Scopes Trial Centennial Conference
July 18 – 20, 2025 (Friday – Sunday)
The Chattanoogan Hotel, Curio Collection by Hilton
1201 Broad Street
Chattanooga, TN 37402
DAN BARKER
He is co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation with Annie Laurie Gaylor. He left religion and a musical ministry in 1983. His many books include “Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist,” “Godless,” “Free Will Explained” and, most recently, “Contraduction.” He has engaged in more than 100 formal debates about religion. A professional pianist and composer, Dan has written many freethought songs. He is co-host of Freethought Radio and “Freethought Matters” (TV) and producer of “Godless Gospel.”
ROBYN BLUMNER
Robyn E. Blumner is president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry and executive director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science. She is a lawyer who previously held posts as a syndicated columnist and editorial writer at the Tampa Bay Times and as executive director of the ACLU of Florida and ACLU of Utah.
TAHIRA CLAYTON
A world-renowned jazz vocalist and band leader, she lives in New York City. She joined Jazz at Lincoln Center Presents: “Songs We Love,” a national tour, in 2023. In 2024, she became an ambassador of the National Jazz Museum of Harlem. She serves as vice president and is a founding board member of the Women in Jazz Organization and directs its mentorship program. She has presented lectures on “The Dangers of Jazz: Sexism in Society.” She maintains her own studio and is a creative teaching artist, clinician and vocal coach whose debut album is “Wait, Till Now.”
CHRIS CAMERON
History Professor Chris Cameron teaches at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His research interests include African American religious and intellectual history, slavery and abolition, religious liberalism and American secularism. His books include “The Abolitionist Movement: Documents Decoded,” “Early American History: Society, Politics and Culture,” “Black Freethinkers: A History of African American Secularism,” and is co-editor of “To Plead Our Own Cause: African Americans in Massachusetts and the Making of the Antislavery Movement,” “New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition” and “Race, Religion, and Black Lives Matter.”
ANNIE LAURIE GAYLOR
A co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation with her mother Anne Nicol Gaylor, she has been a plaintiff in or overseen many state/church lawsuits. Her current books include “Women Without Superstition.” She first joined FFRF’s staff in 1985 as editor of its newspaper and became co-president with Dan Barker in 2004. She co-hosts Freethought Radio and FFRF’s TV show, “Freethought Matters.”
JUDGE JOHN JONES
John E. Jones III, who is now president of Dickinson College, retired as chief judge of the U.S. Middle District Court of Pennsylvania. He was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush and unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 2002. Jones presided over the landmark case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, which held it unconstitutional to teach intelligent design within a public school science curriculum. He also struck down as unconstitutional Pennsylvania’s ban on same-sex marriage. In 2006, Time magazine named him as one of its Time 100 most influential people in the world. He was the recipient of the first John Marshall Judicial Independence Award given by the Pennsylvania Bar Association.
RICHARD KATSKEE
He is an assistant clinical professor of law and director of Duke’s Appellate Litigation Clinic. Previously, Richard was legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a longtime member of the Supreme Court & Appellate practice at Mayer Brown in Washington, D.C., and deputy director of the Program Legal Group in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. He has taught First Amendment law at the American University Washington College of Law and professional and political ethics at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and Harvard College. He was the Eugene P. Beard Graduate Fellow in Ethics at Harvard’s Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics. He clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
ED LARSON
He holds the Darling Chair in Law and is University Professor of History at Pepperdine University. Recipient of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in history for his book, “Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion,” Larson served as associate counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives and taught for 20 years at the University of Georgia, where he chaired the history department. The author of 15 books and over 80 published articles, his books include “Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory,” and bestsellers on Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. Larson recently published “American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765-1795.” His articles have appeared in journals as varied as Nature, Time, Atlantic, American History, Scientific American, The Nation, Wall Street Journal, and 20 law reviews. He’s co-author of seven additional books, including “The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow” and “The Constitutional Convention: A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison.” Larson has served as a visiting professor at Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, University of Melbourne and others.
