l***@rogers.com
2007-04-19 14:24:33 UTC
Animal Rights Extremism Meets Academia
By Jacob Laksin
Glen Kissel did not recognize the name. Reading through the website of
his employer, the University of Southern Indiana, on March 29th, the
assistant professor of engineering marked that the following Monday
the school was slated to play host to someone named Gary Yourofsky. By
all appearances an animal-rights activist, he was to deliver a lecture
on "Ethical Veganism." According to the school's description,
Yourofsky "asks people to be kind to animals and ultimately, to go
vegan." It seemed innocent enough.
Until Kissel clicked on the Yourofksy's website, adaptt.org, featured
prominently on the school's online bulletin. What he found there
shocked him. No common campaigner for the virtues of tofu of wheat
germ, Yourokfsy, it turned out, was an animal-rights ultra who openly
endorsed violence against humans and forthrightly supported eco-
terrorist organizations.
What arrested his attention was an article Yourofsky had authored in
1997 under the title "Empathy, Education & Violence: A Time for
Everything" and updated in 2005. A brief for the view, prevalent among
the outer fringes of the animal-rights movement, that "violence" was
preferable to "apathy," the article carried the following admission:
"Given the choice of apathy or someone liberating mink, burning down a
research torture-laboratory, or killing a vivisectionist or other
DIRECT murderer of animals, I will choose the aforesaid actions over
apathy any day of the week." Elsewhere in the article, Yourofsky
declared his belief that "since violence is an essential part of
activism, even if an abuser of animals perished during a fire or other
form of direct action, I would unequivocally support that, too."
Most chilling, perhaps, was Yourofsky's call to arms: "The time has
come to forcibly free our family members from their captors, even if
that means injuring or killing someone in the process." That's when
Kissel knew that there was more to Yourofsky's story than one would
gather from the school's website. "I realized at that point that it
was more serious than it appeared to be," he told FPM last week.
Indeed, Kissel had discovered only one section of a decidedly
dangerous resume.
That wasn't always the case. Born in Oak Park, Michigan, in 1970, Gary
Yourofsky called the solidly middle-class suburb home until the age of
25. Once a meat-eating, leather-shoe sporting everyman, Yourofsky, by
his own account, became a convert to the cause of veganism (a more
puritanical version of vegetarianism) and animal rights after
attending the circus with his stepfather, a professional circus clown,
in his early twenties. There, as he recounted to one interviewer, he
saw an elephant with "nothing but fear and hopelessness in her eyes"
and became convinced that "something was wrong."
Not only did Yourofsky walk out of the circus but, in short order, he
became the ringleader of the notorious eco-radical outfit the Animal
Liberation Front (ALF). In no small part, ALF owes its well-documented
reputation for vandalism, sabotage, and arson in the name of "animal
liberation" to incendiaries like Yourofsky. In April of 1997, to
isolate just one instance, he led a gang of ALF militants in a raid on
a Canadian fur farm, in the course of which the hearty band of
trespassers "liberated" 1,542 mink. Canadian authorities saw matters
differently, and Yourofsky wound up serving a 77-day stint in maximum
security lock-up. (The freed furballs reportedly fared even worse,
with many perishing in the wild.)
Yourofsky was unapologetic. The assault on the fur farm, Yourofsky
would later muse, was of a piece with his mission "to do everything in
my power legally and illegally to facilitate positive and meaningful
changes for my planetary companions." Particular stress should be
placed on "illegally": In the years between 1997 and 1999 alone,
Yourofsky would be arrested no fewer than 13 times.
Crime not only did not pay for Yourofsky, but it left him in
considerable debt. In a 2001 interview with the Toledo Blade, the self-
proclaimed friend of animals everywhere confessed that he had trouble
providing for his dog Rex and owed "at least $30,000 on credit cards."
Things looked bleak. In a 2002 email to supporters, reproduced on the
website AnimalRights.net, Yourofsky revealed that he had "been on the
brink of homelessness as well for about six months now." Mournfully,
he added that he would be taking a temporary respite from activism in
search of more gainful employment.
