Professor Sir Bernard Crick

Eminent political philosopher and Vice-President of the British Humanist Association, born 1929

Sir Bernard Crick is Emeritus Professor of Birkbeck College , University of London . He began his teaching career as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard and taught at McGill a year before returning to teach at the LSE from 1956 to 1967. He was first Professor of Politics at Sheffield from 1967 to 1973, and then at Birkbeck. Among his many publications are: The American Science of Politics , The Reform of Parliament , In Defence of Politics ; Orwell: a Life ; Essays on Politics; "Literature, Political Thoughts and Polemics (with David Miller); Essays on Citizenship (in which he wrote: “ The crucial test of ethical values is whether they apply to strangers, and those afar, not just in our midst.”); and Democracy: a very short introduction .

For many years he was editor of "The Political Quarterly", and he was joint founder of the Study of Parliament Group, first president of the Politics Association (for teachers) in the 1970s and recently of the Association for Citizenship Teaching. He is also vice-President of the Political Studies Association and holder of four honorary degrees. In 1997 he became chairman of the advisory group whose report "The Teaching of Citizenship and Democracy in Schools" led to the introduction of Citizenship in the English National Curriculum. He has also advised the Home Office on education for naturalisation and active citizenship.

Sir Bernard is recognised by the International Academy of Humanism (IAH) as a Humanist Laureate and is also an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Association. He has been a very active and supportive distinguished supporter. He spoke at the 2003 Humanist Philosophers’ Group conference, "Faith, community and the common good", on "Citizenship is Secular” (click here for an account of the conference), and at the 2005 BHA conference , where he urged humanists to seek friends and allies, not enemies: “ We must cooperate on the practical politics of the common good,” he said. “In our country we are inherently pluralistic, unlike the heresy of French secularism, our church was made by compromises with each other long ago, and now the majority of our population are in all practical terms non-believers. We must assert the secularity of politics and citizenship but in doing this we should not assume that all believers would differ from us.” He was one of the signatories to a letter supporting a holiday on Charles’ Darwin’s birthday , published in The Times on February 12, 2003, and also sent to the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary.

See also
A Wikipedia biography
A collection of his articles at http://www.findarticles.com/p/search?tb=art&qt=%22Bernard+Crick%22
An overview of his career with links to some of his Royal Society of Arts lectures and debates on immigration and integration at http://www.rsa.org.uk/read/speakerCloseUp.asp?speakerID=911
A debate with Kenan Malik on 'What should integration mean in Britain today?' ( JCWI Bulletin , Winter 2004/ 2005) at http://www.kenanmalik.com/debates/crick_jcwi.html
Comment on his political philosophy at http://openpolitics.ca/Bernard+Crick
An article in New Humanist “Love thine enemy”( January 11th, 2006) at http://www.newhumanist.org.uk/volume121issue1_more.php?id=1859_0_40_0_M
An article in New Humanist   “A public presence” (June 1 st 1999) at http://www.newhumanist.org.uk/volume114issue2_more.php?id=101_0_19_0_M
” This age of fanaticism is no time for non-believers to make enemies - Humanists need to be less fussy about working with the religious who share our commitment to social justice” in The Guardian (Saturday October 22, 2005)