Monday, April 13, 2009

J. David Jentsch Stands Up to Animal Rights Extremists

I'm a little surprised to see this story at the Los Angeles Times, but check it out for some decent old-fashioned journalism: "UCLA professor stands up to violent animal rights activists":

As soon as he heard his car alarm blare and saw the orange glow through his bedroom window, UCLA neuroscientist J. David Jentsch knew that his fears had come true.

His 2006 Volvo, parked next to his Westside house, had been set ablaze and destroyed in an early morning attack March 7. Jentsch had become the latest victim in a series of violent incidents targeting University of California scientists who use animals in biomedical research.

"Obviously, someone who does the work I do in this environment expects that it's possible, indeed likely, that it would have happened," said Jentsch, who uses vervet monkeys in his research on treatments for schizophrenia and drug addiction. Before the attack, he had received no threats and had taken only limited precautions, including keeping his photo off the Internet.

"I've been as careful as you can be without being paranoid," he said.

After similar incidents, other UCLA scientists have become almost reclusive as security and public curiosity around them grew. Three years ago, another UCLA neuroscientist, weary of harassment and threats to his family, abandoned animal research altogether, sending an e-mail to an animal rights website that read: "You win."

But Jentsch has decided to push back.

Jentsch, an associate professor of psychology and psychiatry, has founded an organization at UCLA to voice support for research that uses animals in what he calls a humane, carefully regulated way. He is organizing a pro-research campus rally April 22, a date chosen because animal rights activists, who contend that his research involves the torture and needless killing of primates, already had scheduled their own UCLA protest that day.

"People always say: 'Don't respond. If you respond, that will give [the attackers] credibility,' " Jentsch, 37, said in a recent interview in his UCLA office. "But being silent wasn't making us feel safer. And it's a moot point if they are coming to burn your car anyway, whether you give them credibility or not."

The incidents have traumatized many professors and students on the Westwood campus, well beyond the circle of those directly affected, said Jentsch, who was not injured in the car fire.
This part's a little mind-boggling:

Two days after Jentsch's car was burned, a profanity-laced Internet message from the murky Animal Liberation Brigade took credit for the fire, as it had for past UCLA assaults.

"The things you and others like you do to feeling, sentient monkeys is so cruel and disgusting we can't believe anyone would be able to live with themselves," the message read. "David, here's a message just for you, we will come for you when you least expect it and do a lot more damage than to your property."

Jerry Vlasak, a Los Angeles-area physician and frequent spokesman for the animal rights movement, said he and fellow activists do not participate in the attacks and do not know who is behind them, although he sympathizes with the actions.

Jentsch, according to Vlasak, "is hurting and killing non-human primates every day. And if it took harming him to make him stop torturing, it is certainly morally justifiable."

Vlasak said that Jentsch's new group is a publicity stunt aimed at preserving researchers' federal funding and turning public attention from the nature of the researcher's own work, which involves addicting monkeys to methamphetamine. Vlasak and others said they want to meet Jentsch in a public debate, but the UCLA professor said he was willing to do so only with people who don't condone violence.
Jentsch (pronounced "Yench") has organized a counter organization affilliated with Britain's scientific progress group, "Pro-Test." On April 22, Jentsch will speak at a UCLA rally, "Stand up for Science, Research and the Medicines of Tomorrow." The event is scheduled for 11:30am at the UCLA campus. Click here for more information.

**********

Addendum: I just checked the archives for a previous entry on animal rights, "
The Postmodern Culture of Animal Rights Activism."

It turns out that Professor John Sanbonmatsu of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Worcester, Massachusetts,
left a comment at the post. Professor Sanbonmatsu attacks my essay as "factually wrong on all counts," and he suggests that my writing is "a blogger's animus toward animal rights, based neither in logic nor reason, but simple prejudice."

Well, I beg to differ with this point of neither "logic nor reason"; and frankly, the good professor looks to be short of logic when he suggests that animal rights "is not a 'relativistic' moral position; nor are animal rights activists 'postmodernists'."

Any philosophy that elevates animals to a morally equivalent plane to that of humankind qualifies as a "postmodernist" ideological program in the general usage of postmodernism in political science (interesting related link is here). I'm not particularly interested in Sanbonmatsu's revisionist nomenclature, in any case. He can quibble with academic labels if he wishes (but don't miss the philosphically anti-modernist "about page" at the "Institute for Critical Animal Studies," which is apparently an animal rights academic thinktank.


