Outreach
The Center for Inquiry engages in a robust program of campus and community outreach in order to enlarge the "reality based community." To further this agenda, CFI provides programming, fundraising, financial, promotional, and other kinds of professional support to a growing network of rationalist, skeptic, and humanist groups in cities around the globe, both on and off college campuses.
Virtually all of these groups are outgrowths of local grassroots secular humanist and skeptical movements, most involving the leadership of local subscribers to Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer magazines. These groups draw upon volunteers and Center for Inquiry Friends and supporters who are enthusiastic about CFI's efforts to advance the scientific outlook in our society and who wish to become active in our movement.
Education
The Center for Inquiry Institute offers undergraduate level summer school, seminars, and workshops in critical thinking and the scientific outlook and its implications for religion, human values, and the borderlands of science. In addition to transferable undergraduate credit through the State University of New York (SUNY) system, CFI offers a thirty credit hour Certificate of Proficiency in Critical Inquiry. This three-year curriculum plan offers summer sessions at the main campus at SUNY-Buffalo in Amherst and the Skeptic's Toolbox workshop at the University of Oregon, Eugene.
If the Center is to proceed in contributing to a cultural reformation, then it needs to pay heed to education from the earliest grades. That is why the Center for Inquiry and CSICOP's Inquiring Minds program have sponsored trial programs to teach critical thinking for children, developed classroom curricular material and resources for educators, and are currently working on informal educational initiatives with museums, science centers, and community groups. CSH's Secular Family Network provides additional support and program development for parents and children and publishes a newsletter entitled Family Matters.
Advocacy
The Center for Inquiry is an active agent for social and cultural change in the courts, in the U.S. capital, and at the grassroots level. CFI has also been granted special consultative status as a non-governmental organization, or NGO, under the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
CFI's Office of Public Policy seeks to develop relationships with legislators in D.C. and bring its experts to testify in legislative hearings. We submit white papers, solicited from our network of fellows and scientists, and work with legislators who care about science and reason to effect legislative responses to attacks on secular values. Additionally, CFI's Legal Department actively files amicus briefs in cases involving First Amendment rights, reproductive freedom, assistance in dying and other issues of importance to the Center and its supporters.
Research
The Center has established a Research Institute to coordinate the research of distinguished scholars and social critics from around world, many of whom are appointed CFI research fellows or post-doctoral fellows. These include Professor Richard Wiseman, a parapsychological researcher at University of Hertsfordshire; Ibn Warraq, noted Islamic scholar; Professor Gerd Lüdemann, noted biblical scholar from Göttingen, Germany; Professor Richard Stenger, astrophysicist at the University of Colorado; and others.
Each academic year, the Center for Inquiry announces visiting research fellows and post doctoral fellows on a given program of inquiry selected by the Center (for example, the efficacy of medical prayer, the connection between theology and cosmology, or philosophical implications of neuro-science). Fellows who are appointed may use the SUNY Buffalo facilities, where they can interact with the university community, deliver guest lectures, and attend graduate seminars and colloquia. The results of their research are published and advertised to the public and media by the Center for Inquiry.
