Transcript:
Dean McCoy:
Hello, I’m Professor Henrika McCoy, dean of the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work. Welcome to Episode 17 of GSSW’s Brave Ideas for Social Change podcast series, which draws on GSSW faculty expertise for fast-moving discussions on emerging research, practice and policy innovations to spur social change. Today’s guest is Clinical Professor Philip Tedeschi, co-director of the University of Denver’s Institute for Animal Sentience and Protection, and director emeritus and founder of the Graduate School of Social Work Institute for Human-Animal Connection, which I might occasionally refer to by the acronym IHAC. He’s a licensed clinical social worker and teaches [in] GSSW’s Human–Animal–Environmental Interactions in Social Work MSW Certificate program, where students examine the intricate relationship between people, domestic and wild animals in the natural world.
Professor Tedeschi’s research, scholarship, teaching and community practice work focus on issues of social and interspecies justice, global perspectives of human–animal interactions, conservation, social work and human ecology. He specializes in the bio affiliative connection between people and animals, causes of maltreatment to people and non-human animals, and the health-promoting potential of human–animal and nature interactions. Professor Tedeschi is someone who is currently owned by two cats and who lived with pets… oh, that’s me. Oh.
Professor Tedeschi:
I was going to say.
Dean McCoy:
I’m like, that’s me. Not you.
Professor Tedeschi:
I was going to say, how did you even know I had two cats because I do have two cats.
Dean McCoy:
Oh.
Professor Tedeschi:
But I don’t think they own me, but they…
Dean McCoy:
Mine do. Professor Tedeschi, as someone who’s owned currently by two cats and who lived with pets her entire life, I’m very interested in learning about your work and that of the Institute for Animal Sentience and Protection, so please do tell.
Professor Tedeschi:
Well, thank you. Thanks for the opportunity to come and talk to you about this important topic.
Dean McCoy:
So I know that the Institute for Animal Sentience and Protection launched in 2022. Please tell us about this relatively new venture here at the University of Denver.
Professor Tedeschi:
Yeah, it’s a very exciting initiative that occurred in 2022, and we met an individual named Dr. Robert Brinkman, who had been following the work of the Institute for Human–Animal Connection for quite some time and reached out to me and expressed an interest in making an investment towards our work in animal protection. In particular, he was really interested in the concept of moving legal standing forward for animals. So I would say that in many ways the impact that IHAC has had was a major component of this particular gift. So we started this conversation and he went on to ultimately help establish the new Institute for Animal Sentience and Protection.
Dean McCoy:
Wow, that’s amazing. So this is such a unique focus. Social work is so often focused on people first. Although here at GSSW they’ve been long engaged in demonstrating the important connection between human and animals. I know this work is more than just an extension, so just please tell me more about the work of the institute and your work more broadly and how it advances social work.
Professor Tedeschi:
Well, it’s an important, and it’s a big conversation really. I would say in many ways one of the goals of the institute is to develop a center that would in some ways be kind of a one-stop shop or a place that persons who are interested in animals, human–animal interaction and connection, and really the care of animals broadly speaking, would find educational programs, ethical attention to these related issues. A research center that began to educate our communities increasingly about what we now know about the cognitive and emotional lives of animals, and really also a center for organizations to begin to collaborate. And one of the concepts that has begun to unite these many goals of the institute is a concept called One Health, which is really now the scientific exploration of the interconnection between people, animals and the environment. And the more we learn about that, really what we’re finding is that the science is really kind of on our side, that we should be interested in the care of animals and the environment because in many ways it contributes to our own health.
We’re also really interested in this area that Dr. Brinkman asked us to begin to explore, which is understanding sentience, the moral implications of the capacity for animals to have deep, cognitive and emotional lives. And in many ways, this is bringing us to this question around justice and which is why I think the [University of Denver Graduate] School of Social Work is such a unique place for this program because of social work’s interest in social justice. This is really an expansion to include what we now sometimes refer to as interspecies justice, which is really the moral imperative and setting a new understanding about the roles of animals in our society and their capacity for sentience.
