July / August 2015

Uncertain Humanism and the Water of Whiteness

IN 2005, one of today’s most revered American writers, David Foster Wallace (now deceased), delivered a commencement address to graduates of Kenyon College, titled “This Is Water.” The twenty-minute speech is worth a listen or read, freely available on YouTube and in Wallace’s eponymous 2009 collection, This Is Water: Some...

Read More

Features

Up Front

Pathologies of Power

"A tyranny," Plato says in the Republic, "is the wretchedest form of government," and "a tyrant grows worse from having power: he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless, more...

Read More

Columns

Reviews

Elsewhere in the Humanist:

When They Speak of Our Time

Speech delivered at the No Kings protest at the Lexington Common, MA, October 18, 2025. Good morning to all. My name is Regie Gibson and I am the Inaugural Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I always feel it necessary to...

Read All

Elsewhere in the Humanist:

By Conscience Alone

We are here today to present the American Humanist Association’s Humanist of the Year award to Jelani Cobb. The award was established in 1953 to recognize a person of national or international reputation who, through the application of humanist values, has made...

Read All

Elsewhere in the Humanist:

The Future of Civic Power

At this moment in history, we have a clear challenge and opportunity. There is the long-term challenge of educating for expansive civic engagement, and there is the immediate challenge of responding to growing attacks on the very structure of democracy and an...

Read All

Elsewhere in the Humanist:

Curing Loneliness: How Humanism Can Bring Us Closer Together

Fish Stark is the Executive Director of the American Humanist Association. This article is adapted from his remarks at the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis. “The most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can...

Read All