WK2 Project
Project: Course Project: Topic Exploration and Analysis
This week, as the first step of your Course Project, you select and analyze a social issue. The main goals of your analysis are to develop a problem statement, address the “heart” or “root” of the issue, describe the situation as it looks today, and explain why this social issue is important to investigate.
There are numerous social issues that prompt attention today and that directly or indirectly impact both small and large populations. These include issues as diverse as animal rights, euthanasia, the gender wage gap, intimate partner violence, access to health care, disability rights, detention of unaccompanied migrant children, and veterans rights, to name but a few.
As you consider a social issue on which to focus, keep in mind that you will be researching and writing about the social issue throughout the remainder of the course. An objective of this project is to build a well-researched foundation on which you might pursue further involvement. For that reason, you are encouraged to select an issue about which you have genuine concern and interest. Is there a social issue that has impacted you or a family member personally? Are there inequities that impact your life or the lives of others in your community? Are there global concerns that resonate strongly with you? Personal passion and connection to an issue often fuels the kind of committed action that attracts participants and achieves objectives. For this project, select an issue that you genuinely care about.
To prepare for this Project:
- With the thoughts above in mind, select a social issue for further research.
- Gather 2 resources about this issue from the Walden Library. You will use these resources in writing this Topic Exploration and Analysis.
- Develop a problem statement (e.g., “The problem I will address in this study is…”).
In a 2-page paper (not including the cover page and references), address the following:
- The problem statement you have developed (e.g., “The problem I will address in this study is…”)
- What are the “symptoms” of the social issue? What does it “look like”?
- What are the conflicts that exist regarding this issue? What are the interests, rights, and values of all parties involved with the social issue?
- What are some potential ethical dilemmas involved with the social issue?
- How has the social issue developed? What are some possible causes?
- Why is the social issue important to investigate?
Support your statements with APA Style in-text citations using the articles you gathered from the Walden Library.
animals
Article
International Animal Protection Society Leadership:
The Right People for the Right Issues
Michelle Sinclair * and Clive J. C. Phillips
Centre for Animal Welfare and Ethics, School of Veterinary Science, University of Queensland, Gatton 4343,
Queensland, Australia; c.phillips@uq.edu.au
* Correspondence: m.sinclair6@uq.edu.au
Received: 4 May 2018; Accepted: 4 June 2018; Published: 7 June 2018
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Abstract: As the increasing body of scientific information about the experiences of other species
and their ability to suffer becomes available to those working within the field of animal welfare,
the amount of potential issues to address also increases. Carefully choosing issues to address,
and indeed leaders to drive the cause forward, has the potential to significantly increase the efficacy
of the international animal welfare movement. Within this study 15 leaders of major international
animal welfare organizations were interviewed about their experiences, thoughts and strategies,
which have been primarily acquired through long-term exposure to the movement, and endeavors of
trial and error. After thematic analysis, key themes are presented, along with strategies and cautions
that may be beneficial to the animal welfare movement. Animal welfare leaders suggested a focus
on issues that fitted well with their organizations’ remit and were not too broad, to avoid spreading
resources and expertise too thin. A utilitarian framework was also considered important, aiming
to improve the lives of as many animals as possible for the resources deployed. Good leaders were
believed to have passion for their cause, not just for animals, and an ability to build and lead good
teams, hence good interpersonal human skills were also perceived as essential. It is concluded
that establishing what makes a good animal welfare leader could offer useful direction for future
engagement of successful leaders in this field.
Keywords: animal welfare; leadership; international; animal protection; strategy; organization;
human resources; succession planning; non government organization; NGO
1. Introduction
As a modern movement and field of science, Animal Welfare has exponentially grown over recent
decades, to one that has now achieved global recognition. Measured in terms of social media attention
(public support) rather than the traditional terms of net worth (donor generosity), animal-based
charitable causes now occupy three of the top 20 globally ranked positions for supporters, including
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which has 5.4 million supporters on Facebook [1–3].
US domestic animal welfare charity Humane Society US has 2.6 million supporters on Facebook, where
Amnesty International Global has only 2 million, Save the Children 1.8 million, and World Vision
Global 92 thousand [3]. Despite not making the top 10 richest causes, reserved for long established
social movements managing poverty, housing, healthcare, education and emergency relief aid for
humans [4], these statistics show a growing movement support base of significant proportions.
The animal welfare movement has advanced significantly in western countries in the last
30 years [5]. The work of Rene Descartes (popularized in the nineteenth century) that maintained that
non-human animals were nothing more than machines, to which pain is insignificant, is now mostly a
figment of past scientific misjudgments [6]. The birth of animal welfare science, and the simultaneous
growing awareness and scientific understanding of animal suffering has seen a focus placed on a
Animals 2018, 8, 89; doi:10.3390/ani8060089 www.mdpi.com/journal/animals
http://www.mdpi.com/journal/animals
http://www.mdpi.com
http://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/8/6/89?type=check_update&version=1
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani8060089
http://www.mdpi.com/journal/animals
Animals 2018, 8, 89 2 of 11
growing number of species. First, the factory farming of vertebrates [7], more recently, the sentience of
cetaceans for example [8], and now, after proving fish have the ability to feel pain and to suffer, animal
welfare science has a major focus on fish welfare, with widespread implications [9]. It seems, the more
scientific knowledge develops, the more animal welfare issues exist for the movement to focus on.
With so many potential issues, and so much work to do to bring animal welfare standards in line
with public expectations in some regions, how do leaders in the animal welfare advocacy movement
choose which issues to focus on? This study aims to investigate this question, by interviewing current
international animal welfare leaders to identify factors that drive their decisions.
“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the
sails.”
John Maxwell
As with any organization, those within the social movement organizations are only as good
as the people working and living within them, so the vision and ability of the people leading them
becomes paramount to success. In fact, leading within a non-profit environment brings with it
additional challenges. “The role of leadership in social movements goes well beyond that of the
stereotypical charismatic public persona with whom they are often identified” [10]. This is due to
the nature of social organizations as “voluntary, decentralized, and self-governing; they are volatile,
dynamic, and interactive; participants are motivated by moral claims, but results depend on strategic
creativity; and their capacity to make things happen depends on their ability to mobilize broad levels
of commitment” [10].
Leading an animal welfare organization brings with it further challenges, both external and
internal, by its very purpose: advocating for other species. There is little doubt that it requires a variety
of competencies and mix of traits in order to be most successful. For this purpose, effective human
resources practices—recruiting and succession planning to ensure the right people are in the right
place at the right time—underpins the success of non-profit initiatives. Recruiting the best possible
leaders into these roles could be assisted by knowledge from current successful leaders.
In addition to identifying animal welfare issues to pursue, this study aims to investigate effective
human resources practices by interviewing international animal welfare leaders about their experiences
and their opinions on effective leadership in the movement. This knowledge could assist in the early
identification of potential future leaders, in the development plans of those leaders, and ultimately aid
in the success of the organizations that they lead.
The overall aim of this research is to assist in capacity building the international animal welfare
movement to enable it to be more people focused. Just as people are the ultimate target of all animal
welfare campaigns, they are also leading them.
2. Methodology
Ethical approval for the study was provided by the University of Queensland Human Ethics
Committee (approval number 2017000628). Relevant organizations were considered to be the major
international animal welfare charities on the basis of three aspects of their activities, international,
large scale, and a high level of brand recognition. In total leaders of 13 major international animal
welfare organizations were approached, a total of 15 leaders from 10 organizations accepted, 1 declined,
and 2 did not reply to the invitation. The reason for declining the invitation by 1 organization was a
perceived lack of knowledge to comment on the subject. Participating organizations were Animals
Asia, Humane Society International, Compassion in World Farming, International Animal Rescue,
International Fund for Animal Welfare, World Animal Protection, Royal Society for the Protection
against Cruelty to Animals UK, Vets Beyond Borders, The Donkey Sanctuary and People for the
Protection of Animals.
