Category: Uncommon Ground

Humanism: Realising and Resisting Change in Africa

January 25, 2017 | by | 1 Comments
In 1994, a student gave me a book, and one of the lines in the book read, “If you want to change the society, start a movement”. I did not understand the full importance of this statement but the insight struck me and stuck with me, and never left me since then. In 1996, I […] Read more

Kept in the Dark: Immigration detention in the UK

January 19, 2017 | by | 0 Comments
Dev* stood in front of his PowerPoint slideshow in a glass-walled room in the Warwick Oculus building and recalled his first 3 months in the UK for his audience. He had volunteered to hold a discussion on immigration detention for Warwick Amnesty before their trip to Campsfield Detention Centre.  A once-hopeful asylum-seeker emerging from difficult […] Read more

2017: Post-Truth, Post-Intolerance, Post-Understanding

January 8, 2017 | by | 1 Comments
As predicted, 2017 hasn’t started with a wave of tolerance and understanding. Facebook’s Live feature gained unwanted attention in a viral video of apparently drugged-up black youngsters in Chicago tormenting a white teenager with learning difficulties. They shouted “Fuck Donald Trump” and “Fuck White People”. While the Chicago Police and CNN pundits downplayed the racial […] Read more

Why Trump’s Ideas on Science ​Are Illogical and Dangerous

December 24, 2016 | by | 0 Comments
With less than a month until Inauguration day, Donald Trump has already provided us with an insight about what his administration is going to be like: Scary. Specifically, the views of Trump and his government officials on science are utterly concerning: denying climate change, supporting the idea that vaccines are related to autism, denying the […] Read more

Fears and Terror: ​​Europe under Attack

December 22, 2016 | by | 0 Comments
For over five years I have been living in Europe, and I have never at any time been as worried as I am right now for humankind. I have never had any reason to be more apprehensive or more disturbed about the future than I am today, at this very moment. This is because the […] Read more

Interview with Sikivu Hutchinson -Feminist, Humanist, Novelist, Author

December 20, 2016 | by | 0 Comments
Sikivu Hutchinson is an American feminist, atheist and author/novelist. She is the author of ‘White Nights, Black Paradise‘ (2015), ‘Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels‘ (2013), ‘Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars‘ (2011), and ‘Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles‘ (Travel Writing Across the Disciplines) (2003). Moral Combat is the first book on […] Read more

Interview with Caleb W. Lack – The Secular Therapist Project

December 18, 2016 | by | 0 Comments
Caleb W. Lack, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist, an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Central Oklahoma, and the Director of the Secular Therapist Project. Dr. Lack is the author or editor of six books (most recently Critical Thinking, Science, & Pseudoscience: Why We Can’t Trust Our Brains with Jacques Rousseau) and […] Read more

Interview with Marieke Prien – President of the International Humanist and Ethical Youth Organization (IHEYO)

December 17, 2016 | by | 0 Comments
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your familial and personal background? I was born and raised in Hannover, Germany. When I had finished high school, I spent a year in the Philippines for a volunteer service, then moved to Hamburg to study Cultural Anthropology and Educational Sciences. After getting this degree, I moved to Osnabrück and […] Read more