The American Philosophical Association is pleased to announce that Blake Hereth (University of Washington) has been awarded the 2019 Frank Chapman Sharp Memorial Prize for zirs paper, “Animal Rights Pacifism.”
The Frank Chapman Sharp Memorial Prize, in the amount of $1,500, is awarded biennially to the best unpublished essay or monograph on the philosophy of war and peace. This prize honors Frank Chapman Sharp, who was president of the Western Division of the APA in 1907–1908.
The chair of the selection committee, Endre Begby (Simon Fraser University), had the following to say about Hereth’s paper, “A wide range of nonhuman animals have substantive moral rights, including a right not to be subjected to unwarranted harms. This seems to entail that bystanders are under a moral obligation to engage in potentially lethal defensive action on behalf of these animals against people, such as medical researchers, zookeepers, and many others, who violate animal rights on a regular basis. ‘Animal Rights Pacifism’ shows how we can acknowledge the rights of nonhuman animals without giving rise to this problematic implication.”
Hereth is a doctoral candidate in the philosophy department at the University of Washington. Ze holds master’s degrees in philosophy from both the University of Arkansas and the University of Washington. Zirs fields of interest include animal rights, applied ethics, ethics, philosophy of law, queer studies, philosophy of religion, ethics of self-defense, and ethics of war. Hereth was also a member of the APA’s inaugural graduate student council (GSC) and just completed zirs term as chair of the GSC.
