It’s time for CFI to disavow Richard Dawkins

Professor Richard Dawkins

Some time ago, the Center for Inquiry (CFI), a humanist organization I was taken with and wrote for, merged with the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

Alas, if only Dawkins himself stood for reason and science. Quite the opposite. It is astonishing, the words that manage to negotiate their way around Dawkins’s foot and spew from his mouth.

It began with an incident that was eventually dubbed “Elevatorgate.” After a woman quite reasonably suggested that men could do better than to corner a lone woman in an elevator in the wee hours and invite her to his room for coffee, Dawkins wrote:

Dear Muslima,

Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and... yawn... don’t tell me yet again, I know you aren’t allowed to drive a car, and you can’t leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you’ll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with. Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep”chick”, and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn’t lay a finger on her, but even so... And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.

In the guanostorm of side-taking that followed, what appeared to be lost on many was the irrationality and callousness of Dawkins’s remark. Mind you, the man has an international audience. What he says, profound or stupid, finds its way around the world in record time.

Dawkins would eventually bury something of a not-apology in a later blog post. But in succeeding years, he managed to make things worse. The Atlantic reported that Dawkins actually defended what he called “mild pedophilia”:

Referring to his early days at a boarding school in Salisbury, he recalled how one of the (unnamed) masters “pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts.”
​
He said other children in his school peer group had been molested by the same teacher but concluded: “I don’t think he did any of us lasting harm.”

More recently, Dawkins and CFI CEO Robyn Blumner have been beating anti-trans and anti-woke drums. This is the antithesis of humanism. The American Humanist Association recognized as much in 2021, officially rescinding the Humanist of the Year award that it had bestowed upon Dawkins in 1996. This is from AHA’s official statement:

Regrettably, Richard Dawkins has over the past several years accumulated a history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalized groups, an approach antithetical to humanist values. His latest statement implies that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent, while also simultaneously attacking Black identity as one that can be assumed when convenient. His subsequent attempts at clarification are inadequate and convey neither sensitivity nor sincerity.

Consequently, the AHA Board has concluded that Richard Dawkins is no longer deserving of being honored by the AHA, and has voted to withdraw, effective immediately, the 1996 Humanist of the Year award.

Dawkins’s and Blumner’s response has been to double-down on their anti-trans and anti-woke rhetoric.

To be sure, Dawkins is a renowned biologist who has accomplished much good. His books are for the most part brilliant (though at times rambling). The problems arise when he strays out of his area of expertise.

The Center for Inquiry operates a number of worthy humanist programs. Lest those programs suffer further loss of support, CFI’s Board would do well to find the wherewithal to dismiss Dawkins and Blumner, apologize to the world, and correct its course.