Exploring animal justice amid ecological crisis and authoritarianism, beyond individual choices to systemic change.
Animals, Ethics, and Justice: Beyond the Human is a webinar series hosted by Dr. Kathrin Herrmann that explores how human societies relate to other animals—and what more ethical, just, and sustainable forms of coexistence might look like. Bringing together leading scholars and thinkers from across disciplines, the series examines the structural, cultural, and ethical dimensions of human–animal relations in the context of planetary health and multispecies justice.
Upcoming Talk
John Sanbonmatsu (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)
Animal Justice in an Era of Ecological Collapse and Authoritarianism
Please register in advance at: https://jh.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_UXFsIiPqSMO_UIYlwJ9otg#/registration
In this session, philosopher John Sanbonmatsu will discuss key ideas from his recent book The Omnivore’s Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals, and Ourselves (NYU Press, 2025).
Sanbonmatsu challenges the common framing of animal exploitation as a matter of individual consumer choice. Instead, he situates it within broader social, economic, and ideological systems that normalize the large-scale use and killing of animals. Drawing on political philosophy, critical theory, and environmental thought, he examines how these systems perpetuate violence against nonhuman animals while obscuring its ethical implications.
Abstract
Prospects for the emancipation of nonhuman animals from human terror and violence have never seemed dimmer. Despite centuries of principled dissent against the exploitation of animals for food and other purposes, the number of animals killed each year continues to rise. Veganism remains a marginal—and marginalized—cultural presence in every society, while the mass extinction crisis intensifies.
Meanwhile, populist authoritarian movements of the far right, fueled by structural contradictions and fissures in late capitalism, are gaining state power across the globe, eroding democratic institutions and human rights while accelerating ecological collapse.
In this talk, Professor Sanbonmatsu offers a strategic analysis of the balance of contending forces—economic, ecological, social, cultural, technological, and existential—that shape the context in which future struggles for animal justice will unfold.
About the Speaker
John Sanbonmatsu is Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, where he teaches courses in ethics, political theory, existentialism, and other topics. He is the author of The Omnivore’s Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals, and Ourselves (NYU Press, 2025), which Jeffrey Moussaief Masson has described as „perhaps the single best book ever written about animal suffering and why the world needs to go vegan.“ Prof. Sanbonmatsu is also author of The Postmodern Prince, about the crisis of left intellectual thought, and editor of the anthology Critical Theory and Animal Liberation (Bloomsbury). He is creator and curator of the CleanMeat-Hoax.com website, which raises concerns about cellular meat technology. His writing has appeared in CounterPunch, and Huffington Post, among other places.