a refugee in Jordan with his wife and daughter. Secular Rescue found an academic institution to offer Zee a year-long artist residency and fellowship award. Zee’s family had suffered from hunger and hopelessness, but his family is now safe, housed, and joyous. “We can't find the words to express our thanks to all of you,” he said. “You gave us this hope and a new life.”
Bahir: A teenage ex-Muslim from Iraq, Bahir was beaten and exiled by his parents for his questions about religion and human rights and forced into homelessness and destitution. Near a breaking point, Secular Rescue helped him get the support and counseling he needed so he could pursue an education, free of persecution and fear. “I don’t know what’s next, but everything is ok,” Bahir told us. “Thank you from the depths of my heart!”
Hassan: An ex-Muslim from Kenya, beaten on three occasions by mobs who accused him of being kafir (infidel). Hassan pursued an education and spoke out about atheists’ rights on social media but was a frequent target of threats and harassment. Secular Rescue has been providing Hassan with financial support for living assistance and is assisting him with finding a way out to a place of safety.
Alshaima: A young, non-binary, Jordanian atheist, and a survivor of an abusive, forced marriage and violent family, Alshaima was hiding in Lebanon until Secular Rescue stepped in with financial assistance, advocacy, legal aid, counseling, and securing an Australian humanitarian visa. They are now safe, free, and healing. “Finally,” said Alshaima, “I have the chance to be myself without people shaming me and trying to kill me for it.” It’s certainly not too much to ask.
Aliyu: A Nigerian ex-Muslim, atheist activist, and blogger, Aliyu endured numerous threats to his life, and his bookselling business was destroyed by an angry Islamist mob who falsely accused him of blasphemy. Secular Rescue provided aid for emergency relocation, where he reconnected with his wife and child. Today, Aliyu and his family are doing great. “The most important thing now is I am safe and no longer in danger,” he said. “I am no longer thinking of leaving. I will stay and fight for a better Nigeria.”
Individuals helped by Secular Rescue in 2021
Each year, CFI honors an individual who publicly stands for the values of secularism, rationalism, and scientific truth with the Richard Dawkins Award. In October 2021, that distinction was bestowed upon an artist who has won the hearts of audiences around the world with his razor-sharp wit and unapologetic advocacy for compassion and reason over self-serving myth and fantasy, Australian musician and comedian Tim Minchin.
Tickets to the event at the Sheldonian in Oxford, in which Richard Dawkins and Tim Minchin engaged in a live, unscripted conversation introduced by CFI CEO Robyn Blumner and moderated by CFI Board Member David Cowan, sold out almost immediately. The complete video of the event is now available free online.
In many parts of the world, atheism is no longer the taboo it once was just a few short years ago. The religiously unaffiliated are rapidly on the rise. Yet religious zealotry is as potent and dangerous a force as it has ever been. Free Inquiry magazine is the publication in which issues important to secular humanists are explored with clarity and courage.
Highlights from Free Inquiry in 2021:
The Power Worshippers: Katherine Stewart exposes the movement for theocratic dominionism bent on rewriting American history, seizing control of the legal system, and undermining democracy itself.
Atheism and Self-Reliance: Sociologist Phil Zuckerman espouses the resilience and resourcefulness that comes with a lack of religious belief.
Wayward—A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare and Sexual Purity: Alice Greczyn’s personal story of a life entrenched in extremist Christian “purity culture.”
The New Myths of Transhumanism and the Dark Mountain: Paul Fidalgo contrasts the prophecies of techno-optimists and “collapsitarians."
Free Inquiry circulation (print, digital, and newsstand)
Every year, CFI’s Council for Secular Humanism recognizes the previous year’s best humanist writing with the Forkosch Awards. In 2021, the honors went to two women whose works shined a spotlight on two very different political movements.
The Morris D. Forkosch Award for Best Book of 2020 was awarded to journalist Katherine Stewart for her exposé The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (Bloomsbury), a powerful and disturbing portrait of the authoritarian, divisive movement sometimes inadequately described as the religious Right.
The Selma V. Forkosch Award for Best Article for 2020 was given to historian Judith Wellman for her essay in the August/September 2020 issue of Free Inquiry, “What Can Historic Sites Tell Us about the Movement for Women’s Suffrage in New York State?” The article explores the role of historic sites in interpreting the history of the woman suffrage movement, which began in west-central New York State in 1848.
