This article may rely excessively on sources too closely associated with the subject , potentially preventing the article from being verifiable and neutral.(June 2017) |
Formation | 1985 |
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Type | Research and education organization |
22-2570926 | |
Legal status | 501(c)(3) public charity |
Focus | promote ideas related to Ayn Rand's philosophy |
Headquarters | Santa Ana, California, U.S. [1] [2] |
Coordinates | 33°41′47″N117°51′59″W / 33.6964°N 117.8663°W |
CEO | Tal Tsfany |
Website | ari.aynrand.org |
Objectivist movement |
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The Ayn Rand Institute: The Center for the Advancement of Objectivism, commonly known as the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit think tank in Santa Ana, California, that promotes Objectivism, the philosophy developed by Ayn Rand. The organization was established in 1985, three years after Rand's death, by businessman Ed Snider and Leonard Peikoff, Rand's legal heir.
Ideas promoted by the Ayn Rand Institute include atheism, capitalism, libertarianism and individual rights. The ARI has supported the American Tea Party movement and opposed the United States' wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. [3] [4] A critic of government spending, the organization took a federal loan of between $350,000 and $1 million in 2020 under the Paycheck Protection Program. [5] [6] [7]
The institute's stated goal is to "create a culture whose guiding principles are reason, rational self-interest, individualism and laissez-faire capitalism." [8] ARI has several educational and outreach programs, which include providing intellectuals for public appearances, supporting Objectivist campus clubs, supplying Rand's writings to schools and professors, assisting overseas Objectivist institutions, organizing annual conferences and running the Objectivist Academic Center. [9] [10]
Peikoff, her legal heir, was convinced to found the Ayn Rand Institute after businessman Ed Snider organized a meeting of possible financial supporters in New York in the fall of 1983. [11] Peikoff then agreed to be the first chairman of the organization's board of directors. [12]
In 1983, a group of Objectivists, including George Reisman, organized the Jefferson School of Philosophy, Economics and Politics. The Jefferson School held a two-week-long conference at the University of California, San Diego later that year, a conference which continued to occur every two years and is the predecessor of ARI's current annual Objectivist Conference. [13]
ARI began operations on February 1, 1985, three years after Rand's death, in Marina del Rey, California. The first board of directors included Snider and psychologist Edith Packer. Snider was also one of the founding donors for the organization along with educational entrepreneur Carl Barney. [13] [12] Its first executive director was Michael Berliner, who was previously the chairman of the Department of Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education at California State University, Northridge. ARI also established a board of governors, which initially included Harry Binswanger, Robert Hessen, Edwin Locke, Arthur Mode, George Reisman, Jay Snider, and Mary Ann Sures, with Peter Schwartz as its chairman. [14] M. Northrup Buechner and George Walsh joined the board of advisors shortly thereafter. [15]
ARI's first two projects were aimed at students. One was developing a network of college clubs to study Objectivism. The other was a college scholarship contest for high-school students based on writing an essay about Rand's novel The Fountainhead . [15] Later, additional essay contests were added based on Anthem , [16] We the Living and Atlas Shrugged . [17] [18] [ third-party source needed ] In 1988, ARI began publishing Impact, a newsletter for contributors. [19]
In 1989, a philosophical dispute resulted in ARI ending its association with philosopher David Kelley. [20] Some members of the board of advisors agreed with Kelley and also left, including George Walsh. [21] Kelley subsequently founded his own competing institute now known as The Atlas Society, which remains critical of ARI's stance on strict loyalty to Rand's principles. [22]
In 1994, ARI launched the Objectivist Graduate Center, which offered both distance-learning and in-person courses. [13]
In January 2000, Berliner retired as executive director, replaced by Yaron Brook, [9] then an assistant professor of finance at Santa Clara University. Onkar Ghate began working for ARI later that year and ARI launched the Objectivist Academic Center. [13]
In 2002, ARI moved from Marina del Rey to larger offices in Irvine, California. [4] In 2003, ARI launched the Anthem Fellowship for the Study of Objectivism, a fellowship that financially supports universities who have Objectivist professors. [13]
Charity Navigator, which rates charitable and educational organizations to inform potential donors, gives ARI two out of four stars in 2020. [23] As of September 2021 [update] , ARI's board of directors consists of Brook; Tsfany; Harry Binswanger, philosopher and long-time associate of Rand; Tara Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin; [24] and John Allison, board member and former CEO of the Cato Institute and former CEO of BB&T.; [25] Larry Salzman of the Pacific Legal Foundation; Tim Blum, a Chicago real-estate developer; Robert Mayhew, professor of philosophy at Seton Hall University; Jim Brown, CFA; Onkar Ghate, Chief Philosophy Officer of the institute.
Peikoff retains a cooperative and influential relationship with ARI. [26] In 2006, he remarked that he approved of the work ARI has done [27] and in November 2010 that the executive director "has done a splendid job". [28] Peikoff was a featured speaker at the 2007 and 2010 Objectivist Conferences. [29] In August 2010, he demanded a change to ARI's board of directors, resulting in the resignation of John McCaskey. [30]
A central goal for ARI throughout the 2010s has been to spread Objectivism globally. ARI helped establish the Ayn Rand Center Israel in 2012, the Ayn Rand Institute Europe in 2015 [31] and the Ayn Rand Center Japan in 2017. Each of these organizations are separate legal entities from the United States-based ARI, but they are all affiliated with ARI.
In January 2017, ARI announced Jim Brown as its CEO, succeeding Yaron Brook as its operational executive. [32] In June 2018, Tal Tsfany, co-founder of the Ayn Rand Center Israel, took over as the president and CEO of ARI. [33]
In 2020, ARI received a Paycheck Protection Program loan of between $350K and $1 million, [34] [1] [35] which Binswanger and Ghate described as "partial restitution for government-inflicted losses". [36] The decision was criticized due to the incongruity of some organizations previously opposed to federal spending receiving the funds during the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic impact on small businesses. [35]
ARI runs a variety of programs, many of which are aimed at students. It sends free books to schools, [9] sponsors student essay contests and campus clubs and offers financial assistance to students applying to graduate school. [10] [18] It also has an online bookstore, offers internships for current and recently graduated college students and provides speakers [9] for public lectures and media appearances. [37]
ARI promotes Objectivism, the philosophy developed by Ayn Rand. ARI sponsors writers and speakers who apply Objectivism to contemporary issues, including philosophy, politics and art. [38]
Since Objectivism advocates atheism, ARI promotes the separation of church and state and its writers argue that the religious right poses a threat to individual rights.[ citation needed ] They have argued against displaying religious symbols such as the Ten Commandments in government facilities [39] and against faith-based initiatives. [40] ARI intellectuals argue that religion is incompatible with American ideals [41] and opposes the teaching of "intelligent design" in public schools. [42]
ARI is strongly supportive of free speech and opposes all forms of censorship, including laws that ban obscenity and hate speech. [43] [44] In response to the Muhammad cartoons controversy, ARI started a Free Speech Campaign in 2006. [45] Steve Simpson, formerly director of legal studies at ARI, has argued that campaign finance is a free speech issue and that laws that limit it are a violation of the First Amendment. Accordingly, Simpson and ARI strongly supports Citizens United . [46] [47]
ARI holds that the motivation for Islamic terrorism comes from their religiosity, not poverty or a reaction to Western policies. [48] They have urged that the United States use overwhelming, retaliatory force to "end states who sponsor terrorism", using whatever means are necessary to end the threat. [49] In his article "End States Who Sponsor Terrorism", which was published as a full page ad in The New York Times , Peikoff wrote: "The choice today is mass death in the United States or mass death in the terrorist nations. Our Commander-In-Chief must decide whether it is his duty to save Americans or the governments who conspire to kill them." Although some at ARI initially supported the invasion of Iraq, it has criticized how the Iraq War was handled. [50] Since October 2, 2001, ARI has held that Iran should be the primary target in the war against "Islamic totalitarianism". [49]
ARI is generally supportive of Israel. [51] Of Zionism, Yaron Brook writes: "Zionism fused a valid concern – self-preservation amid a storm of hostility – with a toxic premise – ethnically based collectivism and religion." [52] ARI is highly critical of environmentalism and animal rights, arguing that they are destructive to human well-being. [53] [54] ARI is also highly critical of diversity and affirmative action programs as well as multiculturalism, arguing that they are based on racist premises that ignore the commonality of a shared humanity. [55] [56] ARI supports women's right to choose abortion, [57] voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide. [58]
ARI denounces neoconservatism in general. For example, C. Bradley Thompson wrote an article entitled "The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism", [59] which was later turned with Yaron Brook into a book called Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea. [60]
