Misrepresenting the Abolitionist Approach, Part II: On Hugs and Merit Badges

On Calling Not Changing the Subject "Changing the Subject"

In his post offering up the reasons he had changed his mind about participating in a podcast discussion with Gary Francione, James McWilliams had stated that "it [would] accomplish nothing except intensify the polarization that [McWilliams was] trying to minimize". Rather than take the opportunity to substantiate claims made during his recent public criticism of abolitionist advocates, he'd written that his intention was to instead continue developing his own arguments on his blog. The message received, based on his followers' reactions in the comments (reactions to which he did not respond and which he did not correct) was that debating the differences between abolitionist animal rights and welfarism is a waste of time and that he was no longer going to waste his own time doing it. I figured he'd meant that. So I was disappointed to amble over to his site the other day to find that he'd chosen to re-post an article by Melanie Joy in which she dredges up the welfare-abolition debate and takes a few passive-aggressive swipes at abolitionists.


A Reluctant Finger-Wagger

Joy starts off echoing McWilliams' message about how debating the fundamental differences between welfarism and abolitionist animal rights is a waste of time that she's always avoided, but that the apparently horribly traumatic and negative effects of those differences' having recently been aired forced her make an exception and to give up some of her time to weigh in. She starts off assuring us that there's nothing left to be said in the welfare vs. abolition debate -- she says it's "gridlocked". She implies that focusing on it at all is a soul-sucking time-sink. So? She offers up a fix -- a "reframe", she calls it, to make all of our lives "more peaceful" and our activism "more effective".

Critical Discourse and Debate Are "Non-Vegan"?

Joy suggests that we step away from what she calls the "content" of the issue (i.e. the facts and ethical arguments) and focus instead on "the way we communicate" -- the "process". She sets up a false dichotomy, suggesting that advocates can do one of two things. We can be "argumentative" so that

[o]ur consciousness and process can mirror the speciesist [...] culture we are working to transform, thus reinforcing, for instance, ideological rigidity, black-and-white thinking, defensiveness, bullying, self-righteousness, and hostility.

Otherwise, we can be "cooperative" and let our, um, consciousness

reflect the core principles of veganism – principles such as compassion, reciprocity, justice, and humility – the essence of a “liberatory” consciousness (and process), a way of being (and relating) that is fundamentally liberating and that I believe can significantly empower the important strategic conversations we need to continue to engage in.

She goes on to use the term "non-liberatory" to describe the former, which is also what she writes she's observed is brought to the table when differences in goals, strategy and tactics are discussed.

Conflating Diversity Within One with the Differences Between Two

Joy brings up that old familiar notion of the strengthening effect of diversity and extrapolates from it that we should somehow recognize that there is similar strength in our "differences" as advocates. She suggests that we should see the fundamental differences between what I've already mentioned in my previous post have realistically become two altogether different animal advocacy movements -- one welfarist focusing on how other animals are used and the other abolitionist and focusing on whether other animals are ours to use at all -- and that we should see liken these differences to mere diversity within one movement and as "opportunities" to strengthen what Joy calls "our movement". The thing is that likening diversity to those differences goes beyond comparing apples to oranges and makes as much sense as comparing a bowl of nooch gravy to a piece of granite. To insist otherwise merely undermines the seriousness of those differences.

Things get a whole lot more skewed in the article as Joy continues to weave into her text as a given that we're all apparently focused on the same goal -- i.e. that we're one movement with our collective eye on the same prize. She mentions "differences in terms of how effective various strategies are for ending animal exploitation" and that although some of those strategies may be "counterproductive" that "we" (i.e. members of an apparently comprehensive movement bent on ending animal use) need to discuss our different strategies "openly" and without "argu[ing] with each other"... but what exactly does she mean by "arguing"?

Debating = Evil

Surely, you would think that she's dismissing "arguing" in its common sense, when emotions are heated, tables are flipped and fists are shaken in the air? But no, according to Joy, merely having a rational critical discussion where you're expected to defend claims you make is tantamount to falling into this supposed non-vegan and "non-liberatory" mindset. Joy, in effect, decides to attack the entire idea and usefulness of debating, in and of itself. This form of critical engagement -- this rational exchange of information and arguments to clarify and substantiate claims and positions -- is purportedly rigid and extremist, according to Joy. It's just a contest and is all about winning. In fact, not only is it all about winning, but it's about labeling the person with whom you're engaging in critical dialogue a "loser". It apparently leaves the observer or listener to said debate limited to accepting one of two positions (obviously not the so-called loser's) and leaves the observer or listener completely in the dark about possible nuances to whatever topic is being debated. Presumably, this is because Joy thinks that people are incapable of listening and then reflecting upon and processing what they hear?