JOHN de LANCIE
After four years at Kent State University, John was awarded a scholarship to Juilliard and then worked at the American Shakespeare Company. In 1977, he won a two-year contract with Universal Studios, appeasring in over 40 TV shows and movies, followed by a one-year stint at the Seattle Repertory Company. He played Eugene on “Days of Our Lives” for three years, garnering two People’s Choice awards. Then came “Star Trek” and the infamous “Q,” who became a breakout character. Many TV and film roles later, John extended his career into classical music. His narrations with major symphony orchestras led to his writing and hosting the LA Philharmonic’s children’s concerts and writing a series of symphonic plays called “First Nights.” He has directed operas and galas for events and created a company with Leonard Nimoy called “Alien Voices,” where he co-wrote and produced adaptations of classic science fiction for Simon and Schuster and the Sci-Fi Channel. John’’s interest in science education and evolution began when he toured the country with a show about the Scopes Monkey Trial. The tour opened his eyes to the extent of religious organizations’ attacks on science and evolution, so John co-wrote with Kristen Treager the show, “The Dover Intelligent Design Trial,” which is being performed at the conference.
LEIGHANN LORD
Leighann Lord (veryfunnylady.com) is a seasoned, New York City-based stand-up comedian, who has been seen on Comedy Central, HBO, “The View” and in the Netflix “Def Comedy Jam” 25th anniversary special. She’s performed for the troops in the Middle East, in all 50 states, 20 countries, six continents and Guam. Leighann was named one of the 35 Most Hilarious Comedians of Diversity, was a national finalist in the American Black Film Festival–HBO Comedy Wings Competition and received the NYC Comedy Award for the Most Thought-Provoking Black Female Comic. Leighann can be seen in Showtime’s “Even More Funny Women of a Certain Age.” Her Dry Bar Comedy special, “I Mean Business,” has had over 1 million views. She has a B.A. in journalism and creative writing from Baruch College, City University of New York, an honorary Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies from Southampton University and is a member of the Writers Guild of America, East. Her books include “Dict Jokes” and “Real Women Do It Standing Up.”
KATHERINE STEWART
Katherine Stewart’s latest book, “Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy” (Bloomsbury, February 2025), has been praised by Rep. Jamie Raskin as “an indispensable citizen’s guide to the anti-democratic MAGA Right in America.” Her previous book, “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,” was voted first place for Excellence in Nonfiction Books by the Religion News Association and forms the basis of the documentary feature film “God and Country,” produced by Rob Reiner. She writes for The New York Times, New Republic and others.
BERTHA VASQUEZ
She taught middle school science for 34 years in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. She launched the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science (TIES) in 2015, a program of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science. TIES has presented over 340 professional development opportunities for science teachers in all 50 U.S. states. She was awarded the National Association of Biology Teachers’ 2017 Evolution Educator Award and the 2023 National Center for Science Education’s Friend of Darwin Award. Bertha is now the education director at The Center for Inquiry running three education programs: TIES, ScienceSaves and Generation Skeptics. In addition to various published articles in magazines and academic journals, she is a contributing author for two books, “On Teaching Evolution” (2022) and “What Teachers Want To Know About Teaching Climate Change” (Corwin Press, release date March 2025). A regular speaker at skeptical and humanist conferences, Bertha is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
BRENDA WINEAPPLE
She is the author, most recently, of “Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy and the Trial that Riveted a Nation” —- “history at its most delicious,” according to The New York Times Book Review. Her other books include “The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson” and “The Dream of a Just Nation,” a landmark study, as well as “Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877,” both named best books of the year by The New York Times. “White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson” was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Marfield Prize for Arts Writing, and “Hawthorne: A Life,” won the Ambassador Award for best biography. A recipient of a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, two National Endowment Fellowships in the Humanities, and a National Endowment Public Scholars Award, she recently was named a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She regularly contributes to major publications such as The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books and The Atlantic, and she teaches in the MFA program at Columbia University.