But check Roger Scruton's identification of the animal rights program as a key element of the contemporary left's radical worldview:
Properly understood, the concept of a right—and the attendant ideas of duty, responsibility, law, and obedience—enshrines what is distinctive in the human condition. To spread the concept beyond our species is to jeopardize our dignity as moral beings, who live in judgment of one another and of themselves.
Interestingly - and highly relevant to this discussion - it turns out that Professor Sanbonmatsu did his doctoral training at UC Santa Cruz; and according to his biography, the professor's specialities are in "Political philosophy; critical theory (Marxism, feminism, ecological theory); ethics and animal rights; existentialism (especially phenomenology)."

Well, that explains a lot.

Recall that David Horowitz and Jacob Laskin, in
One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America's Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy, identified UC Santa Cruz as "the worst school in America." The introduction to One Party Classroom is available here.

I'd be interested to know the membership of Professor Sanbonmatsu's dissertation committee, as well as some of faculty members who taught the graduate seminars he attended.

Perhaps I'll find out:
Dr. Sanbonmatsu's e-mail is available at his Worcester faculty page, and I'll forward him this post just as a matter of professional courtesy.

5 comments:

  1. Responding to my comment on his Blog, Donald writes:

    1. "...the good professor looks to be short of logic when he suggests that animal rights 'is not a "relativistic" moral position; nor are animal rights activists "postmodernists".' Any philosophy that elevates animals to a morally equivalent plane to that of humankind qualifies as a 'postmodernist' ideological program in the general usage of postmodernism in political science (interesting related link is here)."

    ==> Well, Mr. Douglas just doesn't know what he's talking about (as I explained last time). Animal rights is *not* postmodernist, nor is it a relativist position. (I should know: I wrote a whole book attacking postmodernism.)

    2. "...I'm not particularly interested in Sanbonmatsu's revisionist nomenclature, in any case. He can quibble with academic labels if he wishes...."

    ==> Again, Mr. Douglas is welcome to spew his intemperate and misguided nonsense about animal rights all he wants, but he should at least get his own terminology right. There are literally hundreds of good books out there now on the subject of postmodernism, as well as some good ones on moral relativism. Mr. Douglas could at least bother to read any one of them. However, I recommend an Introductory Ethics class at the undergraduate level. In my own class, we go over relativism and its problems in the first two weeks of class. My students "get" it; why can't Mr. Douglas?

    3. "...don't miss the philosophically anti-modernist 'about page' at the 'Institute for Critical Animal Studies,' which is apparently an animal rights academic thinktank."

    ==> This is quite the red herring, since I am not affiliated with the Critical Animal Studies journal in any way. Nor have I even read, let alone approved of, its published documents outlining that organization's beliefs.

    4. "But check Roger Scruton's identification of the animal rights program as a key element of the contemporary left's radical worldview:

    "'Properly understood, the concept of a right—and the attendant ideas of duty, responsibility, law, and obedience—enshrines what is distinctive in the human condition. To spread the concept beyond our species is to jeopardize our dignity as moral beings, who live in judgment of one another and of themselves.'"

    ==> I could write a book showing what is idiotic about Roger Scruton's position (in fact, I am). But more revealing is Mr. Douglas's framing of his quote: he identifies the animal rights position with the "radical" left. Ah, if only! Many years ago (in 1989, I think), I wrote an article for Z Magazine in which I argued that the Left should take the torture and killing of nonhuman beings seriously. But very, very few on the Left have heeded my call, nor heeded the calls of a handful of other leftists who, like me, see power and oppression as a continuum that ranges from the human to nonhuman and back again. Indeed, in my forthcoming book (a collection of essays by various authors), a sociologist documents the *identity* between Left and Right denunciations of animal rights. If Mr. Douglas had even the slightest familiarity with the actual Left, or with critical academic theory, he would know that, far from being widely accepted by the Left, animal rights has yet to appear on the Left's agenda. So his position is, again, founded in ignorance.

    5. "Interestingly - and highly relevant to this discussion - it turns out that Professor Sanbonmatsu did his doctoral training at UC Santa Cruz; and according to his biography, the professor's specialities are in 'Political philosophy; critical theory (Marxism, feminism, ecological theory); ethics and animal rights; existentialism (especially phenomenology).'

    "Well, that explains a lot."

    ==> What, exactly, does that explain? Only by appealing to the prior prejudices of his audience can Mr. Douglas hope to score a point. If Mr. Douglas would become even remotely familiar with any of these fields of knowledge, we might be able to have a productive discussion and debate about the ideas themselves. But if this is all he can manage--Red Baiting in a digital guise--then I'm afraid we'll continue having a conversation of the deaf.

