August 23, 1941

Onora Sylvia O'Neill (August 23, 1941) is a British thinker. She studied at Oxford and received a doctorate from Harvard. After a noted career, in 1992, she  accepted the post of Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, and since 2006 she has been Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge.

Her 1997 paper, "Environmental Values, Anthroporphism, and Speciesism" contains a timely argument in which Dr. O'Neill, (she prefers that title to the "Baroness" to which her elevation to the peerage allows) points out inadequacies in the use of the term speciesism to argue against according humans more ethical rights than aspects of the non human world.  A viewpoint that puts "a person torturing a cat is on a par with a cat torturing a bird," is not one she finds supportable. The link is to a downloadable version of this paper. 

We have this picture of Onora O'Neill, in 2002, at Newnham College:

We meet in the Principal's lodge at Newnham. Its smell - a combination of floor polish and disinfectant - is evocatively institutional. So is Dr O'Neill herself. She is wearing the uniform of female Oxbridge dons - navy blue suit with knee-length skirt, flat lace-up shoes and a large black handbag over one arm.

Now she also sits in the House of Lords.