In October 2012, ARI helped establish the Ayn Rand Center Israel (ARCI) to promote Objectivism in Israel and the Middle East. [61] Its current director is Boaz Arad. In 2016, ARCI launched the Atlas Award for the Best Israeli Start-up, presented annually at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. [62] Judges for the award include Yaron Brook and Shlomo Kalish. [63] Moovit was the first recipient of the award in 2016 and Zebra Medical Vision won the award in 2017. [61]
The Jewish Chronicle and the Jerusalem Post described ARI as a right-wing organization. [64] [7]
In April 2015, ARI helped establish the Ayn Rand Institute Europe to promote Objectivism in Europe. [65] The current chairman of ARI Europe is Lars Seir Christensen, CEO and co-founder of Saxo Bank. [65] In February 2017, ARI helped establish the Ayn Rand Center Japan. [66] ARI has also helped guide the independent Spain-based Objetivismo Internacional, which seeks to spread Objectivism in the Spanish-speaking world. [67]
This section contains text that is written in a promotional tone .(October 2023) |
The stated goal of the Ayn Rand Institute Atlas Award is to encourage entrepreneurship. The institute states it is awarded to honour the most innovative entrepreneur who through wealth building and life enhancing enterprise ambition uses their technological developments to make the "world a better place" which reflects the essence of Ayn Rand's philosophy connecting these values "to one of the best parts of the Israeli economy". [61] [68] CEO of Moovit Nir Erez, the recipient of the award in 2016, sought to distance himself from controversial politics surrounding the Institute and award, stating “We are purely trying to focus on transportation and moving, not on political issues. On the contrary, we would like to be as apolitical as possible.” [61]
Recipients include:
Alice O'Connor, better known by her pen name Ayn Rand, was a Russian-born American author and philosopher. She is known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful and two Broadway plays, Rand achieved fame with her 1943 novel The Fountainhead. In 1957, she published her best-selling work, the novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward, until her death in 1982, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own periodicals and releasing several collections of essays.
Objectivism is a philosophical system named and developed by Russian-American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand. She described it as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute".
Leonard Sylvan Peikoff is a Canadian American philosopher. He is an Objectivist and was a close associate of Ayn Rand, who designated him heir to her estate. He is a former professor of philosophy and host of a nationally syndicated radio talk show. He co-founded the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) in 1985 and is the author of several books on philosophy.
This is a bibliography for Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Objectivism is a philosophical system initially developed in the 20th century by Rand.
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology is a book about epistemology by the philosopher Ayn Rand. Rand considered it her most important philosophical writing. First published in installments in Rand's journal, The Objectivist, July 1966 through February 1967, the work presents Rand's proposed solution to the historic problem of universals, describes how the theory can be extended to complex cases, and outlines how it applies to other issues in the theory of knowledge.
David Christopher Kelley is an American philosopher. He is a professed Objectivist, though his position that Objectivism can be revised and influenced by other schools of thought has prompted disagreements with other Objectivists. Kelley is also an author of several books on philosophy and the founder of The Atlas Society, an institution he established in 1990 after permanently dissociating with Leonard Peikoff and the Ayn Rand Institute.
Harry Binswanger is an American professor and author. He is an Objectivist and a board member of the Ayn Rand Institute. He was an associate of Ayn Rand, working with her on The Ayn Rand Lexicon and helping her edit the second edition of Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. He is the author of How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation (2014).
Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand is a 1991 book by the philosopher Leonard Peikoff, in which the author discusses the ideas of his mentor, Ayn Rand. Peikoff describes it as "the first comprehensive statement" of Rand's philosophy, Objectivism. The book is based on a series of lecture courses that Peikoff first gave in 1976 and that Rand publicly endorsed. Peikoff states that only Rand was qualified to write the definitive statement of her philosophic system, and that the book should be seen as an interpretation "by her best student and chosen heir." The book is volume six of the "Ayn Rand Library" series edited by Peikoff.
