Ethics, Experience, and Epiphany: A Journey From Understanding to Action on Inequities

Jon Kerner, Ph.D.

Translating knowledge of ethical humanism into action came primarily from my six-week experience at the Encampment for Citizenship in 1965 in Berkeley, California. Above and beyond the educational programming, my transformation from an intellectual interest in societal inequality to social action stemmed from our community life. Living and learning with youth from different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, and different cities and countries, whose views were so very different from my own, provided me with both the confidence and the motivation to turn my education and my career towards redressing what Martin Luther King dubbed “the most shocking and inhumane” inequality of all.

Born in New York City in 1950, and registered as a Canadian-born on foreign soil by my mother, Jean Somerville Kotkin, I was immersed in ethical humanism from an early age – through nursery school to 12th grade, in the Ethical Culture schools, the NY Society for Ethical Culture Sunday School, and as a participant and later a group leader in the National Ethical Youth Organization. In 1965 I was a participant in the Encampment for Citizenship (EFC) in Berkeley, California, and later I was a member and chair of the EFC Board; now I am a member of the Alumni Association.

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