The leaders of the organizations were chosen by the lead researcher (MS) and the organizations
themselves, based on their assessment of individual’s role within the organization, which required
Animals 2018, 8, 89 3 of 11
them to be a CEO, operations managers or high-level coordinators working in an international capacity.
These leaders were approached via email and requested to take part in a 30 min semi-structured
interview via Skype to talk about their experiences regarding successful and unsuccessful projects in
animal welfare. Prior to the interview, the leaders were given an information sheet to review, outlining
the confidentiality of the interview, its voluntary nature, their right to withdraw at any time, and
details regarding the topic and interview logistics, such as time requirement and platform. Upon
request, all leaders also gave verbal permission at conclusion of the interview to use the name of their
organization as participating within the study. Fifteen leaders accepted this invitation to participate
and a time was booked for interview.
In the interview, leaders were asked:
• How long they have been in animal welfare.
• What drew them to animal welfare.
• What makes a good international animal welfare leader.
• To describe the most successful international animal welfare projects they have been involved in.
• To describe the least successful international animal welfare projects they have been involved in.
• What made those projects successful/unsuccessful.
Responses from all interviewees to those questions marked in italics are presented in this paper,
with the remaining to be presented in a later paper to allow complete discussion and logical division
of data. All interviews were recorded with a voice recorder after verbal permission from each leader at
the onset of the interview, and complete transcripts were subsequently prepared verbatim. This study
was approached in a familiar way to sociological research across fields (including that of other
social progress initiatives such as environmental conservation), with the purpose of identifying and
understanding evidence-based approaches as solutions for advancing the movement [11–13].
Data Analysis
Thematic analysis was aided by appropriate software [14] and through manual inspection of
source data, by the same researcher that conducted the interviews (MS). Coding themes were identified
using text frequency and word search functions in NVivo, in addition to manual familiarization with
the data. Words were chosen for analysis based on the amount of times they appeared overall; however,
joining words (such as ”and”) were excluded, along with words that had no relevance or usefulness
to the node/theme, or to the study. By extracting the main themes that emerged from the analysis,
including key pieces of connective information, mind maps were created to easily visualize the themes
and their relationship with each other. Data within each node (identified reoccurring theme) was then
further analyzed for detail, including frequency of each theme.
3. Results
3.1. Choice of Animal Welfare Issues to Pursue
3.1.1. Fit to Organizational Mandate, and Focus
The most common response was that primarily an issue must fit the specific mandate established
by the institutional strategy, often by boards and committees (Table 1).
Five leaders specifically mentioned the need to “keep it very tight within those program areas”,
and that potential animal welfare activities need to fulfil this mandate. A few also suggested that
this mandate was best if it was specific, as “it is better to do a few things really well, than everything
really badly”. This related to the theme of “targeted focus”, where comments such as “we need to stay
focused on specific issues, otherwise we just get stretched too thin”, were emphasized by three of the
15 leaders. Two leaders stated that the potential activities are also evaluated on their ability to enhance
other programs they are currently running, and how it will strengthen the global program. Five of the
Animals 2018, 8, 89 4 of 11
15 leaders referred to the clarity of their mandate, making the decision to be involved in a potential
animal welfare activity very simple. One leader referred to the overwhelming amount of potential
animal welfare issues to pursue and stated that this was more reason to stay focused on one issue only.
One leader stated that, “It’s easy to dilute when you venture out into new topics, but that doesn’t
really give justice to your core programs. Focus on the core issues with which you start, and don‘t
divert from it too much.”
Table 1. Summary and frequency of nodes (identified occurring theme).
Theme Sources, out of 15 References within the Sources
Fit within organizational mandate 7 9
“Best for the most” 5 7
Opportunity for collaboration or leverage 4 8
Duration and intensity of suffering 4 5
Ability to contribute 4 4
Fit within targeted “focus” 3 4
“Biggest difference” and “widest impact” 3 3
3.1.2. Best for the Most and Scope of Suffering
The second most common theme identified in choosing issues to pursue was utilitarian; selecting
the issues that will affect the most number of animals followed by the scope of suffering (duration and
intensity). A third of leaders interviewed made comments such as, “I think it’s easy when you think
what affects the greatest number of animals”, “it’s best for the most”, and “we only pick issues with the
maximum animal suffering, and there is of course a maximum reduction of suffering for dollars spent,
and hence battery cages, animal testing, wildlife trade, puppy mills, cruelty response—these are the
areas we pick”. In addition to the amount of animals suffering, the same leaders also stated that they
also assess the length of time an animal suffers, and how intense the suffering is. A few leaders state
their choice to focus on battery cages for hens because, “it is lifelong, and is complete immobilization”,
likewise another, regarding the farming of bears for bile. While two thirds of leaders did not cite
pragmatic or utilitarian reasons for choosing their animal welfare issues to pursue, three others did
mention their choices based on the wider notion of ”impact”; however, that was not further defined.
3.1.3. Opportunity for Collaboration or Leverage
Four of the 15 leaders made mention of specific opportunities that led them to choose certain
activities on their portfolio (Table 1). These opportunities mostly centered around opportunity to
collaborate with a government, or a key industry or commerce. Half of these leaders discussed
their vigilance for opportunities to tie their causes to other issues of social concern, such as climate
change, gender empowerment, and food security, which in turn creates wider possibilities and more
opportunities for impact and sustainability.
3.1.4. Ability to Contribute
Four of the 15 leaders noted that their ability to bring something meaningful and useful to the
issue was an important criterion when deciding if to pursue the issue (Table 1). In one instance this
also included consideration of who else was working in the area, and if they would have the ability to
bring something new. One leader stated, “Do we really have an opportunity for change here or are we
going to bang our head against the wall?”, while another summed up the sentiments by stating, “There
are some areas that have severe animal welfare problems, but our ability to change it is minimal, and
therefore if we have minimal resources, limited resources rather, then we ought to focus on problems
that we can fix, at least at this stage. Doesn’t mean you don’t try to address some of those issues long
term so you can get it to a stage when you eventually could tackle them, but in the end that’s the
key thing.”
Animals 2018, 8, 89 5 of 11
3.2. International Animal Welfare Leadership
3.2.1. Attraction to Animal Welfare Leadership
Fourteen leaders answered this question out of 15 and all but three of these were passionate about
animal welfare. Most stated an affinity with non-human species, and others that they felt strongly
about the cause of animal welfare, and uncomfortable with the injustice of poor animal treatment.
Six stated that they had witnessed something that affected them, five stated they felt they could add
something to the cause, and one had an academic history in animal welfare. The remaining two leaders
were recruited into the cause on the basis of specific skills they brought to the table.
3.2.2. Time in the Industry
Nearly all leaders in this study (13 of 15) had been within the animal welfare industry long term,
for over 10 years. Five of these leaders had been leading the same organization they were integral
in founding and claim a minimum of 20 years working in animal welfare. Four of the leaders were
volunteering or engaged with animal welfare causes from a young age, and a few stated that it was an
industry that they would be dedicated to into the future.
3.3. International Animal Welfare Leadership Traits
3.3.1. Passion
Passion was the most commonly referred to trait, with nearly two thirds of respondents raising
it as important (Table 2). “I think having leaders who are hardworking and undoubtedly passionate
to the cause is really the most important thing.” Another leader stated “You’ve got to have passion.
You have to want to make this happen, there are so many reasons why it can’t.”
Table 2. Themes and words cited in relation to the question “What makes a good international animal
welfare leader?”.