She contrasts debate with "dialogue" as if they're two completely altogether different things. Dialogue alone, it seems, allows for the sharing and exchange of information. Dialogue alone fosters an awareness of "multiple perspectives". Dialogue alone leads us to contemplations and thoughtfulness upon hearing different perspectives. Debate? It just leaves us pumping the air all "non-liberatory"-like, itching to see a victor and a vanquished. She writes: 

Achieving our objective of animal liberation depends on developing a comprehensive, complex, sophisticated, and flexible strategic approach to targeting a comprehensive, complex, sophisticated, and ever-changing form of institutionalized oppression. It is unlikely that the reductive, black-and-white rhetoric of debate can ever produce such nuance and analytical richness.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I smell straw. It's possible that she comes by it honestly and that Joy's own experience with debates has left her unnerved -- that a bad experience has left her with a limited and one-sided idea of their purpose or process. There's a certain irony in that something that's such an ordinary part of what I should hope most thinkers or academics view as critical dialogue ends up made a straw man by Joy and that her contrast between this straw man and her notion of "dialogue" is in and of itself as narrow and "black and white" as the outcome she purports results from engaging in debate. Debate, she claims, is "problematic" and is in fact "an obstacle". It's "non-liberatory" and thus (gasp!) non-vegan.

I'm a Pepper, He's a Pepper
She's a Pepper, We're a Pepper

Having established that debates are a Big Bad, Joy branches off from this to get to what I think is the true purpose of her essay, which is explain why it's just plain silly that some who call themselves abolitionists would want to engage in debate with others they call welfarists. According to Joy, advocates are just plain old confused. They've mistaken strategy for ideology (with the latter presented as "morally loaded", as if it's somehow horrible to attribute rightness or wrongness to something and to take a stance accordingly). Her concern, it seems, is that self-described abolitionists who busy themselves educating others about not using animals and who see other advocates focusing on how animals are used (and not engaging in vegan education) are making a big mistake in assessing those actions as reflecting the other advocates' ideology. According to Joy, those differences are just strategic and we're apparently all, in fact, seeking the abolition of animal use. She writes that it's only "when we untangle ideology from strategy [that] we can redirect the conversation to how best to bring about this end without getting sidetracked by moral argumentation. (Because who on earth would want to lose their way advocating for the rights of others by getting distracted actually discussing silly things like "rights" or other "morally loaded" junk?) 

I won't go into detail about how Joy rambles on about how there is absolutely no evidence that promoting welfare reform will or won't bring about the abolition of animal use, except to suggest to she should put down her Cooney and pick up a copy of Gary L. Francione's Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement or (better yet) The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation? and that she perhaps consider taking a quick look at some of the (dare I say it?) nuanced writings on his website about why one should opt to focus on educating others to go vegan rather than waste time on attempts at welfare reform (attempts which often end up reinforcing the idea to non-vegans that other animals are indeed ours to use). Joy writes that "our investment in being right can prevent us from being effective" which misses the point altogether that for abolitionists, our investment is not in being "right", but in convincing others to go vegan. For me, hearing that someone's connected the dots and has rejected animal use is what's effective. Joy's investment in thinking that I'm participating in a contest or sporting event is preventing her from seeing that I'm fighting a holocaust.

To Joy, though, we're all on the same side, albeit some of us are trying to play soccer and to force other advocates into forming an opposing team so that we can just whup their arses for the sake of whupping arses. Debating, according to Joy, is just the "othering" of fellow advocates for the sake of arse-whupping. In fact, she points out, the whole "welfare-abolition debate" is a perfect example of this. It's a "myth", she tells us. It's just a construct slapped together by those who call themselves abolitionists. Why? Supposedly to force into a make-believe opposing camp other vegans who don't self-identify as having any sort of specific political or ethical stance when it comes to the question of the morality of animal use per se. If their actions reflect a political or ethical stance (e.g. through participating in or promoting regulationist campaigns)? Joy says that using a descriptor to identify them is antagonistic and irrelevant if they, themselves, don't self-identify with that same descriptor. (An aside: I wonder if Joy would take this one step further, then, and assert that if someone doesn't self-identify as, say, a sexist, that this person cannot rightfully be called a sexist?) Plus, throwing that descriptor out there is tantamount to actively foiling the hard work that other advocate is doing, whatever that "work" may be.

