Lauren RubensteinJune 2, 20165min
Writing in The Washington Post, Lori Gruen, the William Griffin Professor of Philosophy, argues that fingers are being pointed in the wrong direction after Harambe, an endangered lowland gorilla, was shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo after a 4-year-old child entered his enclosure. "The real culprits are zoos," she writes. Many in the animal protection community contend that the gorilla didn't pose a real threat to the boy, and are questioning if zoo staff did enough to try to separate Harambe from the child. Others are blaming the boy's mother for not properly supervising him. Gruen writes: For me, the real question is…

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Olivia DrakeJanuary 8, 20162min
What started out as a class assignment has evolved into a public website. During the fall semester, students enrolled in the Philosophy 268 course, The Ethics of Captivity, explored the various forms and conditions of captivity, including prisons, zoos, laboratories and sanctuaries. As one of the class assignments, Lori Gruen, the William Griffin Professor of Philosophy and chair of the Philosophy Department, asked her students to work in small groups on a blog post, highlighting a variety of ethical and political issues that captivity raises for humans and other animals. (more…)

Lauren RubensteinNovember 24, 20152min
A book by Stephen Angle, the Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies, was recently published in Chinese translation by Jiangxi People's Press. Titled, "Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy: Toward Progressive Confucianism," the book was originally published by Polity in 2013. The Chinese version includes a new preface. According to the blurb for the English-language version: Confucian political philosophy has recently emerged as a vibrant area of thought both in China and around the globe. This book provides an accessible introduction to the main perspectives and topics being debated today, and shows why Progressive Confucianism is a particularly promising approach. Students…

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Olivia DrakeOctober 14, 20152min
This month, Lori Gruen accepted a three-year appointment as a Faculty Fellow at Tufts' Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine's Center for Animals and Public Policy. Gruen is the William Griffin Professor of Philosophy, professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, and professor of environmental studies at Wesleyan. She also coordinates Wesleyan Animal Studies. The mission of the Tufts University's Center for Animals and Public Policy (CAPP) is to conduct and encourage scholarly evaluation and understanding of the complex societal issues and public policy dimensions of the changing role and impact of animals in society. As a Faculty Fellow, Gruen will explore human-animal relationships with Tufts…

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Olivia DrakeMarch 3, 20152min
Lori Gruen, professor and chair of philosophy, professor of environmental studies, and professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, is the author of a new book, Entangled Empathy: An Alternative Ethic for Our Relationships with Animals, published by Lantern Books on Feb. 15. In Entangled Empathy, Gruen argues that rather than focusing on animal rights, we ought to work to make our relationships with animals right by empathetically responding to their needs, interests, desires, vulnerabilities, hopes and unique perspectives. Pointing out that we are already entangled in complex and life-altering relationships with other animals, Gruen guides readers through a new way…

Lauren RubensteinMarch 3, 20153min
Lori Gruen, professor and chair of philosophy, discussed her new book, Entangled Empathy: An Alternative Ethic for Our Relationships with Animals, with University of Colorado Professor Emeritus Mark Bekoff in The Huffington Post. Bekoff calls the book "a wonderful addition to a growing literature in the transdisciplinary field called anthrozoology, the study of human-animal relationships." Gruen defines "entangled empathy" as "a process whereby we first acknowledge that we are already in relationships with all sorts of other animals (humans and non-humans) and these relationships are, for the most part, not very good ones. We then work to figure out how to make them better and that…

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Olivia DrakeJanuary 6, 20152min
Wesleyan recently received two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The awards will support research by Wesleyan faculty Mary Alice Haddad and Sanford Shieh. Mary Alice Haddad, associate professor of government, received a $33,600 grant for the NEH Fellowships for Advanced Social Science Research on Japan project titled, "Environmental Politics in East Asia: Strategies that Work." “Japan has experienced some of the world’s most intense environmental crises and taken leadership roles in finding solutions," Haddad said. "The Fellowship for Advanced Social Science Research on Japan will enable me to examine the ways that Japan’s experience has served as a model for…

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Olivia DrakeJuly 7, 20142min
Professor Lori Gruen is the co-editor of a new book titled Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth, published by Bloomsbury Academic in July 2014. Gruen is chair and professor of philosophy, professor of environmental studies, and professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies. She also co-coordinates Wesleyan Animal Studies. In this 288-page book, leading feminist scholars and activists introduce and explore themes central to contemporary ecofeminism. Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth first offers an historical, grounding overview that situates ecofeminist theory and activism and provides a timeline for important publications and events. This…

Bill FisherFebruary 20, 20131min
In this video, Lori Gruen, professor of philosophy; professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies; professor of environmental studies, talks about the ethics of caring for chimpanzees who have been subjected to invasive biomedical research. She discusses recent positive developments in the movement to retire to sanctuaries the last 1,000 federally-supported research chimpanzees in the United States. Professor Gruen maintains the website www.last1000chimps.com to track the movement of the remaining research chimps in the U.S. from labs to retirement. Find more information about Chimp Haven, the National Chimpanzee Sanctuary where many research chimps live in retirement, at www.chimphaven.org. #THISISWHY [youtube width="640" height="420"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3HEdXEc95s[/youtube]

David LowJanuary 25, 20132min
Stephen Angle is the author of Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy, published by Polity in 2012. Angle is professor of philosophy, professor of East Asian studies, and tutor in the College of Social Studies. Confucian political philosophy has recently emerged as a vibrant area of thought both in China and around the globe. This book provides an accessible introduction to the main perspectives and topics being debated today, and shows why Progressive Confucianism is a particularly promising approach. Students of political theory or contemporary politics will learn that far from being confined to a museum, contemporary Confucianism is both responding to current…

Olivia DrakeDecember 19, 20113min
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, philosopher, psychoanalyst and public intellectual, died suddenly on Dec. 1 at the age of 65. She served on the Wesleyan faculty for nearly two decades, joining the College of Letters in 1974, after earning her Ph.D. in Philosophy at the New School, where she studied closely with Hannah Arendt. In 1982, Young-Bruehl published what is still considered the definitive biography of Arendt, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (Yale University Press, 1982; Second Edition, 2004), a text for which she received the Harcourt Literary Prize in Biography and Memoirs. Six years later, in 1988, she published an intellectual…

Olivia DrakeJuly 25, 20112min
Wesleyan's Animal Studies hosted the Animals and Society Institute-Wesleyan Animal Studies Fellowship Program Conference June 27-30 in Usdan University Center. The conference is the culminating event in the first annual ASI-WAS Fellowship Program, which brings to campus a broad range of scholars studying human-animal relations. Lori Gruen, chair and professor of philosophy, and Kari Weil, university professor of letters, co-organized the conference. Photos of the conference faculty, guests and ASI fellows are below: (more…)