“Controversial UTEP professor Steve Best risks much in fight for animal rights”

http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_14355275

ANTHONY, N.M. -- People have judged Steve Best many ways during his 30 years in academia.

Some have called him a troublemaker, a radical, and even a domestic and international terrorist because of his vocal and often confrontational stance on animal rights.

He said it is his tenured position that has kept him on the payroll as a philosophy professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

But even Best knows he is gambling with his career when he protests against the school's environmental policies with a bullhorn outside UTEP President Diana Natalicio's office, or when he openly supports a movement that undertakes criminal activities to save animals from research laboratories and slaughterhouses.

"Hey, if Martin Luther King was not afraid to lose his life, I shouldn't be afraid to lose my job," Best said.