Identification with a position has largely been the province of a small group of vegans who have constructed an identity around their strategic-ideological approach and who have constructed labels for both themselves and the other “side.” In our soccer analogy, it’s as if there is only one team trying to win the game; the rest of the individuals don’t even think of themselves as a team and are simply moving across the field, only kicking the ball when it gets in their way.

Even when she admits for a second that maybe there is indeed something to abolitionists contrasting themselves with advocates whose focus is not on use, but on treatment, Joy insists that the difference between welfarists and abolitionists is still somehow make-believe -- a "myth":

To be fair, just because only a minority of vegans have a “team” identity, this does not mean that the majority play no role in constructing the debate. It is entirely possible that the small, vocal minority have developed a cohesive group identity because they have felt that their valid and pressing concerns have not been taken seriously by the broader vegan culture. Both “sides” must work to defuse the Myth of the Great Debate.

So in the end, there is no such thing as a welfarist or an abolitionist according to Melanie Joy -- all vegans are ultimately abolitionists (Joy's obviously never heard of Wayne Pacelle, Paul Shapiro or of Erik Marcus). Oh, and for heaven's sake -- don't try to debate her on this, because you'll just be kicking a soccer ball in her path and blocking the effective advocacy in which she is currently engaged by trying to blur distinctions between two altogether different movements. Joy's intention seems to be to shame and to silence the one movement that is unequivocal about its focus on animal rights while fighting to end animal exploitation. She seems to want to co-opt the descriptor "abolitionist" as it is understood now in animal advocacy circles, and to stretch it out to include anyone and everyone who wants to self-identify with it, regardless of their ethical stances or of their actions and complicity in the reinforcement of speciesist attitudes. I'm guessing that explaining to her that terms come with context and with definitions would just lead to an accusation that I was being confrontational and "non-liberatory".

Descriptors Aren't Merit Badges

Isn't it funny? This whole business of calling those who are actually abolitionists and who reject animal use things like "extremist", "divisive", "bullies", et al. while wanting to co-opt the term for people who aren't actually abolitionist but who still involve themselves in perpetuating animal use by focusing on treatment, it's really no different than animal-using vegetarians calling vegans extremist, divisive, bullies, et al. and then vegetarians wanting to co-opt the term "vegan" to self-identify as some "degree" of vegan as they continue to deliberately engage in avoidable animal use. Vegans get scolded and shamed into accepting vegetarianism (i.e. animal use) as somehow being no more than a wee moral sidestep (lest they be deemed holier-than-thou, judgmental, the vegan police, elitist, et al.). Now abolitionists are being scolded and shamed into embracing welfarism and into allowing those who focus on animal treatment to co-opt the term "abolitionist" for themselves -- regardless of their political or ethical stances or of the nature of their hands-on advocacy. If you try to point out that they're different, according to Joy, you're obviously a bitter trouble-makers who's gobbling up the time of those who could otherwise be doing their tabling or starting Care2 petitions to stop Safeway from selling brown ducks on Tuesday mornings. I mean, how dare you?

Welfarists and abolitionists aren't just grumpy siblings sniping at each other in the back seat of a car while on summer vacation. There is no rift in one unified movement; we are two separate movements. Our differences goes far beyond being mere "diversity", but it seems that hammering that out by engaging in critical debates that would make this evident is "non-liberatory" and not in keeping with vegan principles. Joy claims that we need to be truth-seekers, but seems to want us to do so blindfolded. And if in their own truth-seeking, advocates around us do more harm than good to other animals, we should nonetheless "value" them for their truth-seeking-ness; instead of tapping them on the shoulder and suggesting that they're doing it wrong, we should give up on our own fixation on doing it "right".

