Steven Best (born December 1955) is an American philosopher, writer, speaker and activist. His concerns include animal rights, species extinction, human overpopulation, ecological crisis, biotechnology, liberation politics, terrorism, mass media and culture, globalization, and capitalist domination. He is Associate Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso. He has published 13 books and over 200 articles and reviews. He is co-author (with UCLA Professor Douglas Kellner) of a trilogy of postmodern studies (Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogation; The Postmodern Turn: Paradigms Shifts in Art, Theory, and Science; and The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium (Guilford Press, 1991, 1997, 2001). More recently, he introduced and co-edited four anthologies: Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals (Lantern Books, 2004); Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth (AK Press, 2006); Academic Repression: Reflections on the Academic-Industrial Complex (AK Press, 2010); and The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination (Rowman & Littlefield 2011). His most recent book is titled: The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). Background After attending high school in Chicago, Best took casual jobs in factories and drove a truck for a few years. He attended the College of DuPage (Illinois) from 1977 to 1979, where he completed an associate degree in film and theater. He then studied philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1979 to 1983, where he received a bachelor's degree with distinction; at the University of Chicago from 1985 to 1987 where he obtained his master's degree; and at the University of Texas at Austin from 1989 to 1993, where he obtained his Ph.D. In 1993, he began as an Assistant Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso promoted to Associate Professor in 1999, and was Chair of the Philosophy Department 2002–2005. Academic work A writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education described Best in 2005 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). His academic interests are continental philosophy, postmodernism, and environmental philosophy. He is known for his post-structuralist notions of revolution, based equally in animal rights and total liberation. He is the editor, with Anthony J. Nocella, of Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?