Dean McCoy:
Wow, that’s really interesting and fascinating. So tell me a little bit more about kind of why it’s important and how you really are seeing this exist around the world.
Professor Tedeschi:
Well, it’s a very interesting time. In part, there was a well-known conference in 2013 at Cambridge University called The Declaration of Animal Sentience that in many ways began to lay the groundwork. But just this year we have seen another large event that brought scientists from all over the world who study animal cognition and emotion at NYU, which is now called the NYU Declaration of Animal Consciousness. And what this has really started to establish is a recognition that almost all animals have this capacity, and that it is teaching us to pay closer attention to the new science of what we are calling the science of animal sentience. There are a number of countries that have formally recognized animal sentience. I won’t read all of them, but there are probably 30 or 35 countries now that have included animal sentience directly into their constitutions. And this intersectional awareness of animal cognition and emotion and how this relates to human society has become really one of the deeper questions that the institute is attempting to explore.
Dean McCoy:
That’s really amazing. So I know one of the institute’s aims is to incentivize investigations into an animal sentience. Our listeners might be unaware of those incredible advances in research. So what are we currently learning?
Professor Tedeschi:
Yeah. As I was mentioning, the NYU declaration that focused on consciousness or animal — when we talk about sentience, what we’re really talking about is an animal’s capacity for cognition and emotion very parallel to our own. So that we now know that animals can not only experience pain and pleasure and emotions, but also a range of deep cognitions and other social behaviors that are quite familiar to us. Deep connections to their children, the desire to have community, to have culture, to have relationships with one another, so they miss one another, for example, when they’re taken away from one another and those sorts of things.
What this has started to bring up is kind of a new expectation that when we are working with animals, or trying to make decisions that might impact animals, that we should start from the default position or the assumption that animals really do have the capacity for these deeper emotional experiences. And that rather than seeing animals simply as items to be sold, traded or processed and materialized, that really that they’re individuals with these capacities for much deeper understanding [of] the world around them, which is really this idea of consciousness.
Dean McCoy:
Right. So if we accept the fact that animals are sentient, what then would be the implications for how we should protect them?
Professor Tedeschi:
Yeah, this is really the deep and very important question, and the deep question of the institute’s work. It’s also one of the reasons we’re really excited to be collaborating with the Animal Law Program at the Sturm College of Law here at the University of Denver, because bringing the social sciences together with expertise and the legal questions related to this is really beginning to reveal some of this potential.
So probably the first and maybe one of the most important arguments in animal protection at the moment, one of the most contemporary kind of understandings of the idea is that we’re at a point where it’s no longer really appropriate for us to just see animals simply as material items. And in the United States, animals are considered property, so they have the legal standing of any other purchased or owned property. This is really a familiar challenge in regard to many kinds of social justice protection issues and one that we’re seeing unfolding in the area of animal protection as well.
One example of that is the Nonhuman Rights Project, which recently, for example, sued the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs on behalf of the captive elephants that are in that setting, looking at their histories and documenting their capacity for sentience, bringing experts to the courts. And Colorado’s highest court is hearing that case at the moment. And so these are examples I think of looking at what are the implications when we keep highly sentient individuals, very social individuals, in settings that let’s say are equivalent to a captive environment or something equivalent to a cell, right, or a jail cell. So these are our justice issues. They’re complex issues legally, but there also are complex issues relative to the very core issues of the social sciences in the field of social work as well.
Dean McCoy:
Wow. So social work has a particular biopsychosocial ecological perspective, and as you know, we also have a strong emphasis on justice. So how would you say our profession is positioned to move the needle in this area, and really what are your aspirations for social work as it relates to animal sentience and protection?
