As leaders of higher education, we rarely “deeply” challenge the curriculum we are delivering. Hundreds of years of scientific research and knowledge cumulation support the value of liberal arts and its main components—humanities, social science, and sciences. Or does it? When we think about the category of humanities—the study of humankind and the wisdom that has evolved from it, we do engage in a dangerous speciesism that has contributed to the challenges we face globally today around climate change and the killing of biodiversity. By its very nature, humanities elevates humans as a special category with unique insights and a special place in the lager ecosystem—outsized compared to other species. Animals and plants and the larger ecosystem are designated as objects of study by the sciences. While people have agency and a special designation in the humanities, other species are rendered objects to be controlled and examined, without their own intrinsic value. And animals, plants, and the material environment have been “dominated” based on this view that humans are superior. One of the worst instantiations of this belief is the testing of products, usually harmful, on animals. Humans feel the right to act upon others in any way that suits their needs and desires. Our curriculum is based on a belief that humans feel they are better than other species. These doctrines of human exceptionalism are rooted in Judeo-Christian religions—which of course is where the liberal arts evolved from originally.
Too few of us question the foundation of the liberal arts as inherently based in speciesism—which is an “ism” that gets too little attention in our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts on campus. And this has come with extreme consequences—what we are now experiencing as climate change that threatens the human species. Higher education should prioritize the way we can divest from speciesism by rethinking higher education’s curriculum and its embedded assumptions that can result in fundamental shifts in consciousness that can support solutions for climate change.
Many campuses see themselves as warriors in the fight against climate change through sustainability initiatives. And these efforts are important. But these efforts likely will not have the scaled impact that changing the nature of how we think about the liberal arts and knowledge can have. We may never be successful at addressing climate change unless we focus on the root of the problem—our beliefs about ourselves and the world around us.
Most efforts to rethink speciesism in education and the curriculum are in the K–12 sector. But these can be good resources for higher education leaders to start their work as they undergo a general education reform. For example, the Challenging Assumptions Project (https://www.challengingassumptions.org/) demonstrates the link between speciesism and other forms of discrimination and provides strong inroads for adding speciesism to existing DEI efforts and curricular changes with a DEI focus. There are also important activist groups and resources outside of higher education, and a great set of more popular books that can be found at this website (https://www.humanedecisions.com/books-about-animal-rights-and-animal-rights-activism/) that might be helpful for courses.
While the same curricular resources do not exist in higher education (at least not as easily accessible), there are champions and allies in this work in higher education. Faunalytics is an animal rights advocacy group in higher education (https://faunalytics.org/higher-education-for-animal-advocacy/). Critical animal pedagogy is another group devoted to ridding higher education of speciesism. They have a book that articulates core tenants and ways to reconsider higher education with an animal welfare perspective in mind (https://www.peterlang.com/document/1057181). And there are many individual academics writing about speciesism; see, for example, Donna Haraway’s The Companion Species Manifesto (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/C/bo3645022.html); Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation (https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Liberation-Definitive-Classic-Movement/dp/0061711306); and Joan Dunayer’s Animal Equality (https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Equality-Liberation-Joan-Dunayer/dp/0970647557). Scholars in fields from philosophy to biology, ecology, and religion are all writing about and considering this issue. But while there are many individual thinkers across almost every discipline exploring this speciesism, there is no groundswell to change campus curriculum.
As you think about curricular changes in your program, unit, college, and campus, it is imperative that speciesism become part of the discussion. These questions are probably most important to general education reform. How is speciesism embedded in your courses, books assigned, assignments, and underlying curricular structures and arrangements? These are the questions we all need to be asking to rid ourselves of this insidious, damaging bias that is killing us and our planet.