Dr. Steven Best is Associate Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas, El Paso. For 25 years, he has researched, taught, lectured, and published in areas such as philosophy, literature, social and political theory, cultural studies, film and mass media, science and technology studies, politics, terrorism and peace/security studies, and ethics (with a focus on animal rights, environmentalism, and biotechnology). Best has received invitations to speak on diverse topics throughout the US and also abroad in countries such as Canada, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, England, Germany, France, Greece, Romania, Russia, Croatia, and South Africa.
He is author and editor of 10 books and has published over 100 articles and reviews on diverse topics in critical anthologies focused on the work of Frederic Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, Michel Foucault, Soren Kierkegaard, Richard Rorty, Thomas Pynchon, and Philip K. Dick). Best has published essays on a wide range of topics in an appropriately interdisciplinary and diverse array of journals, such as Social Text, Diacritics, Jump Cut, The Philosophical Forum, Science as Culture, Organization and Environment, Democracy and Nature, Sociological Inquiry, Theory and Society, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Critical Methodologies, Rethinking Marxism, Socialist Review, New Political Science, American Political Science Review, Terra Nova, Environmental Ethics, and Artificial Intelligence and Society. As well, Best has contributed entries to encyclopedia projects such as The Dictionary of Neo-Marxism, The Dictionary of Contemporary Criticism and Critical Terms, The Encyclopedia of the American Left, The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, The Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, The Encyclopedia Britannica Online, The BlackAcademic Repression: Reflections on the Academic-Industrial Complewell Guide to Continental Philosophy, and The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology Online.
Best’s books and articles are read throughout the world and have been translated into languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Swedish, German, French, Polish, Portuguese, Latin American, and Brazilian. In 1997, Best’s book (with Douglas Kellner), The Postmodern Turn: Paradigms Shifts in Art, Theory, and Science (Guilford Press, 1997) won the Michael Harrington Award for Best Social Theory Book and, in 1998, The Postmodern Turn also was selected for Choice’s Outstanding Academic Books list. In 2001, his subsequent book (with Douglas Kellner), The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium (Guilford Press, 2001) won Foreward Magazine’s Best Philosophy Book of the Year Award. He is currently completing a new book, Animal Liberation and Moral Progress: The Struggle foe Human Evolution (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008) and editing a new volume (with Anthony Nocella and Peter McLaren), x (AK Press, 2010).
Speaking at the University of Romania on the topics of moral progress and animal liberation.
Best serves on the editorial board of numerous journals, frequently reviews manuscripts for academic publishers. He served as Book Review Editor and Feature Writer for The International Journal for Inclusive Democracy, and was a co-founder of the peer-reviewed journals, Green Theory and Practice and Critical Animal Studies Journal. From 2001-2009, he served as Chief Editor for the latter journal, housed under the Institute for Critical Animal Studies, which he co-founded and which showcased essays related to the novel discourse of “critical animal studies” that Best did much to define and pioneer. In 2009, Best and co-founder Richard Kahn left the Institute over disagreements about the direction of its theory and practice. After having contributed to the creation of the new field of Critical Animal Studies, they felt it was becoming less radical and true to the original vision of articulating a critical and liberatory theory of society deeply rooted in understanding that the domination of nonhuman animals is foundational to the domination of society and nature generally.
A popular and dynamic speaker, Best has lectured by invitation on a wide variety of topics all over the world. He has, for instance, spoken on narrative theory in Leon, France; on biotechnology and cloning in Essen, Germany; on abolitionism in the human and animal rights struggles in London, England; on moral progress in Oslo, Norway and Stockholm, Sweden; on applied ethics in Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg, South Africa; on contemporary social movements in Moscow and St. Petersburg; on genetic modification of the human body in Istanbul, Turkey; and on contemporary anarchist theory and environmental ethics in Athens, Greece. Best also has been a Visiting Scholar at New Mexico State University; Keynote Speaker for an International Management conference in Manchester, England; and featured Earth Day speaker for the community of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of his work, he has addressed audiences in diverse areas such as sociology, business and management, science, nutrition, and various activist causes. In addition, Best has been interviewed on a wide range of issues by media such as National Public Radio, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, BBC News, the Guardian Independent, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Philosopher’s Magazine, as well as media in Brazil, Barcelona, France, South Africa, and elsewhere. He has also been interviewed for and featured in numerous television and film documentaries shot in England, France, the US, and elsewhere.
