Dr. Lisa Kemmerer

Photo by Jo-Anne McArthur

Internationally known for her work in animal ethics, Dr. Kemmerer is the founder and director of the information-sharing non-profit, Tapestry. With a BA in International Studies (Reed), a Master of Theological Studies in Comparative Religions (Harvard), and a Ph.D. in philosophy (Glasgow University, Scotland), Kemmerer has a diverse educational background; her doctorate focused on interfacing concerns of animal ethics. Dr. Kemmerer—Dr. K for short—taught ethics and religious studies for 20 years, has written thirteen books in the field of animal ethics and vegan studies, including Vegan Ethics: AMORE (essential to any course in animal ethics), In Search of Consistency (exploring philosophy and animals across disciplines), Animals and World Religions (still the only systematic, comprehensive examination of religious ethics and animals across the world’s major religions), Sister Species (one of her books on feminism and animal activism), and Eating Earth (one of her books on environmental ethics and choosing vegan). Dr. Kemmerer retired in 2020 to become a full-time activist through Tapestry.

“We have extended ethics outward from self to family to community to all of humanity. We are now called to extend moral consideration to other species.”

From In Search of Consistency

Formative Years

Dr. Kemmerer’s sense of wonder in nature, smallness of self, and simplicity of lifestyle were shaped by a rural upbringing, time in the wilderness, and international travels on a shoestring. From her youngest years, Kemmerer was sensitive to suffering, including the suffering of animals that was, at the time, so visible in rural communities. As a teen, Kemmerer became an avid backpacker and climber, joined search and rescue, and was soon embarking on month-long kayak trips and even longer cycling trips, including a trip from Washington to Alaska. In these formative years Kemmerer was already shifting toward vegan and taking a stand for animals.

Always seeking broader and deeper understandings, Kemmerer repeatedly walked away from conventional forms of education. Outdoor adventure and exploring the world shaped her life and worldview as an individual, scholar, philosopher, and activist. Her adventures speak to a tough and rugged spirit, and speak to a remarkable resilience that continues to shape her work as a very long term animal activist.

“Those who seek greater justice in our world need to work toward a deeper understanding of oppression.”

Introduction to Sister Species

Dr. K, soon became a college drop-out (with a not-yet diagnosed reading disability) and preferred to learn through explorations of the larger world and who was particularly interested in religions. To finance overseas travels, she worked as a forest fire fighter and nurse’s aide (nursing home). On the road, she hitch-hiked and stayed in local homes, which gifted her with an inside understanding of hundreds of diverse locals in far-away places, including the South Pacific and Asia. In particular, Kemmerer’s understanding of life and community was reshaped by rural Burma and Bangladesh, by little villages on the high ridges of Nepal and in the backwaters of India and China. These remote villages forever shifted her understandings of time, “necessities,” and lifestyle possibilities. Perhaps most importantly, through travel, Dr. K recognized her way of living and thinking as just one among infinite possibilities.

With renewed interest in religious philosophies, cultural conflicts, and the beauty of the planet where we live, Kemmerer graduated from a community college, after which she traveled to Alaska and co-founded her first animal activist organization. She again returned to college, earning a BA in International Studies at Reed College, where she founded her second anymal activist organization and earned a competitive Watson Fellowship that carried her overseas to explore place of women and anymals in religions of Asia, Europe, and the Fertile Crescent. Her adventures took her to remote monasteries and temples of China, facilitated a month at the Dalai Lama’s school in north India, and carried her to Palestine where she met patients in a West Bank hospital, visited holy sites in Israel, and traveled to remote hermitages in the mountains of Egypt and Turkey.

The world’s great religions provide a moral foundation for anymal liberation.

From Animals and World Religions

From tear-gas quelling riots in Kashmir to random violence in Israel, Kemmerer’s Watson Fellowship brought home extent of violence and suffering, especially conflicts rooted in religious convictions: How could such beautiful teachings of peace and compassion lead to so much violence? Kemmerer decided to become a teacher to foster wider and deeper peace and compassion, and her father (a high-school teacher) convinced her to choose to teach at the college level.

Toward this end, Kemmerer doggedly returned to her studies between jobs and adventures, finally earning her doctorate in philosophy with a specialty in animal ethics, working across the interfacing fields of environmental and religious ethics.

“Anymal activists need to understand sexism, feminists need to understand speciesism, and both need to understand the interconnected nature of marginalization and oppression.”

From Oppressive Liberation

Professional Life

Dr. Kemmerer taught at university for more than 20 years, writing a dozen books and speaking to tens of thousands of people in venues across North America and in Europe, Africa, and South America. While in Kenya, Kemmerer worked with a small group of activists and scholars to re-envision methods of preserving both wildlife and rural/indigenous communities (reflected in Animals and the Environment). In Peru she scrambled through thick, steep jungles with locals working to protect endangered yellow-tailed woolley monkeys (reflected in Primate People). Kemmerer visited hundreds of sanctuaries and spent time in bear and elephant sanctuaries in Cambodia, pondering the moral boundaries of sanctuary confinement (reflected in Bear Necessities and Animals and Environment). These experiences continued to shape Dr. K’s understandings of people and cultures, animals and the natural world, ethics, violence, cruelty, and the moral importance of compassion.

As her books became popular worldwide, Kemmerer was invited to collaborate with activists and scholars overseas. Eating Earth (Oxford) was translated into Italian (Mangiare la Terra) and Kemmerer was invited on a two-week book-tour giving talks throughout Italy. She was also invited to publish and lecture with a climate change think-tank in Barcelona. These intense immersions into the work of activists and scholars abroad were among her most treasured experiences as a professor, alongside shaping the minds and lives of thousands of students in ethics and religion courses

“Eating animals is eating earth. . . . Food choices are the number one determinant of an individual’s environmental footprint.

From Eating Earth

Tapestry

In 2020 Kemmerer retired from university to become a full-time activist as the founder and director of Tapestry (a registered non-profit). Tapestry envisions a world where all life and the earth itself are free from exploitation—a vegan world where no living being suffers harm in the name of religion and where anymals and earth are treated with care, dignity, and respect.

Three strands shape Tapestry—education, work in the field, and the arts. Tapestry academics are at the forefront of discovering, compiling, and sharing well-vetted information with those who are best-positioned to bring change: scholars and students, activists, and for religion topics, people of faith. Tapestry’s Hospitality Challenge continues to be a huge success, exponentially increasing vegan offerings at restaurants while Tapestry paintings and poetry inspire kindness, lean into greater justice, and help to build peace.

Tapestry has accomplished a remarkable amount of work in just a handful of years, including the publication of Vegan Ethics, AMORE and creating the Hospitality Challenge. Tapestry has also created the Traveling Banner Exhibit on Animals and World Religions and is currently working on the Animals and Religion Website. As the only scholar working systematically across the world’s key religious traditions, exploring and exposing animal ethics in core sacred texts, Kemmerer is uniquely positioned to create this ground-breaking website, a place where she can make freely available (to scholars, students, activists, and people of faith around the world) knowledge that she has accumulated across decades.

“Core religious teachings from around the world require humans to protect and respect all that is natural, to show compassion for all who are sentient, and in contemporary times, to rethink our relations with anymals—especially what we eat.”

From Animals and World Religions

For more on Tapestry, https://www.tapestryofpeace.org/

Questions? Contact Lisa.
For more about Dr. K, here is her resume.