$1M gift to boost study of animal rights law

heraldsun.com: Bob Barker's $1M gift to boost ...


BY MICHAEL PETROCELLI : The Herald-Sun
mpetrocelli@heraldsun.com
Dec 6, 2004 : 10:46 pm ET

DURHAM -- Duke Law School has a new $1 million endowment fund, but it didn't have to guess the price of a dinette set to win the money.

Bob Barker, the octogenarian host of daytime television's long-running game show "The Price is Right," chose Duke to receive one in a series of gifts he is making to top law schools to promote the teaching of animal rights law.

Barker, a longtime animal advocate who ends his show by reminding viewers to have their pets spayed and neutered, recently gave similar gifts to the law schools at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and the University of California at Los Angeles.

But Duke won't have to start its animal rights law program from scratch.

Professor William Reppy, who does pro bono work for animal rights causes, has been teaching a class on animal law in alternating years. The endowment, he said, should allow him to teach the course every year.

Duke's animal law program encompasses a number of issues, including cruelty to animals, veterinary malpractice and laws prohibiting people from hoarding large numbers of pets, Reppy said.

The school also plans to use the Bob Barker Endowment Fund for the Study of Animal Rights Law to establish an animal law clinic, where students can earn credit working on animal rights-related litigation.

According to Duke officials, Reppy already has been involved in the state's passage of a law, unique in the United States, that allows individuals and outside organizations to seek injunctions against people who violate the state's animal cruelty laws.

Reppy noted that Duke already draws interest from prospective students interested in animal law. It is poised to become a national leader in the field, he added.

"We've got a head start," he said.

Thomas Hadzor, the law school's associate dean for external relations, said Barker's representatives had approached Duke with the offer -- a scenario he called "one of those development officer dreams."

Although he has never spoken directly to Barker, Hadzor surmised that the host might have included Duke in his plans because of its existing animal law program, or simply because he wanted to endow a program at a top-flight law school in the Southeast.

"I never asked why, because I didn't want to scare him off," he said.

Barker, who was taping back-to-back episodes of his show Monday, could not be reached for an interview. However, he recently told The New York Times that he hopes his gifts would create a cadre of lawyers steeped in animal rights and animal cruelty issues.

"The laws are not stringent enough, and unfortunately, the laws that we do have are not necessarily enforced," Barker told the Times. "If we can get more and more young lawyers to be aware of this, then if they're involved in a case that involves animals, they'll know what to do.

"If they become judges, that's wonderful," he said, "they're making decisions. And some of these lawyers are going to become politicians."