University of Southern Indiana Turnaround

Evansville, Ind.—Convicted criminal and violence promoting animal rights extremist, Gary Yourofsky, was invited to give a talk on “Ethical Veganism” to an “Introduction to Ethics” class here at USI on Monday April 2. A university press release invited the public as well.

I examined Yourofsky’s website, and found he supports murder and violence as part of his animal rights activism. For example, he states, “The time has come to forcibly free our family members [animals] from their captors, even if that means injuring or killing someone in the process.” Our university handbook states that outside speakers must “not advocate violation of any federal or state law.”

In addition, I discovered that a violent outburst by Yourofsky in 2003, led to the cancellation of his talk at
East Tennessee State University

. I pointed out these and numerous other facts to the administration (Provost Linda Bennett). The ethics professor who had invited him was forced to back down and cancel the talk four hours before it was to begin. Yourofsky has given nearly 1200 talks across the country in the past 10 years, so he doesn’t get cancelled very often.

Glen J. Kissel, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering at the University of Southern Indiana.