“Veganism is not about giving anything up or losing anything; it is about gaining the peace within yourself that comes from embracing nonviolence and refusing to participate in the exploitation of the vulnerable” ― Gary L. Francione Who is Gary L. Francione Gary Lawrence Francione (born May 1954) is an American academic in the fields of law and philosophy. He is Board of Governors Professor of Law and Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He is also a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lincoln (U.K.) and honorary professor of philosophy at the University of East Anglia (U.K.). He is the author of numerous books and articles on animal ethics. Early Life Gary L. Francione's Francione is known for his work on animal rights theory, and in 1989, was the first academic to teach it in an American law school. His work has focused on three issues: the property status of animals, the differences between animal rights and animal welfare, and a theory of animal rights based on sentience alone, rather than on any other cognitive characteristics. He is a pioneer of the abolitionist theory of animal rights, arguing that animal welfare regulation is theoretically and practically unsound, serving only to prolong the status of animals as property by making the public feel comfortable about using them. He argues that non- human animals require only one right, the right not to be regarded as property, and that veganism—the rejection of the use of animals as mere resources—is the moral baseline of the animal rights movement. He rejects all forms of violence, arguing that the animal rights movement is the logical progression of the peace movement, seeking to take it one step further by ending conflict between human and non- human animals, and by treating animals as ends in themselves. Francione is the author or co-author of several books about animal rights, including Animals, Property, and the Law (1995), Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement (1996), Animals as Persons (2008), and The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation? (2010, with Robert Garner). He has also written papers on copyright, patent law, and law and science.