Nonreligious Americans deserve the right to have their life milestones officiated by someone who shares their secular lifestance and humanist values. In recent years, CFI has won landmark legal victories allowing CFI-trained and certified Secular Celebrants to solemnize marriages in Indiana and Illinois, laid the groundwork for Secular Celebrant legislation enacted in Oregon, and successfully moved the administration in Michigan to extend the state’s marriage laws to include Secular Celebrants.
Early in 2021, CFI faced a legal setback in Texas, as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed our challenge to the state’s exclusion of Secular Celebrants from the list of those permitted to solemnize marriages. CFI remains undaunted, and our legal team is eager to continue this fight on behalf of nonreligious couples and celebrants in Texas. Learn more about the Secular Celebrant program.
“Nonreligious couples in Texas deserve the same rights as the religious—a principle so obvious is should hardly need stating, let alone litigated.” – Nick Little, CFI Vice President and Legal Director
Under the care and curation of the late Tom Flynn, CFI maintains the historic Freethought Trail, a collection of real-world locations and a comprehensive website that tells the story of nineteenth-century Western New York’s pivotal role in the history of American secularism, abolitionism, and woman suffrage.
The cornerstone of this work is the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum in Dresden, New York, which honors the life and legacy of Ingersoll, the era’s greatest orator, known as “the Great Agnostic” for his courageous and eloquent speeches and essays on secularism, science, and human rights. Thanks to unprecedented donor enthusiasm for this labor of love, in May 2021 the museum achieved an endowment of over $400,000, securing the Museum for generations to come.
Museum Director Tom Flynn, editor of Free Inquiry magazine and former executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, died very suddenly in August 2021. The Museum is now overseen by Flynn’s chosen successor, CFI Director of Libraries Tim Binga.
CFI’s new Director of Government Affairs Azhar Majeed hit the ground running in 2021, processing fifty states’ (and one District’s) worth of legislative and regulatory activity, and developing a custom bill tracker to monitor dozens of bills in statehouses across the country on issues dealing with science and church-state separation.
Be a voice for reason in your own community. Sign up for CFI’s action alerts.
At any given time, state lawmakers are introducing and debating measures concerning science curricula in schools, the authority of “alternative medicine” practitioners, the imposition of Christian theology into public schools and city halls, efforts to eliminate any and all vaccination requirements—COVID-19 or otherwise—and much more. When relevant legislation appears active, CFI alerts its community to speak out to make a difference, offering testimony and coalition-building assistance.
Let’s Help Teens with Anti-Vax Parents Get Their COVID-19 Vaccines: Mature minors who want to be vaccinated, protecting their own health and the health of their communities, are too often out of luck if their parents have fallen for anti-vaxxer propaganda. CFI believes that this needs to change, and there’s no time to waste. In 2021, CFI pushed states’ attorneys general to affirm young people’s right to protect themselves and others. Learn more.
Support for a National Day of Reason: Introduced by Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and cosponsored by members of the Congressional Freethought Caucus, the resolution celebrates “the central importance of reason, critical thought, the scientific method, and free inquiry to resolving social problems and promoting the welfare of humankind.” Learn more.
With a U.S. Supreme Court dominated by Christian conservatives, major legal victories for church-state separation or the importance of science are few and far between. Nonetheless, the Center for Inquiry’s legal department has taken every available opportunity to push the Court toward the side of secularism, reason, and reality, working alongside allies in the freethought and scientific communities to file amicus briefs with the court and prepare our movement for the tumultuous road ahead.
Despite the difficult times, there are real victories in sight. CFI’s legal department is particularly focused on consumer protection lawsuits, actively pursuing opportunities to file suit against sellers of homeopathy, psychics, naturopaths, and faith-healers when their claims run contrary to reality and scam the public. Learn more.
Fulton v. City of Philadelphia: Religiously based foster care agencies refused to comply with Philadelphia’s anti-discrimination requirements for contractors, insisting on getting taxpayer dollars while discriminating against same-sex couples. The Court sided with the agencies.
Carson v. Makin: Parents sued the state of Maine to force the state to pay the tuition for their children to attend explicitly religious high schools that overtly practice anti-LGBTQ discrimnination.
