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Professor Mylan Engel Jr., PhD

26th June 2023

is Presidential Engagement and Partnership Professor, Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Professor of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University and Faculty Associate of NIU’s Environment, Sustainability, and Energy Institute. He specializes in epistemology and animal ethics. Representative publications include: “The Immorality of Eating Meat” in The Moral Life (OUP, 2000), “The Mere Considerability of Animals” (2001), “Tierethik, Tierrechte, und moralische Integrität“ [“Animal Rights, Animal Ethics, and Moral Integrity”] in Tierrechte: Eine interdisziplinäre Herausforderung (Harald Fischer Verlag, 2007), “Vegetarianism” (2016), “Demystifying Animal Rights” (2018), “Fishy Reasoning and the Ethics of Eating” (2019), and “Epistemology and the Ethics of Animal Experimentation” in Applied Epistemology (OUP, 2021). As some of these titles suggest, he is an “ethical vegan”—i.e., he believes we are morally obligated to refrain from eating animals and animal products—and has argued that virtually all humans hold beliefs that, if consistently applied, would make them ethical vegans as well. He also argues that animal experimentation should be abolished. His books include: The Moral Rights of Animals (co-edited with Gary Comstock) and The Philosophy of Animal Rights: A Brief Introduction for Students and Teachers (co-authored with Kathie Jenni).