Scott Atran, Irshad Manji
Religion, Heroism, and Violence
Scott Atran is Adjunct Professor in the Psychology Department at Michigan University, as well as Visiting Professor at the Ford School of Public Policy. He is also Directeur de Recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. His research and teaching interests include: cognitive and linguistic anthropology; ethnobiology; environmental decision making; categorization and reasoning; evolutionary psychology; anthropology of science (history and philosophy of natural history and natural philosophy); Middle East ethnography and political economy; natural history of Lowland Maya; cognitive and commitment theories of religion, terrorism and foreign affairs. Recent Publications include: Folkbiology (1999); In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002); Plants of the Peten Itza’ Maya, Plantas de los Maya Itza’ del Peten (2004); The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature (2008).
The author, journalist and human rights activist Irshad Manji is a refugee from Idi Amin’s Uganda. In 1972 she and her family escaped to Vancouver. In 1990 she graduated from the University of British Columbia. Since then, she has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Puget Sound. Irshad Manji is senior fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy. She has served as Visiting Fellow at Yale University and Journalist-in-Residence at the University of Toronto. As a journalist, Irshad Manji’s columns appear frequently in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Times of London and on Al-Arabiya.net. She also writes a regular feature for Canada’s Globe and Mail. Irshad Manji is Director of the Moral Courage Project at New York University, which aims to develop leaders who will challenge political correctness, intellectual conformity and self-censorship. Irshad Manji’s book The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith (2004), has been published in more than 30 countries.