Ramirez v. Collier: A death row inmate sues to be allowed to have his minister in physical contact with him when he is executed.
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization: Mississippi law bans abortions after 15 weeks, scrapping the previous standard for “viability” of the fetus.
South Bay United Pentecostal Church, et al. v. Newsom: The Supreme Court granted an injunction to religious groups to ignore California’s COVID-19 restrictions on indoor, in-person religious services.
Bills tracked by CFI
Bills targeted by CFI
With our diplomatic work at the United Nations, we affect change through our special consultative status under the United Nations Economic and Social Council since 2005, working with international allies to confront global challenges to free expression and belief, advancing human rights from a secular, science-based perspective.
In 2021, CFI UN Advocate Andreas Kyriacou spoke before the UN Human Rights Council on the failure of Libya to protect its religious minorities, particularly atheists, who live under the threat of violence from religious extremists, as well as persecution from the government “merely for voicing their opinion on how the world works.” He also spoke out on the plight of the nonreligious and apostates in Somalia, a country that is working to meet international human rights standards, but falling short in terms of equality for those without religion.
A few examples of the great work of CFI branches and affiliates outside the United States in 2021:
CFI Argentina published twenty-seven original articles for Pensar magazine, the first Spanish-language publication for the skeptic movement. Contributing authors hailed from countries such as Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Italy, Peru, and Uruguay. Pensar is also collaborating with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in the United States to produce Spanish translations of SETI newsletters.
CFI Peru publishes several periodicals, including the humanist magazine Eupraxophia, the skeptic periodical Neo-Skepsis, and the Peruvian Journal of Applied Philosophy, each featuring authors from around the world.
CFI China continues to publish articles for a thriving CFI community on WeChat, where they have published dozens of articles and held several kids’ training camps in scientific thinking.
CFI Poland’s quarterly periodical Racje became the basis of a book on pandemics, coauthored and edited by CFI Poland’s Andrzej Dominiczak, who has also been invited to take part in a European Union project on “European Values.”
CFI France published an annual analysis of the prophecies and predictions of astrologers and fortune tellers.
CFI YouTube Subscribers
CFI YouTube channel views
RDFRS YouTube Subscribers
RDFRS YouTube channel views
Most-viewed RDFRS 2021 YouTube Video:
“An Evening with Richard Dawkins—Featuring Sam Harris”
Most-viewed CFI YouTube Video:
“Tim Minchin and Richard Dawkins in Conversation”
CFI Twitter Followers
CFI Facebook Followers
RDFRS Twitter Followers
RDFRS Facebook Followers
RDFRS Instagram Followers
Skeptical Inquirer Twitter followers
Skeptical Inquirer Facebook followers
For more than six years, the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science (TIES)—a program of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science—has provided middle school teachers with the content knowledge and teaching tools they need to effectively cover their state’s evolution standards and navigate the often perilous cultural waters surrounding evolution education.
In 2021 alone, striking a careful balance between virtual presentations and safe in-person events, TIES held more than forty workshops for teachers in nineteen states, connecting with teachers face-to-face on their home turf.
For example, in July, TIES Director Bertha Vazquez held a day-long workshop for teachers in Brandon, Mississippi, and received a very warm response—particularly from those teachers who had been struggling with how to process conflicting (and often false) information about evolution. By meeting with teachers where they are (face-to-face), she was able to build trust, clear up misconceptions, and share resources.
TIES added a wealth of new free resources for teachers to its rapidly growing website and began its expansion into elementary and high school level education. In August, Vazquez showcased TIES’s new student-guided units on evolution, one for middle school teachers and another for high school teachers. These new units included free materials, such as student response sheets, answer keys, exams, and dozens of other resources.
In the fall, TIES Director Bertha Vazquez published a new book, On Teaching Evolution. Featuring a foreword by Richard Dawkins, the book offers practical advice and sample lesson plans for science teachers, collected from the assembled experience and wisdom of an incredible roster of TIES-trained teachers. Keystone Canyon Press, publisher of On Teaching Evolution, put together a promotional “trailer” for the book featuring insights from many of its contributors.
TIES held three webinars with guest lecturers in 2021 from experts and educators who share our passion for evolution and critical thinking, which can be enjoyed online any time.
2021 TIES Guest Webinars
Jon Perry of Stated Clearly, Inc!