Dr. Steven Best has been described as “one of the leading scholarly voices in animal rights” (Scott Smallwood, “Speaking for the Animals, or the Terrorists,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 5, 2005). In 2007, Best was included in the Animal and Society Institute’s Guide to Experts on Animal Issues, and the national vegetarian health magazine, VegNews, voted him as one of the nation’s “25 Most Fascinating Vegetarians.” A noted public figure internationally, Best’s publishing career spans three decades, and his political activism has equally deep roots. Beginning in 1980, as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, Best was a leading campus activist, leading groups working against US imperialism in Central American politics (which among other things provided sanctuary for illegal refugees from El Salvador and raised money to purchase medical supplies for Nicaraguan people) and South African apartheid, as he put his writing and theatrical background into community radio, performance art, and guerrilla theatre. A radical leftist, Best became a vegetarian in 1983 (eventually going vegan) and an animal rights activist in 1988. In short order, he said, “I realized that the `radical’ traditions in no way are a liberating philosophy or politics from the standpoint of animals and the environment. I saw Leftism as merely another form of Stalinism toward animals.” Never prone to philosophical stagnation, in subsequent years Best formulated an increasingly militant, holistic, and comprehensive analysis of “total revolution” that articulates human, animal, and Earth liberation struggles as an inseparable unity to be conceived of and fought for together.
Speaking in Athens on Best's edited volume, "Globalised Capitalism, the Eclipse of the Left and Inclusive Democracy," assessing the work of Takis Fotopoulos.
In 1993, Best accepted a tenure-track position in the Philosophy Department at the University of Texas El Paso, and applied his radical political views his teaching. As he stated:
Research, writing, and teaching should be linked to activism and the urgent issues of the day. The classroom is a public forum, a polis, where challenging, controversial, and radical ideas can and should be taught. In a world of environmental ruination, species extinction, and predatory global capitalism, academics should not have the luxury to pursue abstract issues that are not related to social transformation and revolutionary change. Rather, academics ought to use their skills to understand, communicate, and change the catastrophic breakdown and crises in the social and natural worlds. Thus, the task of the engaged intellectual is to radicalize academic work in concrete ways, while bringing to light the philosophical and theoretical basis of social issues, such as those relating to the environment and animal rights.
Best hit the ground running once in El Paso. He became Vice President of the Vegetarian Society of El Paso, he organized and led animal rights groups on campus and in the community, he spoke about vegan ethics and animal rights to community groups and schools at all levels, he worked with the Green Party and other environmental and wildlife groups, he was a mainstay on TV and radio news and interview shows, and he launched his own radio show on the local NPR-affiliate station. Among other things, he was arrested numerous times for civil disobedience; he campaigned tirelessly for a new humane society and animal shelter; he implemented a trap, neuter, and release program for the growing population of feral cats on his campus; he freed Sissy the elephant from her tormenters at the El Paso Zoo to live her remaining decades at the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee; he raised awareness about sprawl and its impact on wildlife and the “dirty dozen” worst local polluters; and with his philosophy of law class he successfully lobbied the City Council to pass a measure declaring the USA Patriot Act unconstitutional, was arrested numerous occasions for civil disobedience.
Best found that of all the radical issues he taught, by far the most controversial was ethical veganism and animal rights. From the start, he took fire from colleagues and department chairs who warned him against teaching animal rights, from right-wing radio hosts outraged that taxpayers were supporting “subversion,” from politicians unaccustomed to being challenged, and from the city Mayor who sent numerous letters to the university president complaining about Best involving his students in protest activities.
Best leads one of the first anti-vivisection rallies in Moscow in 2008.
Passing the tenure review process on the strength of his teaching and publications, political pressures considerably increased after the release of Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals (Lantern Books, 2004, co-edited with Anthony J. Nocella II). With a steady stream of related publications, such as Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth (AK Press, 2006, co-edited with Nocella), with lectures and speaking tours throughout the world, and with co-founding the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, Best emerged as the only academic in the country principled and defiant enough to openly support and defend the ALF, knowing full well that his actions constituted professional suicide.
In a rapid succession of events that began in summer 2005, Best was banned for life from the entire UK, pressured by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) to testify before Senate eco-terrorism hearings (he refused), charged by David Martosko of the Center for Consumer Freedom (on C-Span Live before a full Senate hearing) with being the organizational leader of the ALF who recruits his students into the underground, deposed from his position as Philosophy Department Chair, and ostracized from the mainstream animal advocacy movement.
Throughout all of this, Best remained undaunted and unrepentant, speaking out and fighting for his principles and beliefs. From the US to Norway, from Sweden to France, from Germany to Russia to South Africa, Best shows what philosophy means in a world in crisis. And we are proud that Dr. Best, drawing on a wealth of knowledge and experience, is our Senior Editor of Total Liberation.
Dr. Steven Best Home Page
Dr. Steven Best Blog
Speaking Topic Areas:
- Animal Rights
- Critical Animal Studies
- Environmentalism/Ecology
- Veganism (health, ethics, and environmental aspects)
- Marxism, Anarchism, and Critical Theory
- Continental Philosophy
- Postmodernism
- Ethics
- Biotechnology
- Social Movements
- Alliance politics
- Globalization
- Abolitionism
- Philosophy of History
- Concepts of Progress
- Nonviolence/violence debates
- Terrorism and Security Studies
- Cultural Studies
- Media Studies and Popular Culture