Steven Best

Steven Best is an American writer, speaker, public intellectual, and activist with 30 years work in diverse social movements. He is Associate Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas, El Paso. Best has published 13 books and over 200 articles and reviews (translated into numerous languages), spoken in nearly two dozen countries, interviewed with media throughout the world, appeared in numerous documentaries, and in 2007 was voted by VegNewsas one of the nations “25 Most Fascinating Vegetarians.” A writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education described him in 2005 as "one of the leading scholarly voices on animal rights." Best was co-founder of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS), wrote the seminal manifesto for this new field of research/politics, and in December 2004, he co-founded the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which acts as a media office for a number of animal rights groups, including the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). He came to international public attention in 2005, when the British Home Office issued him a lifetime ban from the UK.

Best is co-author (with UCLA Professor Douglas Kellner) of a trilogy of postmodern studies (Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogation; The Postmodern Turn: Paradigms Shifts in Art, Theory, and Science; and The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium (Guilford Press, 1991, 1997, 2001). More recently, he introduced and co-edited four anthologies: Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals (Lantern Books, 2004); Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth (AK Press, 2006); Academic Repression: Reflections on the Academic-Industrial Complex (AK Press, 2010); and The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination (Rowman & Littlefield 2011). His most recent book is entitled: The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).