New Website Button: Public Speaking

I have given many talks over the years at universities, animal rights and vegetarian association venues, and over the media. I am happy to offer my services as a speaker. Please see the following LINK.

New Essay: Veganism versus Violence

I am pleased to present this essay, "Veganism vs. Violence," which is aimed at thoughtful and mature people who are either educated or open to education. Such people need facts and arguments, not just opinions, and they need reasonably thorough coverage, not just superficial commentary. The paper is suitable for widespread dissemination because non-violence is a simple idea, and the essay is not biased in favour of any one ethical theory but rather shows how the major moral views lead to non-violence. The sister paper to this one is "Anti-Vivisection and Anti-Violence." In a forthcoming book I will make a meta-ethical case for non-violent eating and so forth, adding a great deal to the analysis, critiques, and justifications offered in these two papers.

New Essay: Anti-Vivisection and Anti-Violence

I have recently become involved in an anti-vivisection organization at the University of Toronto, where I studied for all of my academic degrees. I have done a few talks on anti-vivisection for them. This informal paper makes a strong ethical case against medical vivisection using non-violence as a principle. As in "Animal Rights in Essence," listed above, I do not offer a meta-ethical justification for non-violence, which I intend to do in a forthcoming book. Rather, I build on the fact that each of us normally insists on non-violence towards ourselves. Vivisectionists on campus often imply that anti-vivisectionists are cranks who are not worth debating, but I show how the most established versions of many ethical theories entail non-violence, which must be extended to nonhuman animals too if we are to disavow speciesism. My blog entry from July 7, 2009 shows how contemporary animal liberationist ethical theories fail to protect animals against vivisection. It is harder to address this issue because although we can all regard the violence in eating animals, wearing their skins, using them in entertainment, or hunting them to be readily dispensable, medical vivisection supposedly addresses a human need in a unique way. Some frame this issue as a moral dilemma: either do not harm animals in laboratories, or let humans come to harm by refusing to engage in medical vivisection. I show how the issue cannot fairly be characterized in such a manner. I hope you will help to get AV v AV out there!

Chart: A Time-line of U.S. Laws Affecting African-Americans

This chart was prepared as a supplement to, and from the data gathered in, my paper on my website, "Incrementalist Animal Law: Welcome to the Real World." The new chronology provides useful visual perspective on the history of racist and anti-racist law in the U.S. It is very revealing, reinforcing the fact that progressive laws take time and that the forces of oppression can be very strong at the legislative level. As I argued in the essay, animals would only have an easier time of it if U.S. legislators will have valued nonhuman animals more than African-Americans, as a matter of history both past and future.

West Hollywood to be Fur-Free City

On September 19, 2011, a city ordinance will make W. Hollywood the first city to be fur-free in the U.S. Stores will be restricted against selling fur garments of any kind! Celebrate the results of these brilliant single-issue campaigners.

Vegan Maker

Those who follow my website may have been aware that I have a list of films to see about how animals are treated without animal rights. I call it "Vegan Maker." Yesterday I noticed Earthlings is nick-named "Vegan Maker." My use of the term was without knowledge of the film's pet name and this may be a coincidence for all I know. Just to set the record straight in case anyone think I am borrowing the name from elsewhere.

Ending One Fellowship and Starting Another

I have recently been appointed as a Research Fellow at the University of Vienna. They are working on an encyclopedia concerning animal issues, and one of the concerns is tracking progress in various countries. I am on the advisory board of the encyclopedia project. Austria is a great leader in terms of reforming the torturous treatment of animals that is presently the norm. I have written on this in past blog entries concerning Martin Balluch and his fellow Austrian activists who have pioneered great legislative changes. I will be funded to appear at a conference in 2013, a 30-year retrospective on Tom Regan's landmark book, The Case for Animal Rights (1983).

At the same time, I have chosen to take my departure from the Fellowship program of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. Ideally, I would have wished to carry on with the program, but this was made practically impossible due to the actions of others. That said, the Director said he was very sorry to see me leave. I do not make such a decision lightly, and would not unless there were serious issues involved. Rather than go into any details, let me just wish the OCAE all the best in its important and valuable work, such as its book series, Journal of Animal Ethics, international conferences, archiving project, and so on. I will always be in some degree of fellowship with those who oppose the degradation of sentient beings.

Oddly enough, I was offered the new fellowship out of the blue, out of respect for my work, on the very day I had already decided to leave the Oxford fellowship. To me, there is an all too vague historical irony in Austria being a great nation for animal ethics development. Austrians or many of them eagerly welcomed Hitler annexing their country, and they were a key part of the Holocaust. I am known to compare the Holocaust to nonhuman animal treatment in my writings and talks. Many of my relatives suffered murder and no doubt other atrocities in that grave historical phenomenon. However, the good people in Vienna have nothing to do with that, any more than fellow Canadian activists have anything to do with Japanese internment during the Second World War. I am so happy to be in professional collaboration with scholars such as Dr. Erwin Lengauer of the University of Vienna, and other animal ethics scholars who are on board with him.