Theme Sources out of 15
References within
the Sources
Frequent Word
*
References
Passion 8 9 ”Passion” 12
Understand the issue and society 7 9 ”Understand” 17
Ability to build an engaged
and competent team
6 8 ”Team” 7
Bigger picture 5 7
Collaborative 5 6 ”Engage” 7
Flexible (reason and moderation) 4 5
Focus 3 6 ”Focus” 7
Communicator 3 6
Driven 3 5 ”Driven” 5
Involved 3 4 ”Involved” 5
Compassion and empathy 3 4
Persistence and determination 2 3
* Words found within the top 100 most frequently used words leaders used in response to “what makes a good
animal welfare leader?”.
Some leaders cautioned that while passion is of paramount importance, it is dangerous when
unaccompanied by focus. “They’re so passionate and they want to take on every issue in the farm
animal movement; that’s not being effective.” Another leader directly stated that passion can also
bring about demise, when not coupled with the right ‘sense for it’. “I’ve seen a lot of passionate people
burn out, very soon, very very fast; because we see so much suffering on our field trips on a daily basis
you know.”
Animals 2018, 8, 89 6 of 11
Another cautioned that the passion of a good leader should not only be for animal welfare causes,
but also for people. With enthusiasm, “you should be able to inspire people around you”, which is
hard to do without a passion for people and potential team achievements.
3.3.2. Understand the Issue and Society
Approximately half of the leaders interviewed stated a need to “understand” the issue they are
leading, and the environment and culture in which they are leading it (Table 2). “I think maybe I
have repeated it many times, (but they need to) understand the society; understand the policy—the
local policy; and understand the country. It is very important.” Another stated that a great leader will,
“understand the great variances there are in cultural differences, because that’s huge”, while another
stated, “you need to know the region that you’re working in really well, that’s the first thing”.
By “understanding”, another leader elaborated that a great leader “need(s) to really understand
the local custom or culture, and in equal part, that person needs to understand the perception of the
ordinary people on animal welfare issues, or even on animal issues”.
One leader made a point of stating that a good leader does not just understand their animal
welfare issues and the society, but also where the issue fits in a broader context of wider issues. “I think
it’s the ability to drive change through understanding the context that makes a more successful animal
welfare leader.”
After stating that a leader needs to become a regional specialist, one leader added a caveat to
caution leaders against overstating their understanding levels and overextending beyond their ability.
Another leader stated the ability of a good leader to identify and hire good teams with the required
knowledge and understanding to support them.
3.3.3. Ability to Build a Capable and Engaged Team
“Obviously a good animal welfare leader does not need to be a technical expert, but needs
technical expertise behind them, I guess, to have that in terms of the organization.” “You’ve got to
have really good people in every position that are able to take up the challenge” . . . “I think you need
to have an all-encompassing view, but to enable people to do things . . . I have no problem delegating,
I have too much to do anyway”.
Three leaders stated the importance of empowering their team and leading from behind (Table 2).
“Rather than, kind of, being the person sort of spearheading it publicly, actually passing
on my knowledge and skills to the people that I work with and kind of building them up
to a point where they can actually do the actual one on one negotiations”. Another leader
stated “that is down to excessive non-stop communication with every member of your team
really . . . it is exhausting; it is so easy to want to concentrate on the program, the animals
and the issue—but you need to focus on the people leading those areas . . . ultimately it is
communication and empathy for your staff”.
Delving deeper into the data, it emerged that a key to building an engaged and capable team is
the ability to relinquish control of key strategic aspects of the business, and to be able to relinquish
personal credit or accolades following successes with campaigns.
“I think a (good) leader (is someone) who doesn’t control branding, who lets the local staff or
the volunteers take the best decision and one who guides.” “I think that animal welfare today
has become ‘eminence-based’ animal welfare rather than evidence-based animal welfare
. . . the people themselves become larger than life, and I feel that a good leader has to put
himself or herself behind, and change the movement from an eminence-based movement
to an evidence-based movement . . . I feel like whoever understands and does that is a
leader who should lead in animal welfare movements.” “Animals don’t have time for one
charismatic person.”
Animals 2018, 8, 89 7 of 11
3.3.4. Bigger Picture Ambition
Another theme trait of good animal welfare leaders is bigger picture vision, and with that,
ambition. “I’ve seen too many models where people have either been willing to plod on and not
change the world, and frankly as far as I’m concerned if we were not in it to change the world we
shouldn’t be here.”
This includes a purposeful contentment in being behind the scene. “Even if I didn’t touch an
animal for the next 10 years and I only talked to 100 people a day and asked them to be kind to animals,
I’d bring about more change than going to animals directly.” Another leader stated “look at the root
cause of the problem, you may run a shelter and spend all your money and all your life taking care of
40 dogs, unless you stop the overpopulation of the dogs on the streets and where they’re coming from,
you waste your time and your money and your resources . . . so these are the things that I think make
a very good animal welfare leader”.
3.3.5. Collaborative
The ability to be collaborative, both internally within the organization, and externally to the
organization was also identified as an important trait of a successful animal welfare leader. One leader
stated “being collaborative and being able to make those connections with other organizations, other
stakeholders outside, and also to bring their own organization along”, were key hallmarks of a
successful leader, while three leaders highlighted the importance of also being able to network and
collaborate with other charities, and “not being insular, working with other charities, opening up”.
Another stated the importance of the collaborative abilities of a good animal welfare leader by stating
they “have to deal with ministers and diplomats, bureaucrats, their community, the groups that hate
animals, the groups that love animals, (and) get them all at a table, talk some sense to them, listen to
them, and find strategies, (and) make them feel committed . . . so I think that’s the number one take
away for me”. This includes the ability to collaborate with the stakeholders they’re trying to change.
Another stated the required ability to “work towards . . . finding something where we have some
common ground and then engaging that person . . . (to) that point where we can actually sit down
with (them) and have that dialogue, and then come up with that compromise”. One leader explicitly
stated “a good animal welfare leader needs to be a people person. I hear a lot of people say, ‘I love
animals, but I hate humans’, and I think that’s something we can do away with . . . we don’t need
those people in front of people, we need a people-loving person, because the root cause of all animal
suffering is human behavior”. For this leader, this begins by recruiting “people-people”. “If I have to
hire someone for a country, I take them out for a beer with a large group of people and I see how they
interact with them.”
3.3.6. Flexibility, Reason and Moderation
Through collaboration, it may sometimes be necessary to arrive at flexible outcomes and
compromises, and as such, flexibility appeared as another theme associated with good leaders in
international animal welfare. “Accepting that . . . we might not be able to get everything that we
want but . . . gradually we might be able to actually . . . get at least a working relationship with that
person and see how things go.” Within the data, flexibility was most commonly associated with
cultural and societal differences. Where it was raised there seemed consensus that, where operating
internationally, this trait was required of a good leader. “(They) need to be able to be flexible and also
accommodating of differences in people, in culture and society”, “they need to be someone who is
flexible, someone who can walk into a situation in a country and listen, and then assess the situation,
but understand the great variances there are in cultural differences . . . because that’s huge . . . you
have to be able to address that in a commonsense way so that you can give a grounded reaction and a
grounded assessment of what’s going on”. The importance of listening was sometimes used in the
context of understanding, tied to flexibility, reason and moderation. A good animal welfare leader
Animals 2018, 8, 89 8 of 11
is “someone who is flexible, who . . . can listen, rather than going in and saying it’s got to be done
this way’ because it’ll never work . . . and someone who is prepared to think about it and make a
rational decision that is best for the animals”. Lastly, one leader responded directly to the themes
of reason and moderation, more so, a leader’s ability to use reason and moderation by referring to
science. “Within our means, I think we can do a good and much better job of letting science play its
part in animal welfare, and accepting that, rather than fighting that.”