According to Joy, judging another's actions is always "shaming" and shaming is non-liberatory (and thus goes against vegan principles). According to Joy, judging always involves bullying. (Critical thinking means less time for hugs?) Joy's investment in keeping us from stepping on each other's toes is preventing her from acknowledging that for each misstep one of my fellow advocates takes, there may be additional lives lost. It's not about us; it's about them. If I point out to you that spending all of your time trying to get non-vegans to sign a petition to convince a fast-food burger chain to only use eggs from chickens who have an extra three inches of room in the cages in which they spend their entire miserable short lives, I'm not doing it to hurt your feelings: I'm doing it because I'm thinking about those chickens and that the chickens in those cages would rather not be in those cages at all. It's not about us; it's about them.

What Now?


She's right that we have "much work to do". Some animal advocates educate the general public about veganism; other advocates choose to educate the public about not not buying shoes made of kangaroo leather from one specific company while not addressing that no leather from any animal should be purchased and that all animal exploitation is problematic. As an abolitionist and an ethical vegan who truly wants to see an end to speciesism and to the horrific cycle into which billions of other sentient beings are enslaved and slaughtered every single year, part of my work involves sometimes tapping the kangaroo shoe petitioner on the shoulder and suggesting that more could and should be done. If someone like Joy wants to insist that that my doing so somehow goes against vegan principles -- that it's "divisive", so be it. At the end of the day I'd still offer Joy a big ol' hug. Then I'd ask her to substantiate her claims and to give me an opportunity to refute them, because this is where real learning and understanding come from -- not from smiling and nodding and turning a blind eye to others' fumbling around us.

Hacking at Branches: On Petitioning Whole Foods

James McWilliams recently posted a petition on Change.org to persuade the Whole Foods supermarket chain to stop selling meat. More specifically, the petition is (was?) to convince the chain to shut down its meat counters. In his petition, McWilliams does offer up some sort of quasi-broader contextualization for its focus:

Forget (for the moment) dairy and eggs and all the animal-based products dependent on systematic suffering that you believe are integral to a robust stock price. We can deal with these items later.

This contextualization does little to change the fact that for a non-vegan supermarket chain that prides itself on its offering its customers so-called "happy" animal consumption options, singling out animal flesh as significant would just send a confusing message. Whole Foods' "articulated values" (as appealed to by McWilliams) are all about providing its customers with these purportedly "kinder" options. It's not -- and never really has been -- about offering consumers an alternative to using other sentient beings. Instead, Whole Foods profits off of its lulling consumers into thinking that there is such a thing as ethical animal exploitation: This is part of its raison d'être.

Nonetheless, McWilliams suggest the elimination of its meat sales to Whole Foods as a first step it should take. He cushions it by temporarily excusing the sales of other animal products until "later" and then throws this weird bit of flattery in:

As a loyal patron, vegan advocate, and historian of agriculture, I’m asking you to do what you have done so well since the 1980s: lead.

That left me earnestly baffled. I'll 'fess up and admit that I've been reading many of McWilliams' blog posts off and on over the past several months whenever I've had time to sit back and catch up on advocacy-related reading. At one point months ago, I would actually get excited reading some of his posts since they seemed to reflect the thoughts of someone who "got it" and who was bent on forwarding an unequivocal message that other animals deserve nothing short of our going vegan. How on earth would he come to see a company such as Whole Foods as "leading"?

The thing is, though, that even if McWilliams' petition had called on Whole Foods to stop selling all of the animal products it stocks on its shelves, whether meat, dairy, eggs, honey and the other ingredients that manifest themselves in the processed foods and non-edibles it carries, the petition would have been -- however possibly well-intentioned -- really wrongheaded and pointless. As Whole Foods' co-founder and co-CEO James Mackey pointed out in his official response to McWilliams:

Whole Foods Market has no plans to stop selling meat and poultry…or seafood, eggs and dairy items for that matter.

[...]

Our first stakeholder is our customer and the most of them purchase and eat meat.

[...]

At the most, about 10 percent of our customers are strict vegetarians and probably around three percent are strict vegans. To not offer a full array of food options is basically suggesting that we voluntarily commit business suicide.

None of this should come as any surprise, yet many animal advocates have reacted to Mackey's response with outrage. You would think that he had suddenly revealed something quite shocking that should leave him worthy of being deemed evil incarnate. The bottom line, however, is that Mackey is a businessman and that perpetuating the myth that some animal use can be more ethical than other types of animal use has been and is essential to Whole Foods' operations. Asking them to cut out selling a particular animal product when Whole Foods has been insisting to its customers that all of the products it sells come from animals who've been raised "happy" goes completely against how Whole Foods justifies including itself in the cycle of animal exploitation.

