The Animal's Right

By Alice Vining

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1 comment on The Animal’s Right

  • Kent Hackmann

    Alice (if I may),
    Thanks for your contribution. As a professor emeritus (history, University of Idaho), I want to express my appreciation for the story you recounted and for Joe’s Socratic method, not missing a beat when a family pet provided a distraction. My own pedagogy was nowhere as sharp. You make a larger, warmer point about the relationship between a dog and his master.

    As a footnote to your essay, I mention a memorable event about 1963 when I was in my Ph.D. program in history in Ann Arbor. The event took place in the William L. Clements Library, across the street from the law school quadrangle. The Clements has a distinguished collection of Americana and manuscripts, especially those pertaining to England in the 1700s. The Shelburne Papers and other holding were important for my dissertation. The Clements sponsored a lecture series, which I attended. One evening, I sat next to Frederick Bernays Wiener, an appellate lawyer from Arizona, who was visiting the law school that week. When he learned about my dissertation on Anglo-French military history in the mid-1700s, he suggested that I join the Selden Society. As a member I amassed a collection of the Society’s annual volumes, and one year in London I attended an annual general meeting in one of the Courts of Law.

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