He found it at the animal-rights left's flagship organization, People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), where he was promptly
appointed a "humane education lecturer." Taking the former ALF radical
into college, high-school and even middle-school classrooms, the job
boosted both his pay and his profile as an activist.
But it was not to last. Although PETA's politics can not reasonably
classified as moderate -- the group opposes seeing-eye dogs for the
blind and likens family farms to Nazi death camps -- it was too
conciliatory for Yourofsky's fanatical tastes. Before long he was
decrying PETA as a "hindrance to the animal liberation movement" for
its insufficiently militant tactics and denouncing PETA co-founder and
president Ingrid Newkirk as a "serial cat killer" who "has turned PETA
into an efficient killing machine mirroring the companies...she claims
to despise," a reference to reports that the organization occasionally
euthanizes some of the animals it takes in.
Instead of returning to the wilderness of radical activism, however,
Yourofsky has found a comfy new racket as an ambassador of "ethical
veganism." As a representative of ADAPTT (animals deserve absolute
protection today and tomorrow), a Royal Oak-based non-profit Yourofsky
founded in 1996, he has become a mainstay on college campuses.
Evidently titillated by his radical credentials, professors have
routinely invited Yourofsky, who in his rectangular glasses and
fashionably glabrous pate could effortlessly pass for a graduate
student, to counsel their students on the evils of eating meat and the
concomitant righteousness of veganism and vegetarianism. The ADAPTT
website devotes a whole page to the testimonials of these fawning
professors. ("Thank you for teaching my students more in one day than
I've been able to teach them all semester," gushes one enamored
educator). Meanwhile, Yourofsky boasts on the site that, as of 2006,
he has given nearly 1,000 lectures in 130 schools and enjoyed the
audience of thousands of "carnivorous students."
There is one thing, however, that you will not find on Yourofsky's
website: a repudiation of his past support for violence and
lawbreaking in the service of animal rights. And with good reason.
Even as he has been welcomed into universities nationwide, Yourofsky
remains an unreconstructed supporter of animal-rights extremism as
practiced by the ALF.
One need only look up Yourofsky's essay "Abolition, Liberation,
Freedom: Coming to a Fur Farm Near You," featured in the 2004 book
Terrorists Or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberation of
Animals. (To convey the ideological flavor of the book, it is
sufficient to note that the foreword is penned by far-left sage Ward
Churchill.) In a billet-doux to the eco-terrorist group, Yourofsky
writes: "If people truly want to end terrorism," they need to "support
the courageous ALF activists and liberate animals from places of
terror." In defense of his view that "ALF activists are not
terrorists," Yourofsky insists that "it should never be viewed as a
crime to try to forcibly stop" the supposed "animal exploiters." On
the contrary, according to Yourofsky, "It is an act of compassion and
courage." For Yourofsky, the ALF is carrying on the proud tradition of
American abolitionists: "Without question, ALF liberations are akin to
Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, which assisted in the
liberation of blacks from white slave owners."
Perhaps ironically, in view of his maximalist faith in animal rights,
Yourofsky has little sympathy for the lives of his own species. When
asked in a 2001 interview whether he would object to the death of an
"animal abuser" while burning down a research lab, he said: "I would
unequivocally support that, too." A similar question in a 2005
interview prompted an eruption of exceptionally malignant bile from
Yourofsky:
I hope that fathers accidentally shoot their sons on hunting
excursions, while carnivores suffer heart attacks that kill them
slowly. Every women ensconced in fur should endure a rape so vicious
that it scars them forever. While every man entrenched in fur should
suffer an anal raping so horrific that they become disembowelled.
Every rodeo cowboy and matador should be gored to death, while circus
abusers are trampled by elephants and mauled by tigers. And, lastly,
may irony shine its esoteric head in the form of animal researchers
catching debilitating diseases and painfully withering away because
research dollars that could have been used to treat them was wasted on
the barbaric, unscientific practice of vivisection.
To Glenn Kissel's astonishment, it was to this Gary Yourofsky -- a
known criminal and unabashed supporter of animal-rights terrorism who
winced at the plight of mink but blithely advocated the worst cruelty
for man -- that the school would be providing a forum.