3.3.7. Focus, Drive, Persistence and Determination
These themes were pooled together here, as they are contextually very similar throughout the
data, and were used interchangeably. When asked what constitutes a good leader in animal welfare,
one leader stated “I think we just crack on a bit, we’re driven. You do have to be driven . . . and driven
by outcome rather than personally. I don’t think you achieve much if you’re ego driven.” Another
stated “I would say the people who are most effective are people who can just focus, say ‘ok, this
is what we’re doing’, people who are focused in that way.” Another stated “very driven, hungry
for success, willing to do what it takes . . . within reason . . . within reason is in concert with the
organization identity”. The focus and drive mostly referred to a focus on an achievable strategy and
outcome, rather than on the issue they were addressing. A good leader is someone “who has a very
clear aim and strategy for achieving that is realistic”. Another stated that an individual can be a great
leader and make a great impact, despite limited resources available to animal welfare organizations,
“by being very outcome focused, and being able to marshal all the resources that an animal welfare
organization can bring, you can have that impact and inspire people to believe that . . . I think if you
do that, you can have a large impact. It’s often a misconception among the general populace that
animal welfare groups are huge and we get loads of money, compared to the big NGOs let alone the
big agencies, we’re tiny”. Another leader addressed the theme of focusing on tangible outcomes as
something that is commonly missing from leaders of animal welfare organization, to the detriment of
their cause, “I think often a common flaw with the over-ambition, comes a lack of focus on outcome
and I see it more often in campaigning organizations. There’s a lot of cred’ing (credit seeking); ‘we got
x number of newspaper headlines, we’ve done this we’ve done that’, but actually if you look at the
issue things haven’t changed. They might be higher profile, but animals are still suffering”. Lastly,
one leader states that passion, backed by focus and determination, is the key tenet of a good animal
welfare leader, and that in discussing determination, the word “no” drives them. “What do I mean by
determination? Never ever take no for an answer . . . if I go to a corporation and the guy on the other
side of the table says ‘no
why do you say that?’, because I’m then looking for feedback, I’m looking for them to give me all of
the answers of what I should do to make that person change their mind, because they will, and they
do, it’s just a matter of time.”
4. Discussion
When choosing animal welfare issues to pursue, animal welfare leaders overwhelmingly stated
that above all, the issue must fit the strategic mandate and remit of the organization. By having a
clear focus and organizational purpose, criteria can be developed that ensure proposed issues are
in line with that mandate. Focusing on a few key issues core to the organization also ensures that
resources (including expertise) are specific to the issue, and that attention and limited resources are not
stretched too thin. While it may be tempting for animal welfare organizations to expand their focus to
ever more issues, particularly for increasing donor pool and donor generosity, it may not be helpful
to the causes being represented. In addition, successfully promoted victories in more narrow and
focused fields may also bring about increased donor generosity. Strategically focusing on key areas
in which an organization does well is a sentiment also reflected in product marketing strategy [15].
Likewise, business strategy often warns against growing beyond capacity and over diversification [16].
Second to this, many leaders stated a pragmatic and utilitarian-based approach of “best for the most”,
Animals 2018, 8, 89 9 of 11
also considering intensity of suffering, as an important criterion. In an industry that affects the lives of
approximately 29 billion animals (chickens, ducks, cattle, pigs, sheep, turkey and buffalo) around the
world at any given time [17], it is of little surprise that this often entailed factory farming programs
to reduce the suffering of poultry, fish, and pigs. Identifying programs with the greatest impact to
the most lives could be considered, in business sense, a good investment return. That is, for the same
amount of investment, more lives could be positively impacted.
This is not to suggest that the animal welfare movement should turn away from other causes
with fewer animals, such as captive wild animals, or companion animal welfare, as some species
could serve as charismatic ambassadors for attitude change towards non-human animal species and
could themselves bring about positive change. In some instances also, focusing on other species
and issues may deliver more readily achieved positive outcomes. It is then suggested that core
programs be chosen based on utilitarian criteria; however, opportunities to advocate for other causes
when the socio-political environment allows should be considered. “Opportunity” was the third
highest criteria that leaders used to decide if their organization would pursue an animal welfare
issue. When considering cost benefit, if a positive outcome for the movement can be achieved, or an
important government collaboration can be forged with reduced effort due to a presented opportunity,
it is also recommended to be considered with high regard. In the absence of opportunities being
directly presented to an organization, opportunities may be proactively identified by having intimate
knowledge of the issues, and the socio-political environment in which the issue sits. In international
animal welfare this also means a significant and well-founded insight into the country [18], culture
and key stakeholders that surround the issue.
When identifying ideal leaders for the movement, a variety of traits were repeated by numerous
leaders. Most notably, there was passion. While non-profit organizations vary when it comes to
passion for their charitable philosophy, passion in their purpose may not be unique to non-profits. Some
leadership researchers state that “human passion”, along with inspiration and vision of leaders directly
drive corporate success [19]. Further to this, when investigating leadership styles in a post-recession
environment, it has been found that passionate leaders were more successful in attracting funding,
creating jobs, in particular within complex and challenging environments [20]. They suggest this
leadership passion is attributable to project success being tied to the personal identity of the leader [20].
The “passion” referred to by leaders in this study was not as simple as just “passion for animal
welfare”. Passion for animal welfare alone was not considered enough, and in fact, detrimental when
not coupled with other key traits, such as focus and determination. Passion, as highlighted in this
study, needs also to encompass a broad brand of passion that strives to see outcomes, supported by
focus, drive, determination, and sense. As one leader states “just to wrap that in three words; passion,
focus and determination”.
Other than the ability to apply themselves in intimately understanding the issue and society
in which their programs are focused, the third most common trait of an effective leader in animal
welfare was the ability to build an engaged and competent team. This is echoed in leadership literature
in other fields [10,19]. A repeating theme within this was the ability to lead the team from behind,
utilizing evidence to move the cause forward and focusing on achieving outcomes instead of building
up personal credentials. For this purpose, the traits make a full circle back to passion; passion for the
cause, and passion for the outcomes . . . rather than passion for personal recognition. This should
drive the selection of future leaders in the animal welfare movement.
Non-profit leaders have decades of leadership literature and advice to draw upon from other
fields; however, it is potentially underutilized. Inherent differences and challenges exist when leading
non-profit organizations are compared to leading for-profit organizations; however, knowledge of
basic human nature, psychology and cultural studies can be utilized across both. One leader stated,
“I don’t really see it different from being a leader in any other . . . except you know, I think just by its
nature we are people who love animals”. While this draws attention to the ability to learn “leadership
lessons” from other fields, the unique differences and required skill mix, still suggests a need to better
Animals 2018, 8, 89 10 of 11
understand what makes successful leaders in international animal welfare. It is hoped that the findings
of this study may assist to advise animal welfare organizations in the identification, recruitment and
succession planning of ultimately successful leaders, along with strategic planning and identification
of development opportunities within the movement.
5. Conclusions
Leaders most commonly identified animal welfare issues to pursue to success based on their fit
with specific organizational remit and criteria. The purpose of this was to avoid stretching attention and
resources too thin, to the point that each campaign loses efficacy. Additionally, it was recommended
that animal welfare issues are also considered using a “best for the most” utilitarian framework,
along with considering environmental and political opportunities that may arise (or are proactively
discovered), to deliver positive outcomes for the movement. Passion, not only for the cause, was the
number one trait identified with “good animal welfare leaders” within this study, and caution was
issued against recruiting for “passion for the cause” alone. The passion for the cause must also be
echoed with a passion for delivering outcomes and for engaging people. This passion must be backed
by a focus, drive and determination to persist in the face of challenges and setback, to remain positive
to people and the possibilities of collaboration. Creating an empowered team with the appropriate
skills and knowledge and leading them from behind; instead of focusing on their own eminence in the
field are also key, along with an ability and interest in intimately understanding and respecting the
society in which the issue is presented.
