Freethought Festival

Freethought Festival
Genre freethought, skepticism, atheism, and science
Venue DeLuca Forum, Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery (2015)
Location(s) Madison, WI
Inaugurated 2012
Attendance 300
Website

Freethought Festival is a student-run freethinking convention held annually in Madison, Wisconsin by the student group Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Speakers give talks relating to atheism, freethinking, skepticism, and other topics.

2015's Festival will be headlined by Susan Jacoby. Other speakers include Debbie Goddard, Jamie Kilstein, James Croft, Candace Gorham, Heina Dadabhoy, Tommy Nugent, Andrew Seidel, and Patrick Elliott. It will also feature two panel discussions. The first will be a discussion about religion on the UW-Madison campus featuring leaders from several campus religious student organizations. The second will be on the topic of women in secularism and will feature speakers from the conference. "[1]

Description

The Freethought Festival is a free, student-run secular conference held annually in Madison, Wisconsin. It is organized and hosted by Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics (AHA) @ UW-Madison. Authors, bloggers, activists, and scientists from around the country come to speak on secular and scientific issues. Freethought Festival 4 is set to feature 11 speakers over three days. Freethought Festival 3 featured Dan Savage and a debate. Freethought Festival 2 featured the first-ever Atheist Pride Parade.[2] The event is funded by AHA through an annual operations budget received from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.[3]

Past Festivals

Dates Location Venue Attendance Speakers Organizers
April 27–29, 2012 University of Wisconsin-Madison Humanities 3650 300 Richard Carrier, PZ Myers, Matt Dillahunty, Ellery Schempp, JT Eberhard, D. J. Grothe, Hemant Mehta, Darrel Ray, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Andrew Seidel, Dale McGowan, Veronica Drantz, Chris Calvey, Elliott Sober, Valerie Tarico, Phil Ferguson, Lyz Liddell, James Croft, Alix Jules [4] Chris Calvey, AHA Officers, MadCOR
March 8–10, 2013 University of Wisconsin-Madison Lowell Center 400 Dan Barker, JT Eberhard, Eugenie Scott, Hemant Mehta, Darrel Ray. Amanda Knief, Dale McGowan, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Andrew Seidel, Greta Christina, Chris Calvey, Jesse Galef, Debbie Goddard, Desiree Schell, Katherine Stewart, Kathy Goodman [4] Chris Calvey, Michael Ramuta, Dillon Wiesner, AHA Officers
April 11 & 12, 2014 University of Wisconsin-Madison Varsity Hall, Union South (Friday) & Social Sciences 6210 (Saturday) 300 Dan Savage, Jamie Kilstein, Dan Barker, Dale McGowan, Hemant Mehta, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Jay Rosenstein, Matthew Slick Sam Erickson, Chris Calvey, AHA Officers[5]

References

External links