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Paul Kurtz

Paul Kurtz (born February 12, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey) is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, founder and chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), the Council for Secular Humanism, the Center for Inquiry and Prometheus Books, and editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry Magazine, the official organ of the Council for Secular Humanism. He is a former Co-President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). BA, New York University; MA and PhD, Columbia University. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Humanist Laureate and President of the International Academy of Humanism. A former member of the American Humanist Association, he contributed to the writing of Humanist Manifesto II. There is an asteroid named in his honor called (6629) Kurtz.

Kurtz was left-wing in his youth. But his experience in the US Army in WWII taught him the dangers of ideology. He saw the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps after they were liberated, he became disillusioned with Communism when he encountered Russian slave laborers who had been taken to Germany by force and refused to return to the Soviet Union at the end of the war.

Paul Kurtz has published over 650 articles or reviews and authored or edited over 40 books.

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