2024-2025 Year in Review
Executive Summary
As we reflect on the 2024-2025 academic year—a year that brought substantial pain and uncertainty to the Harvard community and indeed to academic institutions across the country—we would like to express our profound gratitude to everyone who has steadfastly supported our mission and recognized that it is more important than ever. The stakes are so high that amid these challenges we are even further motivated to roll up our sleeves and redouble our efforts.
The Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program does not currently receive federal funding, but our colleagues across the university who are doing critical work on climate change, food systems, and public health, to name a few areas, were heavily dependent on federal grants, and much of their work has come to a halt. These challenges to our shared mission only increase our determination to do the work that needs to be done—and to do more of it, and better. We are continuing our research, evaluating our impact, and considering carefully and beginning to articulate deliberately how to assess outcomes not only as an educational program, but a program with substantial reach in the world of policymaking, law, jurisprudence, and ethics.
The uncertainty for international students coming to Harvard Law School over the past year has been substantial and has caused great stress. Over the Spring and Summer, we worked closely with the fantastic Harvard International Office and after many months of uncertainty, our current and incoming students were able to receive or extend their student visas, traveling from countries ranging from Chile to China. One of the strengths of Harvard is the international students and scholars it attracts, and they are essential to our community. ALPP is a global program with global reach, and our international students are crucial to our international mission.
2023-2024 Year in Review
Among the many impactful projects that we highlight in our 2023–2024 Year in Review, we want to highlight the completion of our multi-year, internationally collaborative Live Animal Markets Project, led by Ann Linder, Associate Director of Research and Policy. The report, Animal Markets and Zoonotic Disease Risk: A Global Synthesis of a 15 Country Study, is one of the most comprehensive assessments to date of zoonotic risk, offering an in-depth analysis of potential risks posed by animal markets and their supply chains across 15 countries and six continents, incorporating scientific findings, field observations, data, interviews, local and regional regulatory analysis, and other research to describe and analyze what is known about the zoonotic risks posed by animal markets and other related forms of animal industries. Beginning in 2020, the report was researched and written in collaboration with NYU’s Center for Environmental and Animal Protection. The U.S. case study was independently published in July of 2023 and exclusively featured in The New York Times; the global report was published in June of 2024 and exclusively featured in USA Today. Both continue to be cited and reported widely in the media around the world.
2022-2023 Year in Review
ALPP’s eighth year was marked by several notable achievements, including our successful efforts to defend California’s sales ban on animal products produced through certain forms of intensive confinement at the U.S. Supreme Court. Our amicus brief, written in the Clinic, presented the justices with images and descriptions of the intensive confinement of pigs and the egregious suffering it causes. Our brief engaged with the complex arguments of the dormant commerce clause while also giving the justices an unflinching picture of the actual conditions in which these animals are forced to live. Our highlights of the year also included favorable rulings in our ongoing campaign to enhance the psychological welfare of primates utilized in research, and the introduction of a new seminar on farmed animal law, created and taught by our Faculty Director, Professor Kristen Stilt.
2021-2022 Year in Review
As we enter our eighth year, the Animal Law & Policy Program has a huge agenda to solve some of the most pressing problems of today, from the devastating impact of industrial animal agriculture on the lives of animals, humans, and our planet, to the suffering of animals used in research or entertainment, and those killed for sport.
2020-2021 Year in Review
After a productive year of litigation, learning, and teaching remotely, our Animal Law & Policy Program team and Fellows returned to the Harvard Law School campus in September excited to work together and collaborate in person once again. We are grateful to be able to share with you this account of all our Program and Clinic’s accomplishments from the past academic year.
2019-2020 Year in Review
As we celebrate our sixth anniversary, the Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School is proud to share the work we have done to benefit the lives of animals farmed for food, animals used in biomedical research, animals affected by climate change, and those suffering a multitude of other harms.
2018-2019 Year in Review
As we complete our fifth year, the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program has broadened its existing focus on the welfare of animals raised for food to include the regulation of plant-based and cell-based alternatives to animal products, along with federal legislation that could have rolled back scores of state farmed animal welfare laws.