That it did not do so is a testament to the professor's quick-
thinking. Recalling that USI's university handbook made it a condition
that an invited "speaker does not advocate violation of any federal or
state law," Kissel emailed USI Provost Linda Bennett several
statements by Yourofsky justifying violence and illegal activity. As
further evidence, he noted that in 2000, Yourofsky's organization,
ADAPTT, had been stripped of its tax-deductible status by the IRS for
supporting illegal activity and sabotage under the guise of "civil
disobedience and direct action." (In explaining its loss of tax-free
status, the ADAPTT website alludes conspiratorially to "government
harassment.")
Helping Kissel's case was that he was not waging a one-man battle. USI
alumni, alerted by the professor to Yourofsky extremist record,
rallied to his side. So did Indiana Right to Life, the state's leading
anti-abortion group, which issued a statement highlighting Yourofksy's
support for violence and murder and condemned his appearance at USI.
In the end, the school had little choice but to cancel Yourofsky's
lecture.
Not everyone is pleased with that outcome. The world of academia is
not infrequently the refuge of political extremists, and USI does not
appear immune from the general trend. Yourofsky's biggest supporter on
campus, and the man responsible for inviting him, is Maurice
Hamington, an assistant professor of philosophy at USI. Hamington, who
lists his academic interest as "feminist care ethics," has on several
previous occasions invited Yourofsky to address students in his
philosophy courses. In a January 2006 email reprinted on Yourofsky's
website, Hamington writes that "[y]ou are always welcome in my
classroom" and expresses his hope "that someone comes to their senses
and funds your important work."
If the professor is alarmed about his guest's demonstrable support for
violence and lawbreaking, he does not advertise his concerns. Indeed,
following the cancellation of Yourofsky's speech on April 2nd,
Hamington took pains to stress that this move was just a "precaution."
As he told USI's campus newspaper, The Shield: "We could have easily
made the case that this was one statement made 10 years ago and that
he gives speeches across the nation all the time and does not incite
violence."
That defense strains credulity. As any review of his recent writings
would reveal, Yourofsky continues to champion animal-rights militancy;
the notion that his support for violence is limited to a single,
decade-old statement is pure fiction. It is not even clear that
Hamington believes in Yourofsky's newly non-violent disposition.
According to Kissel, at a faculty meeting last fall, Hamington
candidly referred to Yourofsky as an "international
terrorist." (Hamington did not respond to several requests for comment
from this magazine.) Moreover, as Glen Kissel observes, USI's policy
does not center on incitement, but on the issue of weather speakers
advocate the violation of any federal of state law. By that standard,
Yourofsky manifestly has no place on campus.
It bears noting that in his on-campus appearances, Yourofsky himself
has been a security concern. In an April 2003 appearance at East
Tennessee State University, for example, Yourofsky became hostile --
even before his lecture -- when a professor circulated pamphlets
presenting a view on animal rights contrary to his own. According to
one report, Yourofsky "became abusive toward" Shannon Miller, a
biology professor who organized the lecture, and even upset a cart
containing the pamphlets. Campus police had to be called in to restore
order, and the lecture was cancelled. The irony of Professor Hamington
inviting someone like Yourofsky to campus is not lost on Kissel. "Here
we have an ethics professor inviting the most unethical spokesman for
vegetarianism that you can imagine," he observes.
Ultimately, the fact that an extremist in the mold of Yourofsky could
be welcomed by a university is a symptom of a deeper problem plaguing
higher education. USI is no exception. Although the administration
defied left-wing voices on campus by canceling the recent event, that
independence is a rarity at the school. On poring over past press
releases and talking to alumni, Glen Kissel found a startling "lack of
intellectual diversity in the kinds of speakers that are brought to
campus." By way of illustration, he notes that the school has hosted
only two conservative speakers in the last 17 years.
Certainly such intellectual disparities are cause for concern. But
perhaps nothing demonstrates the ills of modern academia so well as
the following fact: At thousands of schools across the country, Gary
Yourofsky remains a guest of honor.
Jacob Laksin is a senior editor for FrontPage Magazine.
