The historian Bernard Unti, until 2021 Senior Policy Advisor and Special Assistant to the President & CEO of The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), has donated his collection of rare books and ephemera concerning animal protection history and animal studies to the Animal Rights and Welfare Archive at North Carolina State University’s Special Collections Research Center. Bernard’s contribution follows two years after the HSUS donated its records to NCSU.
In making his contribution, Bernard cited his long connection with Tom Regan, who taught at NCSU, and his wife Nancy, the co-founders of CAF:
Tom was a wonderful friend and mentor, and he and his wife Nancy . . . encouraged my collection. They supported my decision to go to graduate school. They accepted my decision to write about something other than animals. And they cheered me on when I reversed course and wrote a dissertation on the history of animal protection in the United States.
I have great confidence in NCSU and the management team at the archive, and I am increasingly excited about the role that the collection will play in the lives and scholarly work of others in the future. In this respect, I feel I am keeping the faith with Tom, Nancy, and many others who have helped to make this moment possible.
This expansion of the archive offers scholars a further incentive to apply for the 2022 Tom Regan Visiting Research Fellowship, the deadline for which closes at the end of April.