Genoa, Italy

Steve Best is an award-winning writer, noted speaker, public intellectual, and seasoned activist for 30 years in diverse 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, many of which have been translated into a dozen languages.

He is co-author (with UCLA Professor Douglass Kellner) of an award-winning 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 groundbreaking and bridge-building 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 last published volume is The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (Roman and Littlefield, 2014).

Best’s incisive research and teachings on the crucial topics of the day, along with his controversial positions and high-profile activism has earned him multiple awards, including selection by VegNews Magazine as 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.” But his passionate advocacy of “total liberation” (integrating struggles to emancipate humans, animals, and the earth into a comprehensive movement for systemic change) has put him under heavy fire as well. In 2005, for instance, he was pressured (and refused) to testify before the US Senate Committee Hearings on “Ecoterrorism”; he was forced out of his department Chair position and subsequently penalized in numerous ways by his university; and the British Home Office banned him for life from the entire UK on the grounds that his writing and activism constitutes “a threat to the public order.”

A rare example of an engaged academic and public intellectual, Best has lectured throughout the world, interviewed with global media, and appeared or was featured in numerous documentaries. “In a world of environmental ruination, species extinction, and predatory global capitalism,” Best says, “academics should not have the luxury to pursue abstract issues unrelated to the urgent need for systemic change at all levels; they ought, rather, to abandon petty ego obsessions and career narcissism, in order to help clarify and change the causes of social and ecological breakdown, which demands a break from the ten thousand year reign of dominator cultures.” From Romania to Russia, Poland to Paris, and Slovenia to South Africa, Best inspires and agitates at a global level and shows what philosophy means in a world in crisis.

Complete Curriculum Vitae may be viewed here: BEST CV MAY 2019.