This study is an early start to better understanding the strategic ways of people and issues in
the animal welfare movement, and further, more in-depth, research is recommended to allow the
development of best practices within the industry. The aim of this study is to present findings that may
be of use to the animal welfare movement, in a bid to assist the movement to become more effective in
its strategy and operations.
Author Contributions: M.S. devised, organised and conducted the research, analyzed the data and wrote the
paper. Professor C.J.C.P. provided editorial input and academic supervision.
Funding Information: A contribution to the PhD scholarship of the lead author was made by Open Philanthropy,
Washington D.C., USA.
Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank leaders for their contribution to this study, and their tireless
work within the international animal welfare movement. A special mention is provided to Animals Asia, Humane
Society International, Compassion in World Farming, International Animal Rescue, International Fund for Animal
Welfare, World Animal Protection, Society for the Protection against Cruelty to Animals UK, Vets Beyond Borders,
The Donkey Sanctuary and People for the Protection of Animals. The authors also wish to thank Brendon Todd
for proofreading and editorial advice.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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843
WHY FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS AN IMPORTANT RIGHT AND
WHY ANIMALS SHOULD HAVE IT
MARTHA NUSSBAUM†
Well, thank you Dean Smith. I especially want to thank the students
and Gabs Baker for all the great arrangements and the warm hospitality.
And thank you all for being here. So as the dean says, I have been mainly
occupied with developing this capabilities approach and am now in the
process of writing a book about the capabilities approach and animal
rights. But there’s another angle that I’ve worked on as a philosopher, and
that is on the British Utilitarians. I have been in the process of writing a
book on them for a long period of time. I think that you all may think of
Utilitarianism as a cold, heartless, economistic philosophy, but the British
Utilitarians were actually radicals in many areas: women’s rights, gay
rights, and, above all, animal rights. I believe John Stuart Mill is a fore-
runner of the capabilities approach.
So I want to talk about that relationship. Now, there’s an obvious
point where we need to start. No one thinks that freedom of speech is lim-
ited to language use, even in today’s law. It’s long been established that
symbolic expression, such as flag burning, is a form of speech. So the
scene is set for an extension of speech rights to animals, and I think we
should ultimately be taking that step.
The theory of free speech rights was really founded by John Stuart
Mill, the great British philosopher and activist. On Liberty is the central
source for modern arguments regarding why free speech is important.1 But
Mill (1806–1873) was also a radical and a strong defender of animal rights
who left all of his money when he died to the Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals.2 Let’s investigate that connection. I want to first
look at his mentor and teacher, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). Next, I
want to examine Mill’s views about animals and their entitlements under
law. Finally, I want to turn to On Liberty and see why those arguments
can’t really stop at the species barrier. I will claim that Mill’s arguments
are applicable and that he knew the connection full well, although he did
not make that connection explicitly in On Liberty. Then, I will make a few
tentative remarks about how the speech theory of On Liberty can be ex-
tended to animal law.
† Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the Law and Philosophy
Department of the University of Chicago.
1. See JOHN STUART MILL, ON LIBERTY (David Bromwich & George Kateb eds., Yale Univ.
Press 2003) (1859).
2. See JOHN STUART MILL, WILLS AND DEED OF GIFT (1872), reprinted in MISCELLANEOUS
WRITINGS BY JOHN STUART MILLS 333 (John M. Robson ed., 1989).
844 DENVER LAW REVIEW [Vol. 95:4
Now, first a word about the British Utilitarians. In general, they were
radical outsiders. They couldn’t hold academic posts because they were
atheists, and you couldn’t hold an academic post in Britain at that time
unless you were an Anglican. British Utilitarians were outsiders and radi-
cal opponents of Christian social convention that privileged elites and mar-
ginalized oppressed groups. They were also strong advocates of women’s
rights. Bentham writes about this and Mill was very involved in this from
his youth onward. Mill went to jail when he was a young man for distrib-
uting contraceptive information to people in London. And later as a mem-
ber of Parliament, he introduced the first ever resolution in Britain (there
were some earlier resolutions in the United States) for women’s suffrage.
All of them were defenders, in some ways, of greater political rights for
lesbians and gay men. Bentham is the most explicit on that. Although his
writings on that topic could not even be published in his own lifetime, the
Bentham Project at the University of London published them in 2013.3
British Utilitarians were especially radicals about animals. Why was
that so? Well, the linchpin of their radicalism was the idea that we must
return to the body—pleasures and pains of the body—and we must see the
body as the central site of ethical value. The two main types of ethical
value are pleasure and pain. They are the same for all rather than some
pleasures that are higher and others that are lower. Therefore, the goal of
a rational society is to support pleasures and maximize the net balance of
pleasure over pain, not just for human beings but for all creatures. Even
Henry Sidgwick, who was a little bit later (1838–1900) and was the most
conservative of the British Utilitarians, gestures in this direction. Alt-
hough, again, he couldn’t be fully explicit in his lifetime.
Now, Bentham explicitly applied these ideas to animals. There is a
famous footnote in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Leg-
islation in which he talks about animals:
Under the Gentoo and Mahometan religions, the interests of the rest of
the animal creation seem to have met with some attention. Why have
they not universally, with as much as those of human creatures, allow-
ance made for the difference in point of sensibility? Because the laws
that are have been the work of mutual fear; a sentiment which the less
rational animals have not had the same means as man has of turning to
account. Why ought they not? No reason can be given. If the being
eaten were all, there is very good reason why we should be suffered to
eat such of them as we like to eat: we are the better for it, and they are
never the worse. They have none of those long-protracted anticipations
of future misery which we have. The death they suffer in our hands
commonly is, and always may be, a speedier, and by that means a less
painful one, than that which would await them in the inevitable course
of nature. If the being killed were all, there is very good reason why
we should be suffered to kill such as molest us: we should be the worse
3. See About the Bentham Project, U.C. LONDON, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bentham-pro-
ject/about-bentham-project (last visited July 23, 2018).
2018] WHY ANIMALS SHOULD HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH 845
for their living, and they are never the worse for being dead. But is
there any reason why we should be suffered to torment them? Not any
that I can see. Are there any why we should not be suffered to torment
them? Yes, several. See B. I. tit. [Cruelty to animals]. The day has
been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the
greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been
treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as, in England for
example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come,
when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which
never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyr-
anny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the
skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without
redress to the caprice of a tormentor.* It may come one day to be rec-
ognized, that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the
termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for aban-
doning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should
trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the
faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond compar-
ison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an
infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case
were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they rea-
son? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
* See Lewis XIV’s Code Noir.4
Most people know the famous part of the footnote, where he talks
about the importance of asking not “can they reason?” but “can they suf-
fer?” But I think the beginning part is equally as interesting. People usually
don’t quote this beginning part. He recognizes that other civilizations,
namely Hindu and Islamic civilizations, have taken animal interests into
account when establishing the law. He then says that European civiliza-
tions have not taken animal interests into account because European laws
have been the work of mutual fear. In other words, and Mill agrees, people
make laws to prevent themselves from being harmed. Law is an instrument
of self-protection—a sentiment which the less rational animals have not
had the same means to turn to as man does. In other words, it’s just the
fact that animals haven’t had the power of putting what they fear into the
law. Their voices have not been heard when law is made. In other writings,
some of which are still unpublished, Bentham drew out the consequences
of this for the law. There should be outlawing of hunting and fishing for
sport. There should be a ban on other cruel practices, such as any cruel
practice of raising animals for meat. Bentham’s own life showed that he
was a friend of animals. He loved to befriend them, even the mice who
were in his study. There are anecdotes about him embracing the mice who
ran across his lap and taking walks with a companion pig who lived around
him. So he lived with animals as a companion.