Professor Tedeschi:
Well, I think one of the aspects of this particular program and gift is that we will be establishing a research program that begins to document sentience and look for the best strategies for animal protection by officially recognizing animals as sentient beings. Many discussions will follow about what that really means. Most importantly, it’ll bring the topic of animal sentience to the foreground and generate much needed exchanges about what we should do and must do with this new knowledge. What are the real moral imperatives? It’s not so much an animal rights issue at this point as much as it is a scientific understanding of the capacity of animals for sentient experience. All in all, this science has continued to grow at a rapid rate. As I mentioned earlier, it literally has started to change the laws around the world. The United States happens at the moment to not be one of the countries.
There’s not a single state in the United States, for example, that recognizes animals as sentient beings. So we have a long way to go. In many ways we’re playing catch up in this particular area. And now that we are working with this new understanding, one of the areas that I think we would like to work towards is to start to see clearer declarations and laws changing regarding the legal status of other animals and recognizing that we’re in this together — that as we understand the capacity for animals and improving their lives, we’re likely to also be improving the lives of the communities that we live in as well.
Dean McCoy:
So it sounds like you think that there really are positive effects on really how we think about caring for humans. So what do you mean by that? What do you think?
Professor Tedeschi:
Well, I think one of the things, that I mentioned the concept of One Health — and now, this is not a new concept. It’s when we look at traditional ecological knowledge, we've known that we’ve been interconnected in many ways, but I think starting to realize that making decisions, particularly towards sentient beings, has implications for our own society. Cruelty is not without consequences. When we fail to recognize the harm that’s being done to sentient beings, we’re also harming in many ways our own societies. So we’ve tried to begin the process during this early stage to set the groundwork for greater awareness around what sentient is and some of the ways that we might look at it. So I think in many regards, we’re starting to build a foundation for building this into the common understanding of the areas that social work might make an impact.
Dean McCoy:
So we mentioned earlier that the institute started in 2022, so it’s relatively new. What do you see on the horizon? If we think about two years from now, five, 10, etcetera, what are your goals? What do you see happen?
Professor Tedeschi:
Well, one of the exciting aspects of this gift in and of itself is that it builds in some resources for scholarships that would allow somebody to have a joint degree, both specializing in the field of social work. And here at GSSW, we have this fantastic focus on ecological justice and human–animal interaction. But we also have a great partner in the law school and in a very forward-thinking animal law program. Imagining a lawyer specializing in animal law who also has a knowledge that can be integrated into understanding how the social sciences inform those questions is really one of the exciting promises of this overall program.
In general, I think one of the things that GSSW has already done has been a leader in this area. There are very few … in fact, we were the very first human–animal bond academic center that was not born or lived in a veterinary program. So this was the very first program here in the United States to do this. So we’re excited to add this to our expertise to invite students to come and explore the concepts of social justice and apply them to humans and non-human animals together.
Dean McCoy:
So as you think about the changes that we’re experiencing in our society, how do you see this as being not only important now, but even more important going forward?
Professor Tedeschi:
Yeah, I mean, at the moment we’ve seen this significant challenge. The planet is under tremendous amount of pressure. We have the Anthropocene occurring. This is really the loss of biodiversity, the human-driven loss of biodiversity. The United Nations reports an estimate that dozens of species are going extinct every day. Frankly, we’re seeing dramatic losses. The report also had noted that 30% to 50% of the species face extinction by 2050. One of the roles that social work I think will increasingly have … and, in fact, it’s hard to imagine that social workers in the future would not take into account the health and well-being of biodiversity, what I call bio affiliation, or our relationship with the living world, as part of their capacity of advocating for clients and individuals and families and communities in the future.
Dean McCoy:
Well, thank you so much. This has been fascinating. I have learned a lot, and I already think my cats are sentient, but I will go home and look at them in a different way. So thank you so much for your work in trying to really create a kinder and a healthier world.
Professor Tedeschi:
Thank you. Thanks for inviting me on today.
Dean McCoy:
You’re welcome. And so to our listeners, this conversation is just one example of fascinating and groundbreaking work being done by our faculty. So to hear more, please subscribe to our Brave Ideas for Social Change Podcast. You can learn more at socialwork.du.edu/change.
