Welcome to the cyber home of Dr. Cheryl Abbate, American philosopher at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and animal ethics scholar. My current research focuses on what I call the “hard problems of animal rights.” I think it’s terribly clear that we ought not to intentionally harm animals just for food, sport, entertainment, or clothing. But what’s not clear is whether, and under what conditions, we can harm animals to help others in dire need or to prevent serious harm from coming into existence in the first place. In cleaning up the many unjust messes in our world, it is often the case that helping animals requires hurting and/or leaving others behind. My work attempts to offer guidance in situations in which we have to make heart-wrenching decisions about who lives and who dies.

My Expertise

I’ve published over twenty academic pieces (journal articles, book chapters, etc.) on the topic of the ethical treatment of animals, and I’ve published in some of the leading philosophy journals, including European Journal of Philosophy and Utilitas. I have presented my work at leading academic conferences such as Minding Animals, Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, Irish Philosophical Society Conference, and International Society of Environmental Ethics Conference. You can find a complete list of my publications here.

All great movements, it is written, go through three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption. It is the realisation of this third stage, adoption, that requires our passion and our discipline, our hearts and our heads. The fate of animals is in our hands.

Tom Regan

Dr. Abbate is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is also the co-director of the Society for the study of Ethics and Animals, the founder of the Animal Ethics from the Margins Project, and an associate editor of Between the Species. She received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2019. Dr. Abbate has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including Acta Analytica, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Journal of European Philosophy, Journal of Social Philosophy, Social Epistemology, Social Theory and Practice, and Utilitas.