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List of atheist activists and educators

There have been many atheists who have been active in advocacy or education. This is a list of atheist activists and educators. Living persons in this list are people whose atheism is relevant to their notable activities or public life, and who have publicly identified themselves as atheists.

Atheist activists and educators

Other activists and educators

People who are/were activists or educators in other areas (social reform, feminism etc), but who were also atheists.

  • Pietro Acciarito (1871–1943): Italian anarchist activist who attempted to assassinate King Umberto I.
  • Zackie Achmat (born 1962): South African anti-HIV/AIDS activist; founder of the Treatment Action Campaign.
  • Baba Amte (1914–2008): respected Indian social activist, known for his work with lepers.
  • Julian Assange (born 1971): Australian publisher, journalist, media and internet entrepreneur, media critic, writer, computer programmer and political/internet activist.
  • Alexander Berkman (1870–1936): anarchist known for his political activism and writing. He was a leading member of the anarchist movement in the early 20th century. While living in France, Berkman continued his work in support of the anarchist movement, producing the classic exposition of anarchist principles, Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism.
  • Walter Block (born 1941): Austrian School economist and classical liberal
  • Richard Dawkins (born 1941): British biologist, author of The God Delusion, The Greatest Show on Earth, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, A Devil's Chaplain, The Ancestor's Tale, The Blind Watchmaker, The Extended Phenotype, River Out of Eden, and The Selfish Gene. Founder of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, a non–profit charitable organization that promotes critical thinking, science-based education, and evidence–based understanding of the world. Richard Dawkins has produced several documentaries, including Root of all Evil? and Enemies of Reason.
  • Robert Ettinger (1918–2011): American academic, known as "the father of cryonics" because of the impact of his 1962 book The Prospect of Immortality.
  • David D. Friedman (born 1945): Economist, law professor, novelist, and libertarian activist.
  • Abbie Hoffman (1936–1989): American political and social activist.
  • Ze'ev Jabotinsky (1880–1940): Revisionist Zionist (nationalist) leader, author, orator, activist, soldier, and founder of the Jewish Self-Defense Organization in Odessa.
  • Franklin E. Kameny (1925–2011): American gay rights activist and former astronomer.
  • Adam Kokesh (born 1982): American libertarian anti-war activist and self-professed anarcho-capitalist.
  • Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921): Russian anarchist communist activist and geographer, best known for his book, ', which refutes social Darwinism.
  • Gustav Landauer (1870–1919): German anarchist and activist. He was one of the leading theorists on anarchism in Germany in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. He was an advocate of social anarchism and an avowed pacifist.
  • Taslima Nasrin (born 1962): Bangladeshi physician, writer, feminist human rights activist and secular humanist.
  • Ingrid Newkirk (born 1949): British-born animal rights activist, author, and president and co-founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the world's largest animal rights organization.
  • Deng Pufang (born 1944): Chinese handicap people's rights activist, first son of China's former Paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.
  • Ron Reagan (born 1958): American magazine journalist, board member of the politically activistic Creative Coalition, son of former U. S. President Ronald Reagan.
  • Henry Stephens Salt (1851–1939): English writer and campaigner for social reform in the fields of prisons, schools, economic institutions and the treatment of animals, a noted anti-vivisectionist and pacifist, and a literary critic, biographer, classical scholar and naturalist, and the man who introduced Mahatma Gandhi to the influential works of Henry David Thoreau.
  • Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989): Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. He gained renown as the designer of the Soviet Union's Third Idea, a codename for Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. The Sakharov Prize, which is awarded annually by the European Parliament for people and organizations dedicated to human rights and freedoms, is named in his honor.
  • Margaret Sanger (1879–1966): American birth-control activist, founder of the American Birth Control League, a forerunner to Planned Parenthood. The masthead motto of her newsletter, The Woman Rebel, read: "No Gods, No Masters".
  • Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948): Hungarian-born pacifist, feminist and female suffragist.
  • Bhagat Singh (1907–1931): Indian revolutionary freedom fighter.
  • Marie Souvestre (1830–1905): French headmistress, a feminist educator who sought to develop independent minds in young women.
  • David Suzuki (born 1936): Canadian academic, science broadcaster and environmental activist.
  • Aaron Swartz (1986–2012): American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist. Swartz was involved in the development of the web feed format RSS, the organization Creative Commons, the website framework web.py and the social news site Reddit, in which he was an equal partner after its merger with his Infogami company.
  • Periyar (1879–1973): social activist and politician.

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