Animal Law Week Book Talk with former ALPP Fellow Peter Brandt of the Humane Society of the United States and visual artist Sue Coe.
Event Overview
Peter Brandt is a Managing Attorney at the Humane Society of the United States who served as the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program’s first Visiting Fellow in 2017. During his Fellowship, Peter began drafting a book on his experiences as a farmed animal protection lawyer that was just published by Lantern Books in October. The famed visual artist Sue Coe created the cover art for the book and will be joining Peter in conversation about the issues it addresses and their respective careers. The event is open to all and pre-registration is required.
Peter Brandt has been at the forefront of some of the toughest cases of animal abuse in the last ten years—including supervising a team of lawyers working to protect the interests of farm animals. In this revelatory and often surprisingly funny memoir-cum-manifesto, Brandt describes his growing awareness of the extent of the cruelty of animals in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (a.k.a. factory farms), and the manifold harms to human health, local communities, and the environment for those who live near them. He shows how it’s a world of enormous suffering, sustained by deliberate secrecy and misinformation, and reeking of corruption and lagoons full of ordure. Brandt details his realization of intensive animal farming’s further costs to wild creatures and their habitats, as well as clean water and clean air, and demonstrates how curbing animal agriculture is one of the few ways to make an immediate positive difference to climate change.
Sue Coe is considered one of the foremost political artists working today. Her art often includes animal rights commentary, although she also creates imagery that centralizes the rights of marginalized peoples and criticizes capitalism. Sue’s work has been shown and collected by various international arts institutions, including Harvard Art Museum. Through printmaking, Sue further found a way to serve a broad audience, disseminating her messages through affordably priced prints accessible to people of all financial means. A firm believer in the power of the media to effect social change, Coe’s work also has been published in The New York Times, the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and countless other periodicals. In 2015, Sue Coe was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art, and she received rave reviews her 2018 solo exhibition at MoMA PS1, “Sue Coe: Graphic Resistance.”