The weekly report on the SPI Fellows
by Johnny Monsarrat
Last week we announced the SPI World Future Guide 2016, our big annual roundup of the best public policy thinking from the secular movement. Our Fellows contributed some eye-opening content.
For example, SPI Fellow A C Grayling┬áwrote about education. What’s the best way not just to teach facts but to inspire students to learn critical thinking?
Last month,┬áat the Hong Kong Literary Festival, A C Grayling said that philosophy should be a┬árequired part of every student’s education, and demonstrated how religion is a reason why conflicts arise.
Grayling is a┬áFellow of St. AnneÔÇÖs College, Oxford, in the United Kingdom. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
SPI Fellow Elizabeth Loftus┬áwas the focus of an article in the Washington Post describing US Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s recent suggestion that Arab-American┬ácheered for the 9/11 attacks. She said that that as humans, we are more likely to invent or fill in false details to memories that align with our political beliefs – in others words, what we wish were true. Her article in the World Future Guide also spoke to the fallibility of memory, specifically witness testimony in courtrooms. Is it useful, somewhat useful, or useless?
Read the article on Loftus in The Washington Post
In the United States, SPI Fellow Marty Klein spent his Thanksgiving holiday giving thanks for sexual freedom. In most area of the country, men and women can dress as they please, day after abortion medical is available, and the US Supreme Court ruled that morality, which┬áis hard to pin down in the context of consensual interactions, can’t be the primary reason for sexual acts to be legal or illegal. Also, he gives some criticisms of freedoms yet to be won.
Read the article,┬áGiving Thanks for Sex; HoweverÔǪ
And finally, let us introduce a topic that will get under your skin. SPI Fellow John Joseph Kisakye, a Lecturer at Makerere University in Kampala is an expert in parasitology and an expert in dragonflies, who explores many aspects of human ecology, and he approaches all of his work as an avid humanist.