University of North Texas 
Join the the undergraduate Philosophy Club for a special event! We'll be hosting a semester-kickoff meeting sponsored by Jain Studies, where we'll hear from Dr. Faraz Harsini of Allied Scholars for Animal Protection. Dr. Harsini will present a talk "The Biggest Moral Blind Spot of Our Time" on the ethics of choosing a vegan diet. Jain Studies will provide free vegan refreshments!
Why Attend: Come learn how to use your career in philosophy and science to tackle the biggest global challenges we're facing.Most people spend forty years working on someone else's priorities. There's another way to do it. When your work lines up with what you believe, it stops feeling like work, and you get a kind of fulfillment you probably haven't felt before. This talk will help you unlock the power and potential you have as philosophy students at UNT to change the world while doing the most good you can do.
Bio: Dr. Faraz Harsini is a biomedical and food systems scientist, and the CEO and founder of Allied Scholars for Animal Protection (ASAP), a nonprofit that advocates for changing unjust laws, animal and environmental protection, public health, nutrition, and pursuing careers that can make the most difference. ASAP has dozens of chapters at top universities across the country.
He is a recipient of the Winsome Constance Kindness Gold Medal, presented by Philip Wollen in recognition of his advocacy, an honor previously given to Peter Singer, Jane Goodall, and Sir David Attenborough. Dr. Harsini donated the entire prize to ASAP.Born in Iran, he escaped execution and rebuilt his life in the United States, and that experience still shapes the human rights work he does alongside his animal advocacy.He was also a Bioprocessing Senior Scientist at the Good Food Institute, where he worked on advancing scientific and technological methods to produce alternative proteins and cultivated meat.Dr. Harsini's educational background includes a Bachelor's degree in chemical engineering, with a focus on process design and nanobiotechnology. He also has a Master's degree in biotechnology and cancer research, as well as a doctorate in Cell Physiology and Molecular Biophysics and a diploma in Lifestyle Medicine. He has received numerous awards for his scientific work, including recognition from the National Institutes of Health.He is a plaintiff in Dubash v. City of Houston, et al., a federal civil rights lawsuit in the 5th Circuit with major implications for free speech and animal protection. He is represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the University of Texas Law and Religion Clinic.Dr. Harsini lectures at Harvard, Yale, and UChicago law schools, where he directly links the legal system and ethics to the food system, human and animal rights, environmental protection, and sustainability. He is also an honorary keynote speaker at Jain events including YJA, YJP, and JAINA, some of the largest Jain conventions in the world. Across all of it, he brings science, medicine, policy, and philosophy together with the principle of nonviolence, connecting his human rights activism and his work for animals as one continuous argument rather than separate causes.