Lydia Denworth: Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental
Sara Fitzsimmons: The Revival of the American Chestnut Tree
A groundbreaking program of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, the Translations Project produces professionally translated versions of landmark books on science and evolution into several languages, including Arabic, Urdu, Indonesian, and Farsi. These books can be downloaded free of charge from TranslationsProject.org to help share the light of reason and the wonders of science with as many people around the world as possible, no matter where they are.
To date, eighteen books have been translated, which have been downloaded over 17,000 times in eighty-six different countries. In 2021, the Translations Project published its first children’s book translations and produced subtitled versions of short, shareable videos from some of Richard Dawkins’s classic science lectures.
CFI’s Free Thinking blogs continue to provide timely analysis of critical issues, offering a necessary dose of realism within an informational environment beset by confusion and conspiracy theories. Some of the year’s columns and contributors included:
Reality v. Bloody Nonsense: CFI’s Legal Director Nick Little produces sharp-witted commentary and analysis on the major legal issues central to our movement.
A Skeptic Reads the Newspaper: Benjamin Radford brings his expertise in folklore and media criticism to bear on current events.
Searching for Better Angels: Angel Eduardo provides a fresh, counterintuitive perspective to moral and ethical issues.
The Rationality of Science: Jamie Hale gets to the nuts and bolts of how we arrive at truths and how to be better critical thinkers.
Hollywood Reality Check and Ask the Atheist : CFI West Director Jim Underdown’s wry reflections on religion, the paranormal, and the entertainment industry.
In the spring, CFI launched a new annual award to highlight prominent individuals who profit off misleading the public with lies, misinformation, and pseudoscience: the Full of Bull Award. Visitors were invited to review the track records of deception and misinformation from six egregious offenders and then vote on who is the worst. The 2021 nominees who didn’t win were pseudoscience profiteer Gwyneth Paltrow, unhinged conspiracy peddler Alex Jones, religious-Right disgrace Jerry Falwell Jr., anti-vaxxer-in-chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and fake-psychic Thomas John. The abundance of scoundrels really put the “embarrassment” in “embarrassment of riches.”
Voters overwhelmingly chose former mayor Rudy Giuliani as the most Full of Bull for his ceaseless trumpeting of the "Big Lie" about the 2020 presidential election and his cynical promotion of pseudoscientific treatments for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since the earliest days of podcasting, Point of Inquiry has been presenting deep, insightful conversation with some of the brightest minds of our time. Hosts Leighann Lord and Jim Underdown engage with innovative thinkers, authors, and experts on the big questions in science, religion, politics, and culture.
Highlights from Point of Inquiry in 2021:
And more!
Every weekday (mostly) for ten years now, CFI Communications Director Paul Fidalgo has been keeping us up to date on the issues we care about most with The Morning Heresy, the blog and free email newsletter that rounds up news, opinion, and analysis relevant to the skeptic and secular movement. Today our inboxes are overflowing with email newsletters, but with The Morning Heresy’s focus on the current events that matter to the reality-based community, filtered through Paul’s wry humor, there is nothing else like it.
In 2021, The Morning Heresy expanded its empire from text to sound, with the introduction of the new podcast Heresy Now! Every Friday, Paul takes the best (and worst) news items from the week and packages them in a fun and informative broadcast, perfect for getting caught up with all the madness happening all around us, and what the Center for Inquiry is doing about it.
“I continue to be amazed at the assembled content and engaging writing in The Morning Heresy email. I joyfully devour it! … it’s so well-crafted and jam-packed with fresh stuff that I’ve missed or want to explore further. … The humor is a true bonus that I relish.” – Marshall Benveniste, PhD
CFI West in Los Angeles is the Center for Inquiry’s west coast base of operations, home of the CFI Investigations Group, the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Theater, and—unveiling in 2022—the Freethinkers Mural. Painted in the summer and fall of 2021, it’s the largest mural in the world honoring luminaries of freethought, science, and humanism. Among the twenty-three historical figures depicted are freethought heroes, such as Carl Sagan, James Randi, Zora Neal Hurston, Giordano Bruno, Matilda Joslyn Gage, John Lennon, and others.
Based at the Center for Inquiry’s transnational headquarters in Amherst, New York, CFI Western New York was able to safely return to in-person lectures at the Center, as well as events such as community potluck dinners, movie screenings, solstice celebrations, and a Secular Book Club.
