"The enduring challenge for any activist is both to dream of almost-unimaginable justice and to make the case to nonbelievers that your dreams are practical."

"The problem is particularly acute in animal-rights activism. Ending wild-animal suffering is laughably hard (our efforts at ending human suffering don’t exactly recommend us to the task); obviously, so is changing the landscape of factory farms.... In 2014, the British sociologist Richard Twine suggested that the vegan isn’t unlike the feminist of yore, in that both come across as killjoys whose 'resistance against routinized norms of commodification and violence' repels those who prefer the comforts of the status quo...."

Writes Elizabeth Barber, in "What Would It Mean to Treat Animals Fairly? Each year, billions of animals die for human ends. In two new books, Martha Nussbaum and Peter Singer insist that we stop the suffering" (The New Yorker).

"As historians, we the undersigned condemn Prof. Peter Singers’ [sic] abhorrent views that some humans have less value than others."

"We object to inviting him to Rhodes College to speak as part of a 'Pandemics Ethics' panel. Positioning him as an expert on ethics only legitimizes his reprehensible beliefs that deny the very humanity of people with disabilities. Hypothetical philosophies on morality cause real violence. We historians are all too familiar with ideas that justify labeling marginalized, vulnerable, and minority populations as 'life unworthy of life,' and the murderous consequences for those deemed 'unfit' to live. Adhering to the College’s own IDEAS Framework that seeks to foster 'a sense of belonging' and embrace 'the full range of psychological, physical, and social difference,' we historians assert that Prof. Peter Singers’ blatant inhumanity has no place in serious academic exchange here at Rhodes."

From a letter by the History faculty and the Anthropology/Sociology/African Studies Program at Rhodes, quoted at Brian Leiter's blog. Leiter's point is that the Philosophy faculty invited Singer, and it's a matter of their academic freedom. 

"It's okay to eat fish 'cause they don't have any feelings..."

... or, oh, maybe not...

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Song lyric in the post title comes from this: