Tom Kerns

Tom Kerns

Director – Environment and Human Rights Advisory

Tom Kerns is Director of Environment and Human Rights Advisory and professor emeritus of Philosophy at North Seattle College. He has taught online courses in Bioethics, Ways of Knowing, and Environment and Human Rights.

Dr. Kerns is author of Environmentally Induced Illnesses: Ethics, Risk Assessment and Human Rights (McFarland, 2001). He has lectured at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva on human rights issues in HIV vaccine research, and he has served as commissioner on the New Zealand People’s Inquiry into Aerial Pesticide Sprays Over Auckland (2006). Tom also serves as a Board member of Beyond Toxics, and of Concerned Citizens for Clean Air. He is on the Steering Group for the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on the Human Rights Impacts of Fracking and is a member of the Drafting Group for the Declaration on Human Rights and Climate Change.

Recent articles include “Ten Practical Advantages of a Human Rights Approach to Environmental Advocacy” (2013) and “Schopenhauer’s Mitleid: environmental outrage and human rights” (2016).


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