4. JEREMY BENTHAM, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS AND LEGISLATION
310 n.122 (Oxford Univ. Press 1879) (1789).
846 DENVER LAW REVIEW [Vol. 95:4
In contrast to Bentham, Mill was not a total outsider: eventually he
became a member of Parliament. He explicitly and forcefully defends Ben-
tham’s views on animals in an important but very neglected article called,
Whewell and Moral Philosophy (1852).5 William Whewell was a con-
servative Christian cleric and a very influential thinker. He was master of
Trinity College. Whewell attacked Bentham for a range of Bentham’s rad-
ical positions. Mill replies to these attacks with scathing wit in a lengthy
journal article.6 The Bentham passage I quoted is quoted in full by Mill in
that article, and he refutes Whewell’s arguments on a number of points.7
Among other things, he shows that Whewell’s arguments against di-
vorce—that nothing should be terminated once you enter into a contract—
would have the consequence of making members of Parliament irremova-
ble and of prohibiting people from changing their profession. Mill is mak-
ing fun of Whewell by drawing out the real consequences of his argu-
ments. He then draws particular attention to Whewell’s mockery of Ben-
tham’s stance towards animal rights.8 Whewell clearly thought it was a
reductio ad absurdum of Bentham’s views that they would require us to
consider the pleasures and pains of animals on par with those of humans.9
Whewell says we should judge any being’s pleasure based on the likeness
of that being to ourselves.10 Mill then turns the tables and says you’d have
to defend slavery under that principle, because white people were always
saying that our pleasures were much more important than the pains we
inflicted on black people.11 In Britain, slavery was already very unpopular,
so Mill certainly could make that argument and expect his audience to
agree: It would be ridiculous to uphold the slaveholder over the abolition-
ist. Then he draws this conclusion, saying:
We are perfectly willing to stake the whole question on this one issue.
Granted, that any practice causes more pain to animals then it gives
pleasure to man, is this practice moral or immoral? And if exactly in
proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of self-
ishness, they do not with one voice answer immoral, let the morality
of the principle of utility be forever condemned.12
Now, that’s a very vague principle and it’s certainly not very ade-
quate. It’s just what Mill seems to think he can say at this point to refute
the arguments of Whewell. Mill often adjusts his arguments to his audi-
ence, withholding more radical aspects of his views that he utters in other
contexts. The main point I want to get out of this is that Mill thought that
the pains of animals count in the Utilitarian calculus just as the pleasures
5. John Stuart Mill, Whewell on Moral Philosophy, in UTILITARIANISM AND OTHER ESSAYS
228–270 (Alan Ryan ed., Penguin Books 1987) (1852).
6. See id.
7. See id. at 251–52.
8. See id. at 251.
9. See id.
10. See id. at 252.
11. See id. at 252–53.
12. Id. at 253.
2018] WHY ANIMALS SHOULD HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH 847
of humans do. The Utilitarian calculus has to take into account the pains
and pleasures of all sentient beings. In other words, animals have interests.
Mill puts this in terms of pleasure and pain, but unlike Bentham, Mill ac-
tually recognized that pleasure and pain were very broad. His idea of hap-
piness was not just limited to bodily pleasure and physical pain. He
thought that the Utilitarian principle should promote a range of valuable
life activities for the creature in question.
I think this is very much like my capabilities approach. Mill was not
able to hold an academic position, so he wrote journalistically. It’s always
a little difficult to figure out exactly what the implications of his texts are,
but I have tried to argue in things I have written that Mill is really like a
capabilities theorist. So he would have supported “happy lives” for ani-
mals—meaning flourishing lives with their own characteristic activities—
something much like my capabilities approach.13
So now to freedom of speech. Mill’s On Liberty is an extended de-
fense of the tremendous importance of the freedom of speech for a decent
society.14 There are two lines of argument that people usually use today to
explain why freedom of speech is really so important.15 I am going to try
to show that Mill really meant those two lines of argument to apply to
animals. He didn’t say it here because he always knew his audience and
sometimes, as I’ve said, left out the more radical things.
There are two lines of argument in On Liberty: the social utility ar-
gument and the personal happiness argument.16 As we will see, they are
very closely linked.
First, the social utility argument. Mill says that if we’re making laws
and policies, we need to be able to figure out what really maximizes hap-
piness.17 That means that we need to be able to consider all of the available
views and information about welfare.18 Then, continuing this thought, he
says: First of all, we should not assume that we have already found the
best way of life.19 That would be ridiculous.20 (Mill was a believer in pro-
gress over time.) And so, we need alternative inputs, including even radi-
cal inputs, which some people might be inclined to suppress.21 And se-
cond, even if we were sure that we had the best way, any good principle is
13. Martha Nussbaum, Mill Between Bentham and Aristotle, 133 DAEDALUS 60, 65–68 (2004),
reprinted in ECONOMICS AND HAPPINESS: FRAMING THE ANALYSIS 178–82 (Luigino Bruni & Pier
Luigi Porta eds., Oxford Univ. Press 2005).
14. See generally MILL, supra note 1.
15. See id.
16. See generally id.
17. See id. at 87–88.
18. See id.
19. See id.
20. See id.
21. See id. at 88.
848 DENVER LAW REVIEW [Vol. 95:4
likely to grow lazy and slack if it is not continually challenged by alterna-
tive viewpoints.22 In short, he explicitly defended unpopular and unpleas-
ant speech for the way in which, even if we can refute it in the end, it helps
us stay on guard and honest with respect to our own views.23
Now to personal happiness. Mill draws heavily on German Romantic
views of self-development in On Liberty.24 Basically, his view is that all
people should have the opportunity to find what suits them—what makes
them happy—in life through what he calls “experiments in living.”25 The
Utilitarians clearly meant to apply this idea to radical forms of sexual life.
Mill was famous for having had a very intimate relationship with a married
woman for many years. It probably wasn’t a sexual relationship because
Mill was kind of a cautious guy. Anyway, it was a love relationship. Then,
when the husband died, they actually got married. That was one radical
experiment. Mill was clearly defending gay rights as well. So experiments
in living are very important to help society find its way. In the end, his
argument for this idea is linked to social utility because his view is that the
human species learns things over time—we make progress—and human
happiness can increase through the testing of alternatives. But that can
never happen if people don’t get to lead these lives. Certainly, people
won’t get to lead these lives unless the speech that recommends these lives
is permitted. In both cases, we do best by protecting speech very broadly.
Mill’s principle is basically like the one that currently dominates in U.S.
law, that is, unless there’s an imminent threat of violence, there’s no call
at all for the suppression of any kind of speech.
Needless to say, in On Liberty, which is addressed to people like
those who later became his fellow Parliamentarians, Mill doesn’t talk
about animals. But Mill clearly was going to do that at some point in his
own thinking. Animals are on par with humans because we know that the
community whose happiness good laws promote includes all sentient be-
ings. We can now say on his behalf what he couldn’t say in a discourse
that was meant to persuade in the England of his day.
How would we apply the insights of On Liberty to thinking about
animal rights and animal speech? First, I think the obvious thing is to rec-
ognize that animals have standing. Mill’s arguments clearly imply that all
harms are cognizable under the law. Under the law, in a Millian state, an-
imals have standing because their harms are harms, just as human harms
are harms. Of course, animals have to be represented by a lawyer or a
guardian to go to court, but they can do that, just as human beings with
cognitive disabilities can now go to court.
