The Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard & MIT

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The Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard, along with the Harvard College Community of Humanists, Atheists, and Agnostics (HCHAA), is delighted to announce that Jordan Klepper is the 2025 Harvard Humanist of the Year.

Klepper is best known for his work as a longtime correspondent and host for legendary comedy show The Daily Show (alongside both Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah), and his multiple Emmy-nominated specials focusing on the political world. Bringing a deeply humanistic vision into an extraordinarily wide range of comedic interactions, Jordan has witnessed an insurrection, capsized a boat with pipeline protestors, interviewed a President, and been arrested and locked up in Fulton County Jail. He also travels the globe with his segment “Fingers The Pulse,” which has racked up hundreds of millions of views.

Throughout such work, including especially impactful on-the-street dialogues with Donald Trump supporters and MAGA enthusiasts at Trump rallies and Republican conventions — and even bringing them to a Democratic convention as observers — Klepper uses comedy to entertain millions while practicing a political style that is deeply needed, even visionary, for this moment in the history of democracy: talking with respect and curiosity to people with whom we disagree.

Klepper will join a list of influential and accomplished past Harvard Humanist honorees including novelist Sir Salman Rushdie; late Star Wars actress and author Carrie Fisher; #1 New York Times-bestselling authors Piper Kerman (Orange is the New Black) and Ijeoma Oluo (So You Want to Talk About Race), film auteur Seth MacFarlane, and many more.

An award ceremony honoring Klepper, In conversation with Greg M. Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard & MIT and New York Times bestselling author of Good Without God, will take place on Saturday November 1st at 7pm at Harvard University. This is a private campus event but a limited number of seats have been set aside for the broader Humanist community.

Sherwin Wine was a brilliant and innovative Jewish and Humanist thinker, a talented and sensitive congregational rabbi, an untiring organizer and activist, and a modern-day Renaissance man who read and learned as much as he could to teach and inspire as much as he could. (sherwinwine.com)

On the chai (18th) anniversary of Sherwin’s death, join us to celebrate his life. In this enriching program, you’ll learn about Sherwin as a founder, intellectual, speaker, rabbi, leader, organizer, and family member. The program will include select videos of Sherwin speaking, his bio (things you never knew!), photos, and remarks by people who were close to Sherwin, including Rabbi Adam Chalom, Dean for North America of the International Institute of Secular Humanistic Judaism; Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT; and Elyse Pivnick, Sherwin’s niece. This program is unique and enlightening, providing a deeper understanding of the man who founded Humanistic Judaism.

In addition to the live ceremony at Fayerweather Street School, the
11 am program will be live streamed.

RSVP for Zoom link

(This is not a HCHM event so please follow the link which the organizers control: your RSVP to this MeetUp announcement on our page does not register you, use the Zoom address to attend virtually)