An education in (non-human) animals: Q&A with Dr. Patricia McEachern

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Last week, my favorite Price is Right host, Bob Barker, made headlines with a $1-million-dollar donation to his alma mater, Drury University. The money is going to the Drury University Forum on Animal Rights, which Barker initially financed last year. The school hopes to expand the Forum into a full undergraduate degree program.

A degree in Animal Rights. On first glance, it seems too good to be true, and, indeed, the Forum is unlike any other in the country. I would have loved the opportunity to spend less time analyzing Shakespeare and more time comparing the merits and drawbacks of various animal advocacy ideas. Here’s a recap of the current curriculum, which is being run as a multidisciplinary Animal Ethics class:

Students will study a range of issues related to nonhuman animals including the animal rights debate, spay/neuter issues, vivisection, animal law, animal fighting, views of nonhuman animals in various religious traditions, sustainability, associations between animal abuse and interpersonal violence, factory farming hoarding, wildlife control, and overpopulation.

To get a better sense of the curriculum and how Drury hopes to expand the Forum into a full-on, degree-granting program, I asked a few questions to Dr. Patricia McEachern, the Forum’s director, who received the Dorothy Jo Barker endowment last week.

What are the general demographics of the students enrolled? Are they mostly familiar with the issues, or do you think you’ve attracted students who might otherwise not learn about animal rights and related topics?

The class consists of a very diverse group. There are definitely students enrolled who might otherwise not have learned about animals rights issues. There are students who want to become doctors, veterinarians, lawyers, writers and even one neuroscientist. Most of them are interested in animals, but I do not think a majority began the semester as vegans or vegetarians. When reading student journals, I have noticed that a number of them are struggling with whether or not to make changes in their personal lives.

How did you sift through such a large, diverse pool of potential research/reading materials to establish a syllabus?

I read everything I could get my hands on and I continue to do so. As we see how the course goes this semester, we will make changes accordingly next year. For example, there was such intense student interest in animal hoarding that we will devote more time to that issue next year.

Gary Francione was discussed in the philosophy section of the class. The philosophy professor established a clear distinction between a utilitarian reformist, such as Singer, and an abolitionist, such as Francione. (That is how I see them, in any case; your opinion may differ.) The syllabus is one of the longest ones I have ever used already, and if we were to include every detail on the syllabus the students would not be likely not to read it at all.

Will Barker be an active member of the program as it expands and goes through different phases of development? And did his endowment influence the course material?

The Drury University Forum on Animal Rights consists exclusively of members of the faculty. The Bob Barker Endowment Fund for the Study of Animal Rights made the course possible. His new gift, the Dorothy Jo Barker Endowed Professorship of Animal Rights, enables me to devote myself to this work full-time.

On that note, what are your plans for the program’s future? Where do you hope to see it go in years to come?

We will be adding a Sociology course on Animals and Society and another course on Animal Law. I would like to establish a minor, at a minimum.

What do you hope to see students get out of the program? Is there a hope that these students will contribute to animal rights work outside the program?

I hope that students will develop greater respect for animals. All human beings, no matter what our careers may be, interact with animals. The decisions we make about how we interact with animals affects them and us profoundly. I hope that future decisions these students make about how they choose to live their lives with regard to human-animal interactions will be made based on knowledge and respect.