Focusing on the middle-man really makes no sense where animal advocacy is concerned. If Whole Foods stopped selling meat, its customers would just go elsewhere to purchase it. Why wouldn't they? Mackey knows this and it baffles me that McWilliams wouldn't see this, as well. Mackey was right in saying that McWilliams was ultimately asking Whole Foods to engage in "business suicide".

More so than this Whole Foods affair (which is just perplexing), McWilliams' recent promotion of Melanie Joy has left me a little saddened. Joy's work emphasizes the ethics and psychology of meat eating, highlighting so-called "carnism" as she calls it instead of acknowledging the actual issue of speciesism as a whole. She chooses to publicly pooh-pooh the delivering of a vegan message as being too extreme, insisting that talking about veganism is somehow counter-productive when trying to get people to take other animals seriously. McWilliams' endorsement of her work was a sad surprise. I had come to really enjoy his writing style and his writings themselves had seemed to indicate that he did indeed understand that teaching people to not use others animals was the first step in making a difference for those other animals.

In his more recent article for Slate ("Vegan Feud"), McWilliams actually takes issue quite explicitly with the those who present veganism as a moral baseline for animal rights advocacy. McWilliams touts it as extremist. Instead, he champions HSUS, whose bread and butter (yep) is also wrapped around lulling consumers into thinking that there is indeed such a thing as a kinder, gentler and more ethical way to treat other animals as things. In his piece for Slate, McWilliams champions HSUS and then specifically singles out abolitionists and the work of Prof. Gary Francione as too, too demanding with their focus on teaching the public to take the rights and interests of other animals seriously by choosing not to participate in the use and exploitation of these other animals.

I won't weigh in on the Slate article at this time, since Francione has already done so and even extended an invitation to McWilliams to discuss all of this in a podcast via his Abolitionist Approach website. McWilliams has agreed to participate in the podcast and it should be falling into place sometime in October. I really do hope that the discussion they have brings McWilliams around to realizing that singling out those who provide consumers with what they want or asking them to stop providing in no way convinces those same consumers that they should stop viewing other sentient beings as things. The only way to fight speciesism is to get those who provide the demand that perpetuates the cycle of animal exploitation to understand that animals aren't ours to use. Limiting their options in terms of where they can obtain animal products certainly won't accomplish that.

Francione gets that. I get that. A lot of you get that and even Whole Foods' Mackey gets that. Hopefully, come October, James McWilliams will get it, too.

Copy of the "Letter to the New York Times: The Ethics of the Ethicist"

Writer and historian James McWilliams posted this letter on his Eating Plants blog yesterday, written--and signed--in response to a horribly wrongheaded and tacky contest recently initiated by the New York Times' "Ethicist" columnist Ariel Kaminer.

It was announced yesterday that Kaminer will be leaving her post as Ethicist columnist and returning to the New York Times' metro desk. Her final column will run this weekend and a replacement will soon be found. According to editor Hugo Lindgren:

While her official goodbye column closed this week and will run in the April 29th issue, she will unveil the results of her overwhelmingly popular 'ethics of meat eating' writing competition (which set a new impossibly high standard in reader-engagement projects) in the May 6 issue and then will close the cover story for the May 13 issue. That story could well be one of the biggest of the year for us.

Is the timing of her departure a coincidence given all of the recent negative publicity? Perhaps. Perhaps not. If this contest is what the New York Times' editor sees as setting "a new impossibly high standard in reader-engagement projects", I'm almost afraid to see how low they'll go next.

Below is a copy of the letter shared by McWilliams and which is being widely circulated this week. Please do share it.

-------------------------------------

What follows is a letter signed by 59 scholars, artists, writers, and physicians (including me) who disagree with the motivation and spirit of the New York Times Magazine’s “Defending Your Dinner” contest. Please spread this letter far and wide. We very much hope it will be published.

Editor, The New York Times Magazine

Dear Editor,

We are a diverse group of scholars, researchers, and artists from such disciplines as philosophy, women’s studies, sociology, law, political theory, psychology, and literary studies, writing to take sharp issue with the Magazine’s decision to run a “Defending Your Dinner” contest.

