Barry A. Kosmin to Receive American Humanist Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award

Hartford, Connecticut, March 27, 2019 – Barry A. Kosmin, research professor of public policy and law at Trinity College and founding director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (ISSSC), will receive the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Humanist Association at its 78th annual conference. The award, which honors distinguished humanist scholars, will be presented on June 9 in Florida at the University of Miami.

A Trinity College faculty member since 2005, Kosmin has held teaching, visiting, and research posts at numerous universities including London School of Economics, Oxford University, the University of Cape Town, and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has served since 1990 as the principal investigator of the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS).

Kosmin’s books based on the ARIS research include One Nation under God: Religion in Contemporary American Society (with Seymour Lachman, Harmony Books, 1993, and Crown Trade Paperbacks, 1994), which was an alternate selection for the Book of the Month Club; and Religion in a Free Market: Religious and Non-Religious Americans (with Ariela Keysar, Paramount Market Publishing, 2006).

He was founding editor of the international online journal Secularism & Nonreligion (Ubiquity Press) and is a former joint editor of the journal Patterns of Prejudice (Routledge). Kosmin has published numerous academic journal articles, book chapters, monographs, and research reports on aspects of humanism and secularism. He probably is best known for publicizing the term “Nones” as a descriptor for the non-theistic population.

Kosmin is a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Inquiry and chairs its Governance Committee. He is a frequent contributor to Free Inquiry and other secularist publications.

The American Humanist Association (AHA) is the oldest and largest humanist organization in the United States and its award recipients include some of the world’s most accomplished scholars, authors, scientists, and artists. Kosmin will be joining the ranks of Bill Nye, Gloria Steinem, Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, and Lester Brown, among other previous AHA award recipients.