    6. "Recall that David Horowitz and Jacob Laskin, in One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America's Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy, identified UC Santa Cruz as 'the worst school in America.' The introduction to One Party Classroom is available here."

    ==> With friends like these, who needs enemies? ... Leaving aside the moronic level of Horowitz and Laskin's discourse, which is at about the same intellectual level as the sports columns of Pravda of yesteryear, Mr. Douglas has done *UCSC* a great disservice. UCSC is a great school, filled with talented faculty, dedicated staff, and thousands of students. Believe it or not, there are even conservatives who teach there! So to dismiss one of the flagship campuses of the Univ. of California system in this way is simply mean.

    That said, if Mr. Douglas is implying that I run a One Party classroom, he is mistaken. I invite him to drop in some time and see for himself. I leave lots of room for discussion and debate in my classes, and I always invite disagreement.

    7. "I'd be interested to know the membership of Professor Sanbonmatsu's dissertation committee, as well as some of faculty members who taught the graduate seminars he attended."

    ==> More guilt by association! Whether it is the faculty I worked with, however, that are supposed to be held accountable before Douglas's People's Tribunal, for associating with me, or me for associating with them, it's hard to say. But he seems to be implying that I simply mimic the teachings of the faculty I encountered in graduate school. Either way, he is only hinting at some sort of conspiracy, not making an argument.

    Should Mr. Douglas decide to have a real argument, I would welcome the opportunity.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jenstch complains when violent acts are committed against him, but has no problem committing violence against innocent animals. His claim that the monkeys feel no pain is ludricous and raises the alarm that perhaps he is incapable of feeling compassion or empathizing with others. The research on methamphetamine addiciton is unnecessary and cruel. We know enough to know that drug education and addiction prevention programs are a humane alternative to dealing with our society's problems with addiction. Education and anti-smoking campaigns have been extremely effective in lessening the amount of people who are addicted to tobacco,if that approach works with tobacco, it would work with methamphetamines, and no torture of monkeys would be required. Animal research is barbaric. The time to fully evolve away from this cruel practice is now.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Vlasak and the rest of ALF's defense of violence is EXACTLY the logic that underlies animal research: harming a living thing is justifiable if the wider benefits are high enough. The difference is that animal research has brought many benefits, while animal rights terrorism has not.

    The claim that giving methamphetamine injections is torture is ludicrous because we don't consider it torture to immunize infants without anesthesia, and people voluntarily inject themselves with methamphetamine. "Prevention" hasn't helped anyone who's already addicted to tobacco. Of course some research causes animals to suffer. An experiment many people would pay thousands of dollars to be a subject in is not a good example.

    Animal rights people know that the logical consequences of their position are unacceptable to most people, since most people like vaccines, medications, effective surgical procedures, etc. Therefore they resort to making disingenuous claims like "you can't learn anything from animal research." If animals are so different that we can't get insight into human physiology from them, you also can't draw inferences the other way about how much they suffer.

    You should stick to criticizing the food industry, since arguments against the necessity of using animals actually make sense in that context. Did you know that there are vegetarian scientists?

    Granted, engaging with people rationally isn't as fun as blowing things up in the middle of the night and posting half literate threats on the ALF website.

    ReplyDelete
  4. JS: Quite the smackdown.

    Donald, for the record, is known for generalizations and denigrations of anything he doesn't believe in. It's much easier than debating logic, issues and relevant points. But to knock one's education is, to me, beyond the pale. This is just one of many reasons I disagree with Donald on about 95% of all issues.

    The easy tags -- postmodernist and nihilist, are especially popular here. To Donald, there is no gray area, just black and white. Every issue is simple, there are no extenuating circumstances or nuances.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The argument that better education and prevention efforts eliminate the need for improved treatments for addiction is ludicrous. Similar efforts have failed to eradicate the spread of AIDS in Africa, eliminate teen pregnancy, prevent people from smoking, drinking, taking drugs, or engaging in any number of other risky behaviors. Everyone knows that smoking is bad for your health and will kill you. Most people that engage in unprotected sex with multiple partners are similarly aware of the potential for negative consequences. But it is something in the brain of these individuals that compels them to engage in these behaviors because of their rewarding aspects. Why and how this works is critical if we are to find improved treatments for maladaptvie human behaviors with addictive potential.

    If you don't believe me and think that I just like making defenseless animals suffer, then go attend an AA meeting and listen to the people's stories there. Talk to anyone who has tried quitting smoking. Or someone who has lost their home, family, job, friends due to compulsive gambling. There is something clearly different about these people's biology because others can engage in the same behaviors (smoking, drinking, gambling) and not get addicted.

    ReplyDelete