Advocacy Committee

Sasha Sagan

Member since 2022

Massachusetts

Biography

Sasha Sagan is a writer and speaker. Her essays and interviews on mortality, motherhood, and history, from a secular viewpoint have appeared in The Cut, O the Oprah Magazine, Parents, and beyond. She’s the author of the critically acclaimed book For Small Creatures Such As We, an exploration of celebrations and rituals through a scientific lens. Inverse named Sasha one of their Future 50, “a group of 50 people who will be forces of good in the 2020s”.

Rev. Barry Lynn

Member since 2022

Washington, DC

Biography

Barry W. Lynn is both an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and a member of the Supreme Court bar. He worked on fighting censorship during years with the Washington Office of the ACLU and began advocacy there for a strong separation of church and state. He continued this work for 25 years as Executive Director of Americans United For Separation of Church and State, retiring in 2019. Since retirement, he has been working on a memoir called "Paid To Piss People Off" and is a regular commentator on the "David Feldman Show" on YouTube and John Fuegelsang's Sirius/XM radio broadcast "Tell Me Everything"

Lynn is the author of three previous books and has appeared on virtually every major radio and television show in the United States. He is a graduate of Dickinson College, the Boston University School of Theology and Georgetown University Law Center.

Anjan Chakravartty

Member since 2022

Florida

Biography

Anjan Chakravartty is the Appignani Foundation Chair for the Study of Atheism, Humanism, and Secular Ethics at the University of Miami. He holds a BSc in Biophysics and an MA in Philosophy, as well as an MPhil and PhD in the history and philosophy of science. Anjan is a Guggenheim Fellow, authoring books and articles in the philosophy of science, metaphysics, and epistemology. He taught previously at the Universities of Cambridge and Toronto, where he was Director of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and at Notre Dame, where he was Director of the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values. Between degrees, he worked on various projects in international development, a cause he feels strongly about to this day.

Elizabeth Reiner Platt

Member since 2022

New York

Biography

Elizabeth Platt is the Director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School. Before joining Columbia, she was a Staff Attorney at MFY Legal Services Mental Health Law Project. After graduating from New York University School of Law, she was a Carr Center for Reproductive Justice Fellow at A Better Balance. During law school, Liz worked with the Urban Justice Sex Workers Project, New York Civil Liberties Union, and Brennan Center for Justice. In 2013, she published Gangsters to Greyhounds: The Past, Present and Future of Offender Registration, 37 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 727 (2013).

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Interested in becoming a Board Member or part of the National Leadership Council?

Email us at ssa@secularstudents.org for information regarding upcoming board vacancies.