CFI Michigan continues to host enriching programming, in person and online, and revived its Secular Service program to beautify the local environment and help those in need. CFI New York City has hosted a weekly Sunday online Food for Thought program, as well as a discussion session after each Skeptical Inquirer Presents event for venturing deeper into the weeds of each episode’s topic.
Though usually an in-person training event, CFI Indiana held a successful Civic Day in February over Zoom, and continues its English as a Second Language classes, also online. CFI Tampa has maintained a very active schedule of Zoom-based lectures and events, working alongside other freethought groups in Florida.
Each CFI branch is responding to the needs and wishes of its local community, so a “return to normalcy” will mean something different for every location, whether they’re deep in the heart of Texas with CFI Austin, sipping coffee with CFI Portland, or riding the cable car to CFI San Francisco. Join one of our communities, and find your local Center for Inquiry.
Just as Skeptical Inquirer Presents allowed us to bring some of our CSICon conferences to audiences at home, the CFI Insider online series of live events introduced our community to the people who work every day to advance CFI’s mission. CFI Insider presented four new interviews in 2021 before wrapping up the series, each hosted by Melissa Myers.
2021 CFI Insider Events:
The Center for Inquiry Libraries, located across from the North Campus of the University of Buffalo in Amherst, New York, houses books, periodicals, archives, microfilm, databases, and other materials relevant to humanism, freethought, and skepticism—some of which are centuries old. Tim Binga, CFI’s director of libraries, posts updates on new acquisitions and other observations at his CFI Free Thinking column, “Access Points.”
For every job, you need the right tool. In 1992, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (then known as CSICOP) launched the Skeptic’s Toolbox, a series of in-person workshops in which experts train skeptic activists to hone their investigative and critical thinking skills with hands-on activities and enlightening talks. Today, there’s no need to keep these invaluable resources behind closed doors.
In 2021, the Skeptic’s Toolbox began a new life on the web delivering a collection of resources and training events that can be enjoyed any time, anywhere, free of charge. These new online workshops equip participants with the tools and techniques needed to guard against deception and evaluate the validity of claims using critical thinking, skepticism, and the scientific method.
Dig into the toolbox, learn some new skills, check out the bonus materials, and share them with anyone who wants to think more critically and build some immunity from the infodemic.
2021 Skeptic’s Toolbox Workshops:
Translations Project translators
Books Translated
Books downloaded from the Translations Project
Countries downloading Translations Project books
CFI Branches in the US and International
CFI email subscribers
RDFRS email subscribers
The Morning Heresy subscribers
Almost double from 2020
Vinod Bhardwaj: Inventor, entrepreneur
David Cowan: Venture capitalist
Richard Dawkins: Evolutionary biologist
Brian Engler: Operations research analyst, nonprofit executive
Kendrick Frazier: Editor, Skeptical Inquirer
Barry Kosmin: Director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut
Bill Maxwell: Columnist, university professor, screenwriter
Y. Sherry Sheng: Nonprofit executive, educator
Julia Sweeney: Comedian, actress
Eddie Tabash (Chair, Board of Directors): Attorney, activist
J. Anderson Thomson (Vice Chair, Board of Directors): Psychiatrist
Leonard Tramiel: Physicist, educator
When you give to the Center for Inquiry and its programs, you want your donation to be stewarded with care and attention to the mission. That's why we report our revenue and expense ratios here. In addition, our Form 990 is available on our website.
In 2021, we generated $4,642,123.13 in revenue. Seventy-five percent came from private donations, and the remaining came from magazine sales, events, and other sources of income.
We are keenly aware of the responsibility we have to our donors when it comes to expenditures. This commitment is reflected in our expense breakdown:
These figures do not include bequests or support for the CFI Development Fund. Please note that these are not final, audited figures. We save costs by having our audit done later in the year. If you would like to see final, audited figures, please contact the Development Department at [email protected] in August.
* denotes member of CSI Executive Council
None of our work would be possible without the steadfast support of our donors and subscribers. We are very grateful for their generosity.
There has never been a greater need for an organization like the Center for Inquiry, championing facts, reason, truth, science, and secularism, all at a time that they are all under threat by the changing tides of national and global events. Everyone who shares these core values will be needed. CFI needs you to be part of the solution, to join the good guys.