But then what about humans’ speech about animals? Well, once
again, there’s going to be a very radical principle here, which is that there
22. See id.
23. See id. at 87–88.
24. See id. at 122.
25. Id. at 122.
2018] WHY ANIMALS SHOULD HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH 849
should be no suppression of any kind of human speech purporting to give
information about the well-being of animals. All of the discussion of “ag-
gag” laws are very pertinent here. Any law limiting that kind of infor-
mation would be a bad law.
But then what about speech by animals? Animals provide infor-
mation about their welfare in many ways. Some really do have some form
of quasi-linguistic communication. For instance, whales have song and el-
ephants have patterns of trumpeting. But that isn’t really the whole issue
because in many ways—through their behavior and evidence of their de-
light, fear, and pain—animals are giving us information all the time even
without anything like speech if we would stop, look, and interact with
them. So here I’m very much in agreement with Will Kymlicka and Sue
Donaldson. In their book, Zoopolis, they say very plausibly that the many
ways in which domesticated animals give evidence of their preferences,
satisfactions, dissatisfactions, fears, and longings should be taken into ac-
count through an established system of surrogacy when making law and
policy.26 This surrogacy occurs when humans would then represent those
interests under the law. But where I disagree with Kymlicka and Don-
aldson is that I really don’t see any reason to draw any sharp line between
domesticated animals and wild animals. They somehow suggest that wild
animals are living in a condition that’s not managed by human beings, but
that’s just not the world that we live in. Wild animals can’t just go off and
decide to lead the lives they want on their own, because human beings are
interfering with those lives all the time, usually for the worse.
Of course, we need to learn a lot to do this well. We’re learning more
all the time and we need to do what Kymlicka and Donaldson so rightly
recommend: we must have a kind of sensitive interaction with these ani-
mals where we listen to them, look at them, absorb what they’re saying to
us, and then try to figure this out. This is more complicated by the fact,
which I think Kymlicka and Donaldson don’t take into account enough,
that animals can have what economists call “adaptive preferences.” That
is, if they’re living a very deprived life, let’s say they’re getting cut off
from the very social group that’s characteristic for them, they may not reg-
ister that by showing pain. Yet, we can figure out by studying the species
more generally that there is an inadequate form of life for them. Anyway,
combining what we know about an animal’s form of life with the infor-
mation that animals are giving us all the time, we can conclude a lot of
different things and then act on these conclusions.
Utilitarians were of course people of their time and place, and it was
a really bad era in Britain, where, for the most part, animals just didn’t
count at all. European traditions at the time were much worse than other
26. SUE DONALDSON & WILL KYMLICKA, ZOOPOLIS: A POLITICAL THEORY OF ANIMAL
RIGHTS (Oxford Univ. Press 2011).
850 DENVER LAW REVIEW [Vol. 95:4
world traditions, as Bentham notes in the passage I quoted. The Utilitari-
ans were radicals and they challenged the idea that animals didn’t count at
all. But Mill was also a pragmatist, so he did not always state the full im-
plications of his thought. But if we put the pieces together, the implications
are absolutely clear: On Liberty does apply to human speech on behalf of
animals and also to the speech of animals about their own welfare. Now is
the time where, unlike Mill, we can seize the radical implications of his
insights for the law. Thank you. Now I will take questions.
QUESTION AND ANSWER
Question: You talked about how speech on behalf of animals
should be protected. Could you talk about United States v.
Stevens27 and a person’s free speech rights to depict cruelty
to animals?
Of course, there are going to be tragic dilemmas. That’s a whole issue
on which I think the Utilitarians were not very good. But what’s really bad
about the whole way that case was treated was that the speech of animals
conveying their pain and torment was not really taken into account at all.
So what we really should do is say that there two kinds of speech. If we
see that a kind of human speech is heavily implicated in the promoting in
a kind of cruelty, which the animal speech records in no uncertain terms,
then there would be a very strong case for the limiting of that kind of hu-
man speech. I think all of those cases are hard cases and we must
acknowledge that they are hard cases, but that conclusion, here, seems ob-
vious to me. It’s not as hard as some other cases because the imminent
danger of violence is there. It’s just that the Brandenburg v. Ohio28 princi-
ple has been understood in too narrow a way. It’s been understood as vio-
lence by humans against other humans, but violence by humans against
animals is now part of the picture too. Well, that kind of snuff film por-
nography does constitute an imminent threat of violence, and I think it was
just badly framed and badly understood. I think we need to completely
reformulate that by taking the speech of animals about violence and their
pain into account.
Question: My question is on your point about adaptive prefer-
ences regarding wild animals, but I wanted to ask it more
broadly in terms of the violence that really underscores hu-
manity’s relationship to nonhuman animals historically.
Even if we think about what we call domesticated animals,
you can see it as a long history of adaptive preferences that
have been shaped by selective breeding by human, etcetera.
27. United States v. Stevens, 599 U.S. 460, 482 (2010) (holding that a statute criminalizing the
commercial creation, sale, or possession of depictions of animal cruelty was “substantially overbroad,”
and therefore invalid under First Amendment free speech protections).
28. See Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447–48 (1969) (holding that First Amendment
protections do not extend to speech aimed at inciting or producing “imminent lawless actions”).
2018] WHY ANIMALS SHOULD HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH 851
So what does it even mean to think about free speech for an-
imals in a context in which the very subjectivity of the other
has been so deeply shaped by a violent context?
Thank you. I am actually in pretty full agreement with Kymlicka and
Donaldson there. In some recent articles, which you’ve probably seen—
there’s one in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies29—they take up this
question: Should we really think back to the pre-domestication scenario
and thereby think that it’s just unjustified to live symbiotically at all with
dogs, cats, and so on? Therefore, we should just let them be free? Now,
they argue, I think rather persuasively, that we have to start with where we
are and with the creatures of the world that we’re living in.30 Sometimes
you can’t fix the history, and the dogs and the cats are there. They are
living in a symbiotic relationship with humans, and there’s no good reason
to think that they would be better off just being let go, free from human
guidance and interaction. Indeed, there’s reason to think, and again I agree
with them, that domesticated animals often derive great satisfaction and
pleasure from the skills they deploy and the work that they do in an inter-
relationship with humans. Let’s take the border collie or the sheep dog as
examples. There’s this display of trained skill which is pleasing to the an-
imal. The animal gives speech about this as it were. It gives evidence of
its own pleasure in that interactive relationship.
How far this extends is very unclear. I think they focus on dogs and
cats for good reason, because those species have been so thoroughly
evolved in a domesticated situation that they wouldn’t do very well if they
were just let to roam. Songbirds are much less clear. And horses are a little
bit less clear. Now, they think that the horse probably shouldn’t be ridden,
but I actually don’t see this. I’ve been involved with horseback riders a lot.
I think that although cruel practices are very dominant in that world and
unfortunately are still there, even though they are becoming less so, the
pleasure that a trained jumper gets from jumping and bonding with the
rider is something that we ought to consider. I’m with Kymlicka and Don-
aldson in thinking that the idea of just turning back the clock and thinking
that we could undo evolution is not a good idea.
It’s really quite different for wild animals though. Although they are
living in a human-dominated context, they haven’t evolved in any way that
responds to that domination. Again, the line is hard to draw here because
elephants have performed work with humans—Asian Elephants in partic-
ular, ever since World War II where they were a major part of the victory
over the Japanese in Asia. There they were trained very sensitively by only
positive reinforcement from a person in the British army who had innova-
tive ideas about this. So we have to look and see, and look at each species
29. See Will Kymlicka & Sue Donaldson, Animals and the Frontiers of Citizenship, 34 OXFORD
J. LEGAL STUD. 201, 201 (2014) (discussing how animal citizenship would both promote justice for
animals and deepen fundamental democratic values).
