SSA student activists earn cash

FFRF, with the financial backing of the individual donors, has collaborated with the Secular Student Alliance to select, announce and distribute these student awards. (As per SSA policy to help protect the students’ identities, only the students’ first names are used.)

This year’s Al Luneman Student Activist Award winners are Isaiah, Karina and Vitha, who each received $1,000.

This year’s Cliff Richards Memorial Student Activist Award winners are Kaleb and Leila, who each received $1,000. The Cliff Richards scholarships are specifically for freethinking students going to HBCUs.

This year’s Strong Backbone Award of $1,000 goes to Dustin.

FFRF has a variety of scholarships available to give directly for exceptional student activism, as well. If you know of any student who is actively helping to uphold state/church separation or fighting for the rights of nonbelievers, please use the form at ffrf.us/nominate.

For more information about this year’s scholarships and student recipients, go to: secularstudents.org/scholarships/2026-recipients.

Al Luneman Student Activist Awards

Isaiah

Isaiah is a student activist at Paradise Valley Community College in Arizona with a long-standing passion for political affairs, constitutional law and academic excellence. Isaiah is studying to earn a law degree and become an attorney. Their academic and career focus is centered around the legal and political field, such as constitutional, antitrust, regulatory affairs and criminal justice.

Isaiah has led activism across Arizona as a political canvasser, engaging everyday voters and citizens on economic and political issues, including collecting petition signatures for ballot measures, voter registration and educating the public.

Isaiah’s secular identity has many intersectional elements, assembled upon each other. Isaiah is a member of the LGBTQ community, which radicalized them to continue achieving equality under the law, on a platform of secularism and religious non-affiliation.

Isaiah has fought against Arizona’s ESA voucher program, which has instituted a disastrous burden on public education funding, disintegrating a secular education system that instead chooses to subsidize private school tuition, including private religious schools and multi-millionaire families.

Karina

Karina is a student at Longmont High School in Colorado. Her passion is medicine, research and activism through compassionately understanding people’s belief systems.

Growing up, she never believed in God, but her parents grew up religious: dad was Protestant, mom was Muslim. They became atheists as adults. Throughout her childhood, she learned about religions, sacred texts and how teachings are interpreted into daily life. Through a desire to understand the way people interpret the world, she has become a safe person for her peers to discuss their beliefs, while questioning religious activities in school and proposing alternatives.

Karina’s plans involve a lot of schooling: majors in evolutionary biology and bioengineering, a master’s and Ph.D. in evolutionary biology focusing on epidemiology. Then she plans to attend medical school to become a neurosurgeon.

Vitha

Vitha is a junior at Duke University. She is studying psychology and global health. Her interests include clinical and moral psychology and ethical inquiry, especially questions of atheism, humanism and how people construct meaning, values and resilience outside of imposed belief systems.

Vitha identifies as an ex-Muslim, humanist and atheist and leads Duke’s chapter of the Secular Student Alliance. Her secular identity inspired her activism for ex-religious and non-religious people to have a safe space where they can find like-minded individuals.

As an ex-Muslim, Vitha has seen how barriers to safe spaces can prevent people from speaking up about challenges. She has worked with SSA to build community and support for students who want to talk about religion’s impact on their life and on the world; she wants students to know they are not alone.

Vitha hopes to become a psychologist to conduct research and treatments for people who have left high-control religion and/or deal with depression and trauma.

Cliff Richards Memorial Student Scholarship

Kaleb

Kaleb is a sophomore animal science student at Prairie View A&M University in Texas with a passion for veterinary medicine and animal welfare. His activism focuses on advocating for animals and promoting compassionate, responsible animal care in his community. He would love to be able to give back to those pet owners who have a financial need.

His secular identity is rooted in respecting people with different beliefs and perspectives while valuing critical thinking, openness and freedom of thought. He believes people can have different beliefs while still treating one another with dignity, compassion and respect.

Kaleb began volunteering in middle school and gained hands-on experience in animal care, strengthening his commitment to animal advocacy. He hopes to become a veterinarian and use his career to advocate for animals, educate others about responsible care and serve his community. His secular values will help him approach that work with compassion, respect and an open mind.

Leila

Leila is an activist and high school graduate from Minneapolis with a passion for writing. She dreams of becoming a doctor who can make a meaningful change in her community. She is attending Tennessee State University as a biology major, hoping to follow a pre-med pathway.

She identifies as a humanist. Growing up mostly in her grandparents’ home, she saw firsthand how systemic racism deemed Black and Brown people as useless or undesired. Working in a rehab center, she saw people who were tossed off to the side or outcast for their perceived lack of value. These experiences led her to her humanist identity.

Leila plans to go to medical school to become a physician or medical researcher so she can help give back to her community and become an inspiring story for others in her community to follow and look up to.

Strong Backbone

Dustin

Dustin is a high school student, volunteer and avid activist attending Hightower High School in Houston, Texas. He has a passion for animal care and conservation and is committed to standing up for the justice of all through outreach, protest, and charity.

Dustin believes that his secular identity is foundational to who he is, having been raised on humanist values by ex-Mormon parents. It is as a humanist that he finds the propagation of hatred and bigotry in America to be deeply unacceptable. Striving to be the change he wants in the world, Dustin leads his peers in improving their community, has confronted both his school board and city council on their injustices, hosted charity drives and pollinator plant giveaways, presented his work to Houston secular organizations, and much more.

In the future, Dustin hopes to become a wildlife veterinarian while maintaining his strong presence as an activist in his community, putting action and change into the world, not thoughts and prayers.