Date of Lecture: November 15, 2018
About the Speaker: Holy Cross alumnus Thomas I. White '69 is author of "In Defense of Dolphins: A New Moral Frontier" (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007) and a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. A business ethicist, he held the inaugural Conrad N. Hilton Chair of Business Ethics and was director of the Center for Ethics and Business at Loyola Marymount University.
About the Talk: Drawing on decades of research on dolphins, White argues that dolphins and other cetaceans are self-aware, intelligent beings with emotions, personalities and the capacity to control their actions and should be considered non-human persons. Further, he makes the case that cetaceans cannot flourish in captivity, and therefore, it is unethical and even harmful to keep them. He discusses anthropocentrism as a weakness in the way scientists, ethicists and corporations approach other species.
Watch the talk below»