His e-mail is ***@gmail.com.
By Jacob Laksin
Glen Kissel did not recognize the name. Reading through the website of
his employer, the University of Southern Indiana, on March 29th, the
assistant professor of engineering marked that the following Monday
the school was slated to play host to someone named Gary Yourofsky. By
all appearances an animal-rights activist, he was to deliver a lecture
on "Ethical Veganism." According to the school's description,
Yourofsky "asks people to be kind to animals and ultimately, to go
vegan." It seemed innocent enough.
Until Kissel clicked on the Yourofksy's website, adaptt.org, featured
prominently on the school's online bulletin. What he found there
shocked him. No common campaigner for the virtues of tofu of wheat
germ, Yourokfsy, it turned out, was an animal-rights ultra who openly
endorsed violence against humans and forthrightly supported eco-
terrorist organizations.
What arrested his attention was an article Yourofsky had authored in
1997 under the title "Empathy, Education & Violence: A Time for
Everything" and updated in 2005. A brief for the view, prevalent among
the outer fringes of the animal-rights movement, that "violence" was
preferable to "apathy," the article carried the following admission:
"Given the choice of apathy or someone liberating mink, burning down a
research torture-laboratory, or killing a vivisectionist or other
DIRECT murderer of animals, I will choose the aforesaid actions over
apathy any day of the week." Elsewhere in the article, Yourofsky
declared his belief that "since violence is an essential part of
activism, even if an abuser of animals perished during a fire or other
form of direct action, I would unequivocally support that, too."
Most chilling, perhaps, was Yourofsky's call to arms: "The time has
come to forcibly free our family members from their captors, even if
that means injuring or killing someone in the process." That's when
Kissel knew that there was more to Yourofsky's story than one would
gather from the school's website. "I realized at that point that it
was more serious than it appeared to be," he told FPM last week.
Indeed, Kissel had discovered only one section of a decidedly
dangerous resume.
That wasn't always the case. Born in Oak Park, Michigan, in 1970, Gary
Yourofsky called the solidly middle-class suburb home until the age of
25. Once a meat-eating, leather-shoe sporting everyman, Yourofsky, by
his own account, became a convert to the cause of veganism (a more
puritanical version of vegetarianism) and animal rights after
attending the circus with his stepfather, a professional circus clown,
in his early twenties. There, as he recounted to one interviewer, he
saw an elephant with "nothing but fear and hopelessness in her eyes"
and became convinced that "something was wrong."
Not only did Yourofsky walk out of the circus but, in short order, he
became the ringleader of the notorious eco-radical outfit the Animal
Liberation Front (ALF). In no small part, ALF owes its well-documented
reputation for vandalism, sabotage, and arson in the name of "animal
liberation" to incendiaries like Yourofsky. In April of 1997, to
isolate just one instance, he led a gang of ALF militants in a raid on
a Canadian fur farm, in the course of which the hearty band of
trespassers "liberated" 1,542 mink. Canadian authorities saw matters
differently, and Yourofsky wound up serving a 77-day stint in maximum
security lock-up. (The freed furballs reportedly fared even worse,
with many perishing in the wild.)
Yourofsky was unapologetic. The assault on the fur farm, Yourofsky
would later muse, was of a piece with his mission "to do everything in
my power legally and illegally to facilitate positive and meaningful
changes for my planetary companions." Particular stress should be
placed on "illegally": In the years between 1997 and 1999 alone,
Yourofsky would be arrested no fewer than 13 times.
Crime not only did not pay for Yourofsky, but it left him in
considerable debt. In a 2001 interview with the Toledo Blade, the self-
proclaimed friend of animals everywhere confessed that he had trouble
providing for his dog Rex and owed "at least $30,000 on credit cards."
Things looked bleak. In a 2002 email to supporters, reproduced on the
website AnimalRights.net, Yourofsky revealed that he had "been on the
brink of homelessness as well for about six months now." Mournfully,
he added that he would be taking a temporary respite from activism in
search of more gainful employment.
