Joe Chuman

Dr. Joe Chuman has been the Leader of the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County for over 41 years, and a part-time Leader of the New York Society for over seven years. He represented the AEU on the Board of the International Humanist and Ethical Union for twenty years and was a founding leader of the AEU Summer School, being a member of the faculty in 1996 and 1998.

Joe has a doctorate and two masters degrees in Religion from Columbia University. He has a certificate in Pastoral Counseling from the Postgraduate Center for Mental health. Joe has taught seminars on Human Rights at Columbia in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences since 2001 and has taught Human Rights at Hunter College, both at the Macaulay Honors College and in its mainline division, since 2003. He has also taught Human Rights at the University for Peace in Costa Rica on five occasions, as well as Human Rights and Philosophy at other colleges.

Joe is a writer, activist and public lecturer on a broad range of fields. He has worked primarily in the areas of human rights, civil liberties, inter-group relations and related public issues. He has written scores of Op-Editorials for the Bergen Record, where he had worked as a freelance columnist. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Humanist, Free Inquiry, Humanistic Judaism, and other journals and newspapers. He has written several articles for Encyclopedias on Religion, Agnosticism, and related topics. Joe has written many chapters for academic texts, and in 2013, he published “Speaking of Ethics”, a compilation of platform addresses given over 30 years.