The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a non-profit educational organization with headquarters in the United States whose primary mission is to encourage evidence-based inquiry into paranormal and fringe science claims, alternative medicine and mental health practices, religion, secular ethics, and society. CFI is dedicated to promoting and defending science, reason, and free inquiry in all aspects of human interest.

The Center for Inquiry was established in 1991 by philosopher and author Paul Kurtz. It brought together two organizations: the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and the Council for Secular Humanism (CSH), both of which had previously operated in tandem but were now formally affiliated under one umbrella. By 1995 CFI had expanded into a new 20,000-square-foot (1,900 m²) headquarters in Amherst, New York, and in 1996 opened its first branch office in Los Angeles, CFI West. In the same year, CFI founded the Campus Freethought Alliance, organizing college students around issues of importance to CFI and its members.

Sam Harris may refer to:

Dan M. Kahan is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of law at Yale Law School. He is a leading scholar in the fields of criminal law and evidence and is known for his theory of Cultural cognition.

After attending a boarding school in Vermont, Professor Kahan received a B.A. summa cum laude from Middlebury College in 1986, where he studied under Professor Murray Dry. While at Middlebury, he spent his Junior year at Lincoln College, Oxford. He then received a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1989, where he learned Tort Law from Lewis Sargentich and Criminal Law from Charles Ogletree. While at [HLS], he served as President of the Harvard Law Review for volume 102.

After law school, Professor Kahan served as a law clerk to Judge Harry T. Edwards of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1989–90) and then to Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court (1990–91). After clerking, he worked as an attorney for Mayer, Brown & Platt in Washington D.C. (1991–93). In 1993, Professor Kahan joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School where he worked with Elena Kagan. He joined the Yale Law School faculty in 1999. At Yale, he is one of the instructors in the Law School's Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic and a professor of Criminal Law and Administration. He is a recurring Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School.

Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. He specialises in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular, preference utilitarian perspective.

He has served, on two occasions, as chair of philosophy at Monash University, where he founded its Centre for Human Bioethics. In 1996, he unsuccessfully stood as a Greens candidate for the Australian Senate. In 2004, he was recognised as the Australian Humanist of the Year by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies. He has been voted one of Australia's ten most influential public intellectuals. Singer serves on the Advisory Board of Incentives for Global Health, the NGO formed to develop the Health Impact Fund proposal.

Outside academic circles, Singer is best known for his book Animal Liberation, widely regarded as the touchstone of the animal liberation movement. Not all members of the animal liberation movement share this view, and Singer himself has said the media overstates his status. His views on that and other issues in bioethics have attracted attention and a degree of controversy.

Massimo Pigliucci (born January 16, 1964) is the chair of the Department of Philosophy at CUNY-Lehman College. He is also the editor in chief for the journal Philosophy & Theory in Biology. He is an outspoken critic of creationism and advocate of science education.

Pigliucci was born in Monrovia, Liberia, although he was raised in Rome, Italy. He has a doctorate in genetics from the University of Ferrara, Italy, a Ph.D. in botany from the University of Connecticut, and a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from the University of Tennessee. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Pigliucci was formerly a professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University. He explored phenotypic plasticity, genotype-environment interactions, natural selection, and the constraints imposed on natural selection by the genetic and developmental makeup of organisms. Early in his career, he received the prestigious Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution. As a philosopher, Pigliucci is interested in the structure and foundations of evolutionary theory, the relationship between science and philosophy, and the relationship between science and religion.