Professor & writer
Phil Zuckerman is an award-winning writer, speaker, and professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California.
BIOGRAPHY
About
Biography
Phil Zuckerman is an award-winning writer, speaker, and professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California.
Appearances
A public intellectual, he has been featured on the Chelsea Handler Show, Bill O’Reilly, Dennis Prager, Freethought Today, and All Things Considered, among others. He has been an invited speaker at the Oxford Union, Chautauqua Institute, Georgetown University, Brown University, Cal Tech, UC Berkeley, Washington University, the University of Aberdeen, USC, Reed College, the University of Copenhagen, and many other prominent institutions.
Books
Phil is the author of many books, including Society Without God; What It Means to Be Moral; Living the Secular Life; Beyond Doubt; and The Nonreligious. He is the editor of numerous volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of Apostasy and Deconversion; The Oxford Handbook of Secularism; Beyond Religion; and Atheism and Secularity.
Scholarship
His scholarship has appeared in numerous academic and popular forums, including Secularism and Nonreligion, Secular Studies, Sociology of Religion, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Sociology Compass, and Nordic Journal of Religion and Society.
Essays & commentary
His essays, commentary, and Op-Eds have been featured in such outlets as the Los Angeles Times, Salon, The Nation, The Conversation, The Washington Post, Free Inquiry, The Humanist, and Bloomberg.
Secular Studies
In 2011, Phil founded the first Secular Studies department in the nation. Secular Studies is an interdisciplinary program focusing on manifestations of the secular in societies and cultures, past and present. Secular Studies entails the study of non-religious people, groups, thought, and cultural expressions. Emphasis is placed upon the meanings, forms, relevance, and impact of political and constitutional secularism, philosophical skepticism, and personal and public secularity.
Education
Phil grew up in Pacific Palisades, California. He attended Santa Monica College before transferring to the University of Oregon, where he earned a BA in 1992, an MA in 1995, and a PhD in 1998, all in sociology.
Favorite writers
His favorite writers include Tarjei Vesaas, Knut Hamsun, I.B. Singer, Richard Brautigan, Moa Martinson, Tove Ditlevsen, W.E.B. Du Bois, Steve Bruce, Peter Berger, Erich Fromm, Sam Dann, and Kevin Moffett.
Music
His favorite bands and musicians include Love, Nick Drake, The Beatles, Bert Jansch, Donovan, Turid, The Innocence Mission, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, XTC, The Byrds, The Kinks, The Who, Talking Heads, Tom Petty, Elliott Smith, Kurt Vile, Cat Power, Tim Buckley, Simon and Garfunkel, and Nina Simone.
Personal
As for hobbies, he enjoys reading and writing about secularism, riding waves, hiking, and eating apples. He lives in Claremont, California, with his wife, Stacy.