Photo Op: PETA Returns for Graduation with Giant Binoculars Showing UW’s Shameful Monkey Lab
For Immediate Release:
June 12, 2025
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
PETA will be outside Husky Stadium during the University of Washington’s (UW) graduation ceremonies with a 7.5-foot-tall “How the Other Half Lives” binocular installation. The installation juxtaposes macaques thriving in their natural habitats with the isolation, mutilation, and slow deaths endured by macaques behind laboratory doors, including the school’s Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC).
The return of PETA’s installation is designed to remind graduates and families that blocks from their celebration is a federally funded primate laboratory marked by federal violations, scientific failure, and mounting public outrage propped up by their tuition and tax dollars. Following commencement, PETA’s installation will continue its nationwide tour of all seven National Primate Research Centers.
“UW graduates deserve to know that just blocks away their school is hiding a violent, violation-prone facility where sensitive monkeys suffer and die for nothing,” says PETA Senior Science Advisor Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “PETA calls on UW to shut the monkey lab down and embrace superior, human-relevant science.”
When: Saturday, June 14, 11 a.m.
Where: Outside Husky Stadium, 3800 Montlake Blvd. N.E. (at the intersection of Montlake Boulevard N.E. and N.E. Pacific St.)
The debut of PETA’s “How the Other Half Lives” exhibit at UW earlier this year. Credit: PETA
Why: In their natural habitat, macaques form lifelong bonds, nurture their children, and travel several miles each day to explore diverse habitats. Monkeys at WaNPRC have starved, been mauled by other stressed monkeys, choked on their own vomit, had their limbs mangled, or died from uncontrolled diarrheal diseases. WaNPRC has violated federal animal welfare laws dozens of times, including when a monkey was strangled to death. Recently, UW experimenter Fritzie Arce-McShane blasted a monkey with so much unauthorized radiation that his body broke down, and he suffered for weeks before being killed.
WaNPRC faces growing pressure for public transparency after PETA won recent legal battles, including an across-the-board defeat in UW’s effort to hide the names of members who comprise its animal experimentation oversight committee.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
