Faroe Islands dolphin slaughter

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HARRIS, Paul [SSC]

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Sep 23, 2021, 8:24:15 PM9/23/21
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Dear GEP-Ed Colleagues,

If your teaching involves discussion of whale and dolphin "hunting" in the Faroe Islands, this "Open letter to Faroe Islanders" may be useful for classroom discussion/debate:


Kind regards,

Paul

NOTICE: The Hong Kong 'national security law' is in effect globally. Anyone suspected of violating the law is subject to arrest and imprisonment in Hong Kong without the right to bail or trial by jury. Do not send any messages to me that criticize China, the Chinese government or its officials, the Chinese Communist Party, the Hong Kong government or its officials. Do not express any views regarding Chinese sovereignty or control over any territory, and do not comment on human rights or freedoms in any territory that is part of China, controlled by China or claimed by China. If in doubt about whether your message might violate the law, do not send it to me.

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PAUL G. HARRIS
Chair Professor of Global & Environmental ​Studies
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100+ articles and chapters here.

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Selin, Henrik

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Sep 23, 2021, 9:24:46 PM9/23/21
to pha...@eduhk.hk, Gep-Ed
And if you do, this documentary can also add to class discussions:


Henrik

On Sep 23, 2021, at 8:24 PM, HARRIS, Paul [SSC] <pha...@eduhk.hk> wrote:


Dear GEP-Ed Colleagues,

If your teaching involves discussion of whale and dolphin "hunting" in the Faroe Islands, this "Open letter to Faroe Islanders" may be useful for classroom discussion/debate:


Kind regards,

Paul

NOTICE: The Hong Kong 'national security law' is in effect globally. Anyone suspected of violating the law is subject to arrest and imprisonment in Hong Kong without the right to bail or trial by jury. Do not send any messages to me that criticize China, the Chinese government or its officials, the Chinese Communist Party, the Hong Kong government or its officials. Do not express any views regarding Chinese sovereignty or control over any territory, and do not comment on human rights or freedoms in any territory that is part of China, controlled by China or claimed by China. If in doubt about whether your message might violate the law, do not send it to me.

​
PAUL G. HARRIS
Chair Professor of Global & Environmental ​Studies
100+ articles and chapters here.

©2021 This email, its contents and attachments are subject to copyright protections. All rights reserved. This email, its contents and attachments are proprietary and private. The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination, distribution, forwarding, or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited without the express permission of the sender. If you received this communication in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer.



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georgette matthews

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Sep 24, 2021, 4:35:23 AM9/24/21
to se...@bu.edu, pha...@eduhk.hk, Gep-Ed


Hi Henrik, 
Perhaps I would use this documentary review in The Guardian before exposing the students to the complex and raw issues presented in the documentary:




I am the 176,927th person to sign the petition, and my great-grandfather was born in Streymoy.

Best wishes,
Georgette

We all have a variety of understandings and thresholds for the degrees of sentience of life forms. There is also a quite evolved plant sentience in spite of their greater invisibility and lesser charisma (than the one we grant to the dolphins and whales). 

Every life form is witnessing our (as human beings) 'criminal' acts as individuals and collectivities on a daily basis for millennia, in the name of survival or tradition or other human values.

Perhaps we could start our dialogue with students on the above issues, with animal and plant sentience as presented by Eduardo Kohn in “How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human”?


Georgette Matthews
PhD Candidate, International Relations
& Casual Academic Physics,
University of Sydney 



Gellers, Joshua

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Sep 24, 2021, 5:27:55 AM9/24/21
to gmat...@gmail.com, se...@bu.edu, pha...@eduhk.hk, Gep-Ed
Not to hijack this thread, but sentience is merely one of several uni-criterial properties-based approaches to moral standing. The problem with all of them is that they lack definitional clarity and are difficult to demonstrate empirically. The philosophical concept known as the argument from marginal cases exposes the trouble that inheres in attempting to promote a single ontological property that justifies moral concern when it might not even apply to some humans (ie mentally incapacitated, those with congenital birth defects, etc.). While animal rights are often tethered to sentience, intelligence, or autonomy, the rights of nature are philosophically and legally premised on an entirely different set of considerations. We should strive for consistency.

I suggest a more complex, relational approach to moral and legal standing in my book, Rights for Robots: Artificial Intelligence, Animal and Environmental Law (Routledge 2020) derived from critical environmental law and sensitive to non-Western and Indigenous worldviews. The book is free to download via open access here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9780429288159/rights-robots-joshua-gellers

Best,

Josh

Joshua C. Gellers, PhD
Associate Professor
Dept. of Political Science + Public Admin.
University of North Florida
1 UNF Drive
Jacksonville, FL 32224

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On Sep 24, 2021, at 4:36 AM, georgette matthews <gmat...@gmail.com> wrote:


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