Priscilla Cohn
Priscilla T. Neuman Cohn Ferrater Mora (December 14, 1933 – June 27, 2019) was an American philosopher and animal rights activist. She taught philosophy at Pennsylvania State University for over 35 years, became a full professor in 1982, and later became Professor Emerita at Penn State Abington. She also served as associate director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and co-edited its Journal of Animal Ethics.
Born in Radnor Township, Pennsylvania, she studied at Bryn Mawr College, earning a BA, MA, and PhD in philosophy. Her PhD thesis was on Martin Heidegger, and her doctoral advisor was José Ferrater Mora.
She married Willard Cohn in 1951; they separated in 1969 and divorced in 1980. She then married José Ferrater Mora in 1980, and he died in 1991.
Cohn’s work covered animal ethics, environmental ethics, and the history of philosophy. She pioneered courses in animal ethics, lecturing on five continents. From 1990 to 1993, she directed the Summer School Course in animal rights at Complutense University in Madrid—the first of its kind in Spain—and she also taught at the University of Santiago de Compostela in 1991.
She founded P.N.C. Corp, a nonprofit animal-rights foundation, which organized the first international wildlife contraception conference in the United States and funded the first PZP fertility-control study on white-tailed deer. She served on the boards of The Fund for Animals and Humane USA.
Cohn died at her home in Villanova, Pennsylvania, on June 27, 2019, from complications related to Parkinson’s disease.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 17:09 (CET).