From 2017 to 2019, The Yale Animal Law Speakers Series hosted a popular series of animal law talks and panels. These events attracted large and diverse audiences from across campus. Speakers and panels hosted or co-hosted during the 2017-18 and 2018-19 academic years included:
| "Fighting Factory Farms: How Two Midwestern Family Farmers Stood Up to the Agricultural- Political- Industrial Complex" — featuring Sonja Eayrs Trom, co-founder of Dodge County Concerned Citizens, and Chris Petersen, an Iowa family hog farmer and past president of the Iowa Farmers Union – presenting their personal stories of how factory farms and local government policies work together to force independent families off their land and cause environmental destruction in the Midwest. Watch the recording. |
| "Are Happy Lab Animals Better for Science?" A Panel Discussion on the Impacts of Lab Animal Treatment & Animal Welfare Laws on Human Science” -- featuring Dr. David Grimm Yale PhD ‘04, award-winning science journalist, and scientists Dr. Brianna Gaskill, Dr. Caroline Zeiss and Dr. Garet Lahvis on science’s animal models “translatability crisis” and the impacts of lab animal treatment and animal welfare laws on human science. Watch the recording. |
| Irus Braverman, Professor of Law, University of Buffalo — presenting on her recent work, Captive: Zoometric Operations in Gaza. Drawing on ethnographic encounters and investigative analysis, Professor Braverman — who coined the term “zoometrics” to describe the detailed calculations of biopolitical worthiness that occur within and along the human-animal divide — discussed how Gaza’s spatial confinement has lent itself to a radicalized, discursive interplay between the animalization of humans and the humanization of animals who live in Gaza. |
| The Honorable Virginia Kendall, Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois — presenting on the parallels between human trafficking and animal trafficking and her twenty years of experience training prosecutors on both. Judge Kendall is the co-author of Child Exploitation and Trafficking: Examining the Global Challenges and the U.S. Responses (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2011). Judge Kendall has traveled through the State Department and Lawyers Without Borders to Kenya, Zambia, Liberia, and Cyprus, to teach judges about public corruption, crimes against women and human trafficking. She lectures extensively both domestically and internationally in the areas of public corruption, corporate supply chain compliance, and human rights. |
| Lewis Bollard, YLS ’13, Farm Animal Welfare Program Officer, Open Philanthropy Project, and Amanda Hitt, Food Integrity Campaign Director, Government Accountability Project — presenting as part of a panel on “ag-gag” laws and whistleblower protection in the agricultural sector. |
| Lisa Margonelli, Yale College ‘90, nationally bestselling author and science journalist — presenting “Small Termites & Big Ideas,” a talk and discussion about her latest book, Underbug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology, which The New York Times called “mesmerizing… a rare longitudinal insight into the slippery nature of scientific progress.” |
Timothy Patchirat, Yale Ph.D. ’08, Assistant Professor of Political Science, U. Mass Amherst — presenting on his forthcoming book on the politics of transparency in contemporary industrialized animal agriculture. Pachirat is the author of Every Twelve Seconds (Yale University Press, 2013), which draws on nearly six months of undercover research on the kill floor of an industrialized slaughterhouse to examine how massive processes of violence are normalized in society, and Among Wolves: Ethnography and the Immersive Study of Power (Routledge, 2018), a playful and provocative seven-act play featuring ten contemporary ethnographers and a one-eyed dog who can predict the future. | |
Maryn McKenna, journalist — presenting on her book, Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats. | |
David Wolfson, Executive Director, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy — presenting on farm animal law and the history and strategy of using ballot initiatives to improve industry standards, and his example of advocating for animals pro-bono as a corporate lawyer. | |
Nancy Perry, Senior VP for Government Relations, ASPCA — presenting on legislative and policy work at the state and federal levels and her work to pass laws on animal crush videos, fur trade practices, and animal fighting. | |
Aylon Steinhart, Senior Advisor, The Good Food Institute — presenting on the evolution of the clean food industry. |