Carnists are like slave owners or female oppressors. That is the message the recent HEAL guest speaker, Jennifer Greene from Beyond Carnism, left students enraged over after her recent speech about veganism. Her presentation was supposed to be about the environmental emissions for which the meat industry is responsible. However, instead of focusing on this theme, the speaker digressed into offensive parallels that compared the mindsets and cruelty of carnists to the mindsets and cruelty behind some of the worst acts against humanity in all of history. The Dial Editorial Board believes that the practices in the meat industry are inhumane and cruel, and even though Ms. Greene offended many, her controversial methods were able to open students’ eyes to the terrible practices they blindly accepted every day. Hackley cannot expect to have an impactful speaker if our primary focus is pleasing the entire crowd, even at the cost of controversy.

When Ms. Greene introduced the idea that Carnists were comparable to slave owners, supporters of homophobia, and persecutors in the Holocaust, she trivialized topics that many audience members still feel connected to today, and hyperbolized the immoral practices in the consumption of meat. “She made a generalization against a whole group of people—carnists,” junior William Cotter said. “She was trying to say that there should be as much hate for carnists as there is for slave owners,” he continued, highlighting a parallel that particularly agitated students. Freshman William Goldsmith agreed. “The pictures of Holocaust survivors and humans being whipped next to pictures of chickens dying was inappropriate, distasteful, and offensive,” he said.

Many students felt that Ms. Greene’s comparisons were unfair because she insinuated that all meat eaters were comparable to those who actively participated in these crimes against humanity. Hackley students do not raise animals in inhumane conditions, nor do they consciously go to the grocery store, pick up a piece of meat and decide to buy it because they know it was treated poorly. However, this is why Ms. Greene’s speech was important. It touched a controversial idea and opened up the community’s eyes to the very real issue that is the inhumane treatment of livestock. It showed the community that we do participate in these practices, even if on a smaller, more passive scale.

Some members of the community agreed with The Dial’s stance on the speaker. Freshman Frances Schaeffler said, “she had interesting comparisons, and from her point of view obviously they made sense because she believes that animal rights are comparable to human rights.” However, “she did not explain herself and just threw [the comparisons] at us so we all didn’t really know what to think of it and just rejected the whole carnism idea,” Frances continued, expressing some students’ view that the the drama of the presentation eclipsed the legitimacy of the problem. However, this dramatic speech succeeded in inciting tons of conversation, which a more even toned presentation would have failed to do.

One aspect of the presentation that the Editorial Board found problematic, though, was the way that Ms. Greene responded to questions posed by the community. Following her speech, she opened the floor to questions, some of which were answered fairly and others which were simply shut down. When asked about her reaction to the speaker, senior Isabella Yannuzzi said, “I feel that in an effort to condense her presentation into 45 minutes, she ended up with something that did not relay well to the audience and came across as far fetched. Some of the comparisons she made were offensive, and her claims about the agricultural industry were unsupported because she failed to include facts or data of any kind. She made some good points, but discussed them briefly and did not back them up. Her depiction of small farms was inaccurate and her refusal to even consider them as a solution to large scale industrial agriculture came across as narrow minded and stubborn.”

Despite Ms. Greene’s inability to answer students’ questions sufficiently, the response from the student body was more avid than the response to any previous speaker; this shows that the controversy of the speaker was very effective in raising awareness and conversation about the issue. While Ms. Greene’s claims were offensive, they incited conversation and awareness within the community – the mark of a successful speaker. If the Hackley community desires to continue having impactful speakers, the community should also be open to controversy. Instead of immediate negative responses to concepts that seem radical, students should take a minute to consider the idea presented to them, and try to see it from a different perspective.