Do ethical vegetarians, a growing but still quite small percentage of the population, pose such a “threat” to the meat and dairy industries that the Times Magazine must now invite its millions of readers to shout them down? Is the point of this contest really to open up honest debate about the meat industry, or is the point, rather, to close it down?

We find it disturbing that the Magazine would organize such a one-sided contest, and moreover that Ariel Kaminer should introduce it with such frivolity. “Ethically speaking, vegetables get all the glory,” Kaminer writes, caricaturing vegans as members of a “hard-core inner circle” who have “dominated the discussion.” With her very breeziness (“Bon appetit!”), Kaminer seems intent on trivializing the warrant for ethical veganism. A more serious-minded critic would have given at least cursory attention to the empirical basis of the position, namely, the known facts about animal cognition and the unspeakable suffering that farmed animals endure so that they can end up as meat on our plates.

First, there has been an explosion of scientific research in recent decades showing beyond any doubt that many other species besides our own are emotionally and cognitively complex. Farmed animals are capable of a wide range of feelings and experiences, including empathy and the ability to intuit the interior states of others. The evidence suggests that they experience violence and trauma to their bodies as agonizingly as we do.

Second, most people are now aware of the horrific cruelty and violence that goes on behind the locked doors of the meat industry. Billions of cows, chickens, pigs, turkeys, geese, ducks, and aquaculture fish suffer each year in abominable conditions, then are brutally slaughtered, many of them while they are still fully or partially conscious. Such so-called factory farming accounts for 99% of the meat consumed in our society. The mass slaughter of oceanic fish, meanwhile, is so catastrophic to marine life that even the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia (the academic arm of the Canadian fishing industry) has frankly compared today’s commercial fishing campaigns to “wars of extermination.”

These and other facts have led a majority of contemporary moral philosophers who have studied the question to conclude that killing animals in order to eat them is not a morally defensible human interest, certainly not in a society such as ours, where vegan alternatives are widely available.

Even on purely prudential grounds, i.e. human self-interest, meat finds no rational justification. Numerous studies have shown meat-based diets to be associated with myriad negative health outcomes, including higher risks of cardiovascular disease and cancer (to name but two). Meanwhile, animal agriculture has proven to be an ecological and public health catastrophe, poisoning human water supplies, destroying vast tracts of the rainforests of Latin America, causing soil erosion, and creating dangerous new pathogens like Avian Flu and Mad Cow Disease. Animal agriculture is also one of the leading sources of global warming gas emissions.

Given these and many other facts demonstrating the nightmarish consequences of the meat industry for humans and nonhumans alike, why has the Magazine invited its readers to defend that industry, their essays to be judged chiefly by proponents of “humane” meat eating?

Kaminer implies that she has assembled the most judicious and meat-averse line-up of judges, a “murderer’s row” that will be hard to persuade of the case for eating meat. But is that true? Michael Pollan promotes Joel Salatin and other organic meat producers. Mark Bittman publishes meat recipes. Peter Singer has consistently defended, in principle, the killing of nonhuman beings for human purposes (provided that it be done “painlessly”). Jonathan Safran Foer, in his otherwise admirable book “Eating Animals,” defends small animal farms and backs away from open advocacy of vegetarianism. Only Andrew Light seems to hold a position that finds no ethical justification for meat eating as such.

So the contest’s overt bias (“Tell Us Why It’s Ethical to Eat Meat”) is compounded by its pretense with respect to the judging. Kaminer might instead have tapped any of dozens if not hundreds of prominent scholars, writers, critics, and well-informed activists who unequivocally oppose meat production for ethical reasons. The fact that she did not tells us everything we need to know about how seriously Kaminer takes the “ethical” issues at stake in this debate.

Kaminer’s lack of balance reveals itself further in her having stocked her bench solely with men, when there are so many prominent feminist theorists and writers available to provide a critique of our society’s masculine penchant for organized violence against vulnerable populations, whether against women and girls, foreign peoples, or other species.

There is an important debate to be had about the ethics of killing and eating animals. But this is not the way to have it. Honest ethical inquiry begins with the question, “How should we live?” or “What should I or we do about ‘X’?” It does not begin with a predetermined conclusion, then work backwards for justification. To throw down a rhetorical gauntlet–”Defend X as a practice”– is not to open up an ethical conversation; it is to build closure into the inquiry, and to stack the deck from the outset.