He found it at the animal-rights left's flagship organization, People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), where he was promptly
appointed a "humane education lecturer." Taking the former ALF radical
into college, high-school and even middle-school classrooms, the job
boosted both his pay and his profile as an activist.
But it was not to last. Although PETA's politics can not reasonably
classified as moderate -- the group opposes seeing-eye dogs for the
blind and likens family farms to Nazi death camps -- it was too
conciliatory for Yourofsky's fanatical tastes. Before long he was
decrying PETA as a "hindrance to the animal liberation movement" for
its insufficiently militant tactics and denouncing PETA co-founder and
president Ingrid Newkirk as a "serial cat killer" who "has turned PETA
into an efficient killing machine mirroring the companies...she claims
to despise," a reference to reports that the organization occasionally
euthanizes some of the animals it takes in.
Instead of returning to the wilderness of radical activism, however,
Yourofsky has found a comfy new racket as an ambassador of "ethical
veganism." As a representative of ADAPTT (animals deserve absolute
protection today and tomorrow), a Royal Oak-based non-profit Yourofsky
founded in 1996, he has become a mainstay on college campuses.
Evidently titillated by his radical credentials, professors have
routinely invited Yourofsky, who in his rectangular glasses and
fashionably glabrous pate could effortlessly pass for a graduate
student, to counsel their students on the evils of eating meat and the
concomitant righteousness of veganism and vegetarianism. The ADAPTT
website devotes a whole page to the testimonials of these fawning
professors. ("Thank you for teaching my students more in one day than
I've been able to teach them all semester," gushes one enamored
educator). Meanwhile, Yourofsky boasts on the site that, as of 2006,
he has given nearly 1,000 lectures in 130 schools and enjoyed the
audience of thousands of "carnivorous students."
There is one thing, however, that you will not find on Yourofsky's
website: a repudiation of his past support for violence and
lawbreaking in the service of animal rights. And with good reason.
Even as he has been welcomed into universities nationwide, Yourofsky
remains an unreconstructed supporter of animal-rights extremism as
practiced by the ALF.
One need only look up Yourofsky's essay "Abolition, Liberation,
Freedom: Coming to a Fur Farm Near You," featured in the 2004 book
Terrorists Or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberation of
Animals. (To convey the ideological flavor of the book, it is
sufficient to note that the foreword is penned by far-left sage Ward
Churchill.) In a billet-doux to the eco-terrorist group, Yourofsky
writes: "If people truly want to end terrorism," they need to "support
the courageous ALF activists and liberate animals from places of
terror." In defense of his view that "ALF activists are not
terrorists," Yourofsky insists that "it should never be viewed as a
crime to try to forcibly stop" the supposed "animal exploiters." On
the contrary, according to Yourofsky, "It is an act of compassion and
courage." For Yourofsky, the ALF is carrying on the proud tradition of
American abolitionists: "Without question, ALF liberations are akin to
Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, which assisted in the
liberation of blacks from white slave owners."
Perhaps ironically, in view of his maximalist faith in animal rights,
Yourofsky has little sympathy for the lives of his own species. When
asked in a 2001 interview whether he would object to the death of an
"animal abuser" while burning down a research lab, he said: "I would
unequivocally support that, too." A similar question in a 2005
interview prompted an eruption of exceptionally malignant bile from
Yourofsky:
I hope that fathers accidentally shoot their sons on hunting
excursions, while carnivores suffer heart attacks that kill them
slowly. Every women ensconced in fur should endure a rape so vicious
that it scars them forever. While every man entrenched in fur should
suffer an anal raping so horrific that they become disembowelled.
Every rodeo cowboy and matador should be gored to death, while circus
abusers are trampled by elephants and mauled by tigers. And, lastly,
may irony shine its esoteric head in the form of animal researchers
catching debilitating diseases and painfully withering away because
research dollars that could have been used to treat them was wasted on
the barbaric, unscientific practice of vivisection.
To Glenn Kissel's astonishment, it was to this Gary Yourofsky -- a
known criminal and unabashed supporter of animal-rights terrorism who
winced at the plight of mink but blithely advocated the worst cruelty
for man -- that the school would be providing a forum.