The Atlas Society (TAS) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand. It is part of the Objectivist movement that split off from the Ayn Rand Institute in 1990 due to disagreements over whether Objectivism was a "closed system" or an "open system". David Kelley is the founder of TAS, and Jennifer Grossman is its current CEO.
The Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), originally Nathaniel Branden Lectures, was an organization founded by Nathaniel Branden in 1958 to promote Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. The institute was responsible for many Objectivist lectures and presentations across the United States. Many of those associated with NBI worked on the Objectivist magazines, The Objectivist Newsletter and The Objectivist.
The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature is a collection of essays regarding the nature of art by the philosopher Ayn Rand. It was first published in 1969, with a second, revised edition published in 1975. Most of the essays are reprinted from Rand's magazine The Objectivist.
The Objectivist movement is a movement of individuals who seek to study and advance Objectivism, the philosophy expounded by novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand. The movement began informally in the 1950s and consisted of students who were brought together by their mutual interest in Rand's novel, The Fountainhead. The group, ironically named "The Collective" due to their actual advocacy of individualism, in part consisted of Leonard Peikoff, Nathaniel Branden, Barbara Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Allan Blumenthal. Nathaniel Branden, a young Canadian student who had been greatly inspired by The Fountainhead, became a close confidant and encouraged Rand to expand her philosophy into a formal movement. From this informal beginning in Rand's living room, the movement expanded into a collection of think tanks, academic organizations, and periodicals.
Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism has been, and continues to be, a major influence on the right-libertarian movement, particularly libertarianism in the United States. Many right-libertarians justify their political views using aspects of Objectivism.
Yaron Brook is an Israeli-American Objectivist writer who is the current chairman of the board at the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), where he was executive director from 2000 to 2017. Prior to joining ARI, he was a finance professor at Santa Clara University, where he taught for seven years.
Ayn Rand, author and developer of Objectivism, held controversial views regarding homosexuality and gender roles. Although Rand personally viewed homosexuality negatively, considering it immoral and disgusting, she endorsed non-discrimination protection for homosexuals in the public sphere while opposing laws against discrimination in the private sector on the basis of individual rights.
Jonathan Hoenig is an American, founding member of the Capitalist Pig hedge fund, and a regular contributor to and regular panelist on Fox News Channel's Cashin' In, Your World with Neil Cavuto, Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld and WLS (AM) 890's morning show, Don Wade & Roma.
Objectivist periodicals are a variety of academic journals, magazines, and newsletters with an editorial perspective explicitly based on Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Several early Objectivist periodicals were edited by Rand. She later endorsed two periodicals edited by associates, and a number of others have been founded since her death.
The Passion of Ayn Rand is a biography of Ayn Rand by writer and lecturer Barbara Branden, a former friend and business associate. Published by Doubleday in 1986, it was the first full-length biography of Rand and the basis for the 1999 film of the same name starring Helen Mirren as Rand.
The Ayn Rand Cult is a book by journalist Jeff Walker, published by Open Court Publishing Company in 1999. Walker discusses the history of the Objectivist movement started by novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, which he describes as a cult.
Amy Lynn Peikoff is an American writer, blogger, and a professor of philosophy and law. Peikoff is the Chief Policy Officer of social media platform Parler.
Andrea Badillo, left, and Vanessa Flores, with their eighth-grade English teacher Michael Boucher, show their Ayn Rand Institute "Anthem" essay competition certificates.
The Klingon Language Institute has a scholarship for students pursuing language study, earthly or alien; the United States Bowling Congress gives grants to promising young bowlers; and the Ayn Rand Institute rewards essay writers who are adept at deconstructing her novels, such as "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged."
Brook acknowledged that there was some seeming contradiction between Rand's philosophy and the story of Israel's high-tech success, which has by many accounts benefited from government support for research and development, private-public partnerships and guarantees that helped launch the country's venture capital environment. The nomination for the prize, for example, did not require companies to have forgone any kind of government grants, subsidized credit, government- backed accelerators, and so on.