Signed*,

Karla Armbruster, Ph.D., Professor of English, Webster University

Anurima Banerji, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of World Arts and Cultures, UCLA

George Bates, DVM, Associate Professor of Veterinary Medical Technology at Wilson College

Kimberly Benston, Ph.D., Francis B. Gummere Professor of English, Haverford College

Susan Benston, M.D., Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing, Haverford College

Chris Bobel, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Women’s Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Carl Boggs, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science, National University

G.A. Bradshaw, Ph.D., Director of the Kerulos Center & President of the Trans-Species Institute

Thomas Brody, Ph.D., Staff Scientist, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland

Matthew Calarco, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Philosophy, California State University, Fullerton

Jodey Castricano, Ph.D., Associate Professor Critical Studies, University of British Columbia (Okanagan Campus)

Elizabeth Cherry, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Sociology, Manhattanville College

Sue Coe, Artist (represented by Galerie St. Etienne, New York City)

Susana Cook, Playwright (New York City)

Ellen F. Crain, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Pediatrics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

William Crain, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, The City College of New York

Karen Davis, Ph.D., President of United Poultry Concerns

Maneesha Deckha, LL.M., Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria (Canada)

Margo De Mello, Ph.D., Lecturer, Central New Mexico Community College

Josephine Donovan, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of English, University of Maine

George Eastman, Ed.D., Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Berklee College of Music

Stephen F. Eisenman, Ph.D., Professor of Art History, Northwestern University

Barbara Epstein, Ph.D., Professor, History of Consciousness Department, University of California at Santa Cruz

Amy Fitzgerald, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology, University of Windsor (UK)

Gary L. Francione, J.D., Distinguished Professor of Law, Rutgers University Law School-Newark

Carol Gigliotti, Ph.D., Faculty, Emily Carr University, Vancouver, BC (Canada)

Elizabeth A. Gordon, M.F.A., Instructor of English, Fitchburg State University

Roger Gottlieb, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Michelle Graham, M.A., Lecturer, Department of Writing, Literature & Publishing, Emerson College

Kathy Hessler, J.D., LL.M., Clinical Professor & Director, Animal Law Clinic, Center for Animal Law Studies, Lewis & Clark Law School

Laura Janara, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia (Canada)

Victoria Johnson, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Missouri

Melanie Joy, Ph.D., Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Joseph J. Lynch, Ph.D., Professor, Philosophy Department, California Polytechnic State University

John T. Maher, Adjunct Professor of Animal Law, Touro Law Center

Bill Martin, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, DePaul University

Atsuko Matsuoka, Ph.D., Associate Professor, School of Social Work, York University (Canada)

Timothy M. McDonald, M.F.A., Assistant Professor of Art, Framingham State University

Jennifer McWeeny, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Philosophy, John Carroll University

James McWilliams, Ph.D., Associate Professor, History, Texas State University

Helena Pedersen, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Faculty of Education and Society, Malmö University (Sweden)

Steven Rayshick, Ph.D., Professor of English and Humanities, Quinsigamond Community College

Carrie Rohman, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of English, Lafayette College

John Sanbonmatsu, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Philosophy, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Kira Sanbonmatsu, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University

Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Mathematics, College of Staten Island

Michael Selig, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Emerson College

Jonathan Singer, Doctoral Student, DePaul University

John Sorenson, Ph.D., Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, Brock University (Canada)

H. Peter Steeves, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, DePaul University

Gary Steiner, Ph.D., John Howard Harris Professor of Philosophy, Bucknell University

Marcus Stern, M.F.A., Lecturer in Dramatic Arts, Harvard University

Deborah Tanzer, Ph.D., Psychologist and Author

Susan Thomas, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Political Science, Hollins University

Gray Tuttle, Ph.D., Leila Hadley Luce Assistant Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies, Columbia University

Richard Twine, Ph.D., Department of Sociology, Lancaster University (UK)

Zipporah Weisberg, Doctoral Candidate, Programme in Social and Political Thought, York University (Canada)

Tony Weis, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Geography, The University of Western Ontario (Canada)

Richard York, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies, Director of Graduate Studies for Sociology, University of Oregon