30. Id. at 204–05.
852 DENVER LAW REVIEW [Vol. 95:4
one by one. But for the most part, we should be taking the evidence of
each animal for its form of life—what makes it happy—and try and give
it those conditions by responsible stewardship of the environment, which
is becoming more and more difficult because of human overpopulation.
Responsible stewardship very much includes limiting human population.
Question: If we extended this not only to include the past but
also the future, what utility would the Utilitarian way of
thinking have to say, for example, the agribusiness corporate
companies who might want to engineer a pig incapable of
feeling pain?
That example always gets pulled out to suggest that we can fix things
so that there’s no problem. Well, of course, my Utilitarianism is not just
talking about pain; it’s talking about a whole form of life. That’s why I
prefer Mill to Bentham. I think Bentham was just too narrow, although he
had reasons for that in his own context. I think we have to think: Here’s a
creature who has a complicated form of life, is it getting to lead that form
of life? We should be striving for simulated forms of animal protein that
may satisfy meat eaters because they taste like meat, but they don’t involve
the exploitation of animals—of any kind of living sentient being—at all.
I’ve long said this about animal experimentation: we can do so many
things now by computer simulation that there’s a future where we don’t
have to use animals at all to see the implications of a new surgical tech-
nique or a new form of drug treatment. That seems to me a future that we
should strive for.
Question: I just want to pause over the question of what freedom
of speech animals currently have, and your focus, which is
more on why they should have it. You’ve given us the reasons
that we all know animals express themselves and that there’s
adaptation, in which case their expression may be con-
strained and not natural. I guess the question is, are we talk-
ing about a special case where it becomes our duty to create
the best conditions in which expression can be most honest,
which is quite different from freedom of speech for humans,
in which case we don’t typically impose that duty upon our-
selves? If that’s the case, where does it go? Does it go to-
wards imposing some duty upon us to listen and pay atten-
tion? Does it go down a copyright path? What are all of the
different dimensions that a more robust freedom of speech
might take us?
First, there’s the issue of standing. Now, even though there may be
distorted preferences, at least humans get to express their preferences. The
animals can do it only when some human cares enough to try to make the
law come out that way. But if the law is not enforced, let’s say laws against
cruelty, then there is no animal that has standing to go to court. Humans
2018] WHY ANIMALS SHOULD HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH 853
acting as animal advocates don’t usually have standing either. Fixing that
goes a long way.
But the adaptation problem actually came up in my work in connec-
tion with humans. I’ve spent about twenty years of my career working with
women in developing countries. You poll them and ask if they want to
have more education, and they’ll often say no. They’ve been brought up
to be afraid of more education. They’ve been told that more education
makes them unmarriageable or is bad for them and so on. Even if you tell
them about all the things that education opens up for women, then they
don’t respond to that particularly well because they’re living in these con-
ditions all the time. Now, one of the things that we’ve talked about a lot in
the development context is creating conditions under which women would
then, first of all, be free to express preferences without fear. But then, too,
their preferences gradually shift and, as they grow to understand their pos-
sibilities, their dignity, and their agency, they form more adequate prefer-
ences. Women’s groups in India largely have that function. Women,
whether they’ve left their husbands or whether they haven’t, band together
in solidarity and talk with other women about their life conditions. They
then learn very quickly that there are actually possibilities that they have
in a group of other women that they didn’t actually think that they had at
all. My book, Women and Human Development, is all about transcending
the adaptive in that way.31
Now, we have that in the “Me Too” movement as well.32 We now see
that women were living in conditions of fear for years and years. They
didn’t come forward with reports of sexual harassment and sexual vio-
lence. Sometimes they didn’t even recognize what happened to them as
abuse. We see this with the girls who were the victims of Dr. Nassar.33
Their parent didn’t even recognize that what was happening to them was
abuse because of the adaptation of preferences that says whatever a doctor
tells you is okay. This whole movement is about undoing adaptation and
creating conditions of freedom in which women can come forward and be
believed. It’s still very incomplete, but at least it’s happening. I think we
have to figure out what else we can do to make it happen more. We
shouldn’t have to wait twenty years to have a woman come forward and
say that she has been sexually violated.
I think it’s not a different problem at all. For example, you take ani-
mals in zoos who may not be yelling in pain, and yet they’re deprived of
31. See MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM, WOMEN AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: THE CAPABILITIES
APPROACH 111–66 (Cambridge Univ. Press 2000) (discussing adaptive preferences and women’s op-
tions).
32. See Sandra E. Garcia, The Woman Who Created #MeToo Long Before Hashtags, N.Y.
TIMES (Oct. 20, 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/us/me-too-movement-tarana-
burke.html, for a discussion of the history and origins of the “Me Too” movement.
33. See Christine Hauser, Larry Nassar Is Sentenced to Another 40 to 125 Years in Prison, N.Y.
TIMES (Feb. 5, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/sports/larry-nassar-sentencing-hear-
ing.html, for an overview of the Larry Nassar investigation, trial, and sentencing.
854 DENVER LAW REVIEW [Vol. 95:4
the company of other creatures of their kind. We can study such animals
when they do exist in what I’ll call “greater freedom.” I won’t say “free-
dom absolute” because there is no such thing in this world, but let’s say
elephants that live in a big wildlife preserve instead of a zoo. They give us
evidence that we can then use to say that this is not so good for animals to
live in a zoo and not have any other animals of their type around. We
would then gradually try to undo the confinement of elephants in zoos and
forbid the trafficking of elephants into new zoos, just as Friends of Ani-
mals has been working on very heroically for some time.34 Then we would
create for elephants the conditions in which they could express and gravi-
tate toward the form of life that they would actually choose. That would
be the basic idea.
Question: When talking about animal speech, as with humans
with significant cognitive limitations and/or children, we’re
always talking about a certain degree of paternalism. Do you
have any cautions for us in thinking about the problems in-
herent in representational speech?
Yes, there are big problems. Eva Kittay, who I think is the philoso-
pher who has done the best work on humans with disabilities within the
field of philosophy,35 spent years heroically pursuing these things in the
name of, and using the example of, her own daughter Sesha, who has mul-
tiple and very severe cognitive disabilities. However, she later recognized
that she had been guilty of paternalism because she thought Sesha was
indicating that she wanted to be with the parents all the time, to be shel-
tered and taken care of. Well, a mother can easily feel that way, especially
with a child who is so vulnerable. But then, at one point, Sesha ended up
briefly living in a group home and Eva recognized that she had been flour-
ishing there in a way that she had not flourished in their own home. That
made her backtrack and recognize that we really have great dangers when
we read the preferences of even our own children.
I think there are all the same issues with animals, but maybe a little
less so because parents have all kinds of reasons for misreading. They are
so personally invested in their children and they see the child as another
“them.” They impose on the child all kinds of hopes and fears for them-
selves. Maybe, just maybe, we’re a little bit more honest with respect to
other animals because we don’t project ourselves onto them in the same
way. Anyway, that doesn’t mean that we aren’t prone to error, but it might
be a different kind of error. With anything like that, we just need to realize
what the possibilities for error are and then try to work around it. But in
the case of studying animals, we’re lucky enough to be able to observe
34. See Marielle Grenade-Willis, Keeping Elephants in Zoos Is Not a Right to Ethical Consid-
eration, FRIENDS OF ANIMALS (Oct. 4, 2017), https://friendsofanimals.org/keeping-elephants-in-zoos-
is-not-a-right-to-ethical-consideration.
35. See generally EVA FEDER KITTAY, LOVE’S LABOR: ESSAYS ON WOMEN, EQUALITY, AND
DEPENDENCY (Routledge 1999).
2018] WHY ANIMALS SHOULD HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH 855
how they live when we minimally interfere, in the case of many wild ani-
mals. That gives us a lot of help.
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