Jeff Sebo | |
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 Sebo in 2021 | |
| Born | Jeffrey Raymond Sebo (1983-02-24)February 24, 1983 (age 42)[1][2] |
| Spouse | |
| Education | |
| Education |
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| Thesis | The Personal Is Political (2011) |
| Doctoral advisor | J. David Velleman |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Institutions | New York University |
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| Notable works |
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| Website | jeffsebo.net |
Jeffrey Raymond Sebo (born February 24, 1983) is an American philosopher andanimal rights activist. He works atNew York University, where he is anassociate professor ofenvironmental studies and anaffiliated professor ofbioethics,medical ethics, philosophy, andlaw. He is the director of the university's Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, director of the university's Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, and co-director of the university's Wild Animal Welfare Program.
Sebo specializes inanimal ethics, bioethics, andenvironmental ethics;agency,well-being, andmoral status;moral,legal, andpolitical philosophy; and the ethics of activism, advocacy, andphilanthropy.[3]
In 2022, he published his first sole-authored book,Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves. This was followed byThe Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why in 2025.
Sebo is the son of Sheryl L. Sebo, anorganist, and Eric J. Sebo, asystems special operations manager, ofPlano, Texas.[1]
He studied philosophy and sociology atTexas Christian University, graduatingsumma cum laude with aBA in 2005.[3] During his studies, he founded twoanimal rights groups inFort Worth, Texas, one that hosted movie nights and ranleafletting campaigns and another that facilitated care forferal cats.[3][4]
Sebo completed hisPhD atNew York University in 2011. His dissertation,The Personal Is Political, was supervised byDerek Parfit,John Richardson,Sharon Street, andJ. David Velleman (chair of the committee).[3]
In 2005, Sebo published his first academic article, "A Critique of the Kantian Theory of Indirect Duties to Animals," inAnimal Liberation Philosophy & Policy.[5]
After completing his PhD atNew York University (NYU), he held a postdoctoral fellowship there inanimal andenvironmental studies until 2014, when he moved to theNational Institutes of Health for a one-year postdoctoral position in bioethics. From 2015 to 2017, Sebo worked as aresearchassistant professor of philosophy atUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was the associate director of the Parr Center for Ethics at the university. He returned to NYU in 2017 as aclinical assistant professor in environmental studies, with affiliate roles in bioethics, medical ethics, and philosophy.[3] From 2018, he was the founding director of NYU's MA in animal studies; this was integrated in the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, also founded in 2018, which was directed byDale Jamieson.[6]
Sebo's first book was 2018'sFood, Animals and the Environment: An Ethical Approach, a book devoted tofood ethics, co-authored with Christopher Schlottmann.[7] In the same year, Sebo was among those filing an amicus brief in support of granting legal personhood to chimpanzees.[8][9]Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosopher's Brief was published byRoutledge in 2018; Sebo was one of 13 authors, along withKristin Andrews,Gary L. Comstock, G. K. D. Crozier,Sue Donaldson, Andrew Fenton, Tyler M. John, L. Syd M. Johnson, Robert C. Jones,Will Kymlicka,Letitia Meynell, Nathan Nobis, and David Pena-Guzman.[9]
Sebo was promoted to clinicalassociate professor in 2020.[3] His first sole-authored book,Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves, was published byOxford University Press in 2022.[10][11] NYU launched its Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program (directed by Sebo)[12] and its Wild Animal Welfare Program (co-directed by Sebo and Becca Franks) in the same year.[13] The following year, he became an associate professor and the deputy director of the Centre for Environmental and Animal Protection.[3] The Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, of which Sebo was the founding director, was launched in 2024, funded by endowments from The Navigation Fund and Macroscopic Ventures.[14] Sebo became the director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection in 2024, Jamieson having retired from the NYU faculty in 2022, with Franks taking over as director of the animal studies MA programme.[6]
In 2024, Sebo, along withJonathan Birch andKristin Andrews, launched theNew York Declaration on Animal Consciousness.[15] In the same year, Sebo was included inVox's "Future Perfect 50", a list of people working on solutions to present and future problems.[16]
His second sole-authored book,The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why, was published in 2025 byW. W. Norton.[17] In the same year, Sebo became the principle investigator of NYU's new Wildlife Inclusive Local Development (WILD) Lab.[18]
As of 2025, he is an associate professor of environmental studies and an affiliated professor of bioethics, medical ethics, philosophy, and law. He is the director of the university's Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, director of the university's Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, and co-director of the university's Wild Animal Welfare Program.[19]
Sebo has been a board member ofMinding Animals International since 2014, a mentor and contributing writer atSentient Media from 2020 and a senior research affiliate at the Legal Priorities Project since 2021; he was an executive committee member of theAnimals & Society Institute from 2012 to 2020, board member ofAnimal Charity Evaluators from 2015 to 2021 and an advisory member of theSentience Institute from 2018 to 2020.[3]
In 2014, Sebo married Maryse Mitchell-Brody, apsychotherapist, in a ceremony officiated by aUniversal Life minister.[1] The couple lived together inBrooklyn, New York, with their dog Smoky until their separation and divorce in 2022.[20][21]
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