The British Humanist Association (BHA) has today announced that journalist, author, and commentator Nick Cohen will deliver the Voltaire Lecture 2017, on 8 May in London.
Cohen is a radical and sometimes controversial writer who has argued that the positions taken by the liberal left result in those who have been silenced by repressive and illiberal forces being blamed for their own oppression. He is the author of What’s Left? (2007), You Can’t Read This Book (2012), and Waiting for the Etonians: Reports from the Sickbed of Liberal England (2009).
Cohen’s lecture is the latest in a proud tradition of Voltaire Lectures held in London each year for decades, having been delivered in the past by historian Bettany Hughes, BHA Vice President Jim Al-Khalili, cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, and former Labour Party leader Michael Foot. Bonya Ahmed’s emotional 2015 Voltaire Lecture on ‘Fighting machetes with pens’, concerning the Islamist terror faced by freethinkers in Bangladesh, won two standing ovations and worldwide media coverage.
Tickets for the Voltaire Lecture 2017 cost £12.50 for the general public, and £10 for students and BHA members. You can get yours now at humanists.uk/voltaire2017
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The British Humanist Association (BHA) is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people who seek to live ethical and fulfilling lives on the basis of reason and humanity.