Steven Best (born December 1955) is an American animal rights activist, author, talk-show host, and associate professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso. He has been described as "one of the leading scholarly voices on animal rights."
Best is co-founder of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS), formerly known as the Center on Animal Liberation Affairs (CALA), the first group dedicated to the philosophical discussion of animal liberation. His academic interests are continental philosophy, postmodernism, and environmental philosophy. He is the editor, with Anthony J. Nocella, of Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals (2004), which has a foreword by Ward Churchill, and the sister-companion volume on revolutionary environmentalism, Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth (2006).
Best is best known for his post-structuralist notions of revolution, based equally in animal rights and sexual liberation.
In December 2004, Best co-founded the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which acts as a media office for a number of animal rights groups, including the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), though he has said that he is not himself an ALF activist. He came to public attention in 2005, when the British Home Office told him it intended to use counter-terrorist measures adopted in light of the July 2005 London bombings to prevent him from addressing an animal rights rally in the UK. Best responded by alleging that Britain was becoming a police state.