That it did not do so is a testament to the professor's quick-
thinking. Recalling that USI's university handbook made it a condition
that an invited "speaker does not advocate violation of any federal or
state law," Kissel emailed USI Provost Linda Bennett several
statements by Yourofsky justifying violence and illegal activity. As
further evidence, he noted that in 2000, Yourofsky's organization,
ADAPTT, had been stripped of its tax-deductible status by the IRS for
supporting illegal activity and sabotage under the guise of "civil
disobedience and direct action." (In explaining its loss of tax-free
status, the ADAPTT website alludes conspiratorially to "government
harassment.")
Helping Kissel's case was that he was not waging a one-man battle. USI
alumni, alerted by the professor to Yourofsky extremist record,
rallied to his side. So did Indiana Right to Life, the state's leading
anti-abortion group, which issued a statement highlighting Yourofksy's
support for violence and murder and condemned his appearance at USI.
In the end, the school had little choice but to cancel Yourofsky's
lecture.
Not everyone is pleased with that outcome. The world of academia is
not infrequently the refuge of political extremists, and USI does not
appear immune from the general trend. Yourofsky's biggest supporter on
campus, and the man responsible for inviting him, is Maurice
Hamington, an assistant professor of philosophy at USI. Hamington, who
lists his academic interest as "feminist care ethics," has on several
previous occasions invited Yourofsky to address students in his
philosophy courses. In a January 2006 email reprinted on Yourofsky's
website, Hamington writes that "[y]ou are always welcome in my
classroom" and expresses his hope "that someone comes to their senses
and funds your important work."
If the professor is alarmed about his guest's demonstrable support for
violence and lawbreaking, he does not advertise his concerns. Indeed,
following the cancellation of Yourofsky's speech on April 2nd,
Hamington took pains to stress that this move was just a "precaution."
As he told USI's campus newspaper, The Shield: "We could have easily
made the case that this was one statement made 10 years ago and that
he gives speeches across the nation all the time and does not incite
violence."
That defense strains credulity. As any review of his recent writings
would reveal, Yourofsky continues to champion animal-rights militancy;
the notion that his support for violence is limited to a single,
decade-old statement is pure fiction. It is not even clear that
Hamington believes in Yourofsky's newly non-violent disposition.
According to Kissel, at a faculty meeting last fall, Hamington
candidly referred to Yourofsky as an "international
terrorist." (Hamington did not respond to several requests for comment
from this magazine.) Moreover, as Glen Kissel observes, USI's policy
does not center on incitement, but on the issue of weather speakers
advocate the violation of any federal of state law. By that standard,
Yourofsky manifestly has no place on campus.
It bears noting that in his on-campus appearances, Yourofsky himself
has been a security concern. In an April 2003 appearance at East
Tennessee State University, for example, Yourofsky became hostile --
even before his lecture -- when a professor circulated pamphlets
presenting a view on animal rights contrary to his own. According to
one report, Yourofsky "became abusive toward" Shannon Miller, a
biology professor who organized the lecture, and even upset a cart
containing the pamphlets. Campus police had to be called in to restore
order, and the lecture was cancelled. The irony of Professor Hamington
inviting someone like Yourofsky to campus is not lost on Kissel. "Here
we have an ethics professor inviting the most unethical spokesman for
vegetarianism that you can imagine," he observes.
Ultimately, the fact that an extremist in the mold of Yourofsky could
be welcomed by a university is a symptom of a deeper problem plaguing
higher education. USI is no exception. Although the administration
defied left-wing voices on campus by canceling the recent event, that
independence is a rarity at the school. On poring over past press
releases and talking to alumni, Glen Kissel found a startling "lack of
intellectual diversity in the kinds of speakers that are brought to
campus." By way of illustration, he notes that the school has hosted
only two conservative speakers in the last 17 years.
Certainly such intellectual disparities are cause for concern. But
perhaps nothing demonstrates the ills of modern academia so well as
the following fact: At thousands of schools across the country, Gary
Yourofsky remains a guest of honor.
Jacob Laksin is a senior editor for FrontPage Magazine.
His e-mail is ***@gmail.com.