October 10 is the 60th anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. To commemorate this event, we’re inviting admirers of Atlas Shrugged from around the world to participate in an online celebration of the novel’s publication.
Financiers don’t create the products that enrich our lives — they help grow the businesses that create the products that enrich our lives. Yet many people believe on some level that finance is immoral. Maybe not totally. Maybe it has some redeeming features. But at best it is regarded as a necessary evil. If our economic well-being depends on a vibrant and innovative financial industry, why does no one speak up to defend finance?
ARI invites law students to join the Legal Fellowship program. The fellowship is a unique program in which law students do in-depth policy research on topics at the intersection of law and philosophy. Our legal fellows work with ARI’s director of Legal Studies, Steve Simpson, an experienced constitutional lawyer who for many years worked at the Institute for Justice. Today we’d like to introduce you to one of the 2017 legal fellows: Andrew Napoli, a second-year student at Rutgers Law School in Camden, New Jersey.
ARI celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Anthem essay contest, which launched October 2, 1992. Click to read the winning essay in the 2017 Anthem essay contest, submitted by Elisabeth Schlossel from The Spence School in New York, New York.
Occasionally, in a blog post, we highlight important parts of the Ayn Rand Institute’s Annual Report. Our 2016 report contained this missive from Maja Vrtaric, who recounts her efforts to bring Objectivism to the Balkans.
Zach Johnson is a philosophy major at St. John’s University in New York City. Johnson, a senior, says he became a philosophy major because he is “interested in the connection between ethics and metaphysics, conceptions of human beings, free markets, and the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche. I’m also interested in logic, Friedrich Hayek, and education’s role in social change.” He explains that he had “great English teachers, especially in high school,” who inspired him to read even more philosophic texts. “I was stunned by Plato’s Republic, along with Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I’ve been hooked ever since.”
Tara Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas – Austin, recently addressed an audience of approximately two hundred and fifty members of the intelligence community, imparting an Objectivist perspective on the nature and value of objectivity as a safeguard against politicized or biased military intelligence.
What motivates the Islamic terrorists? Why are our intellectuals unable and unwilling to recognize the moral distinction between America and her enemies? Why are those thought leaders busy philosophically disarming America?
Although Ayn Rand is virtually unknown in France, the release of the French edition of Atlas Shrugged (La Grève) in paperback this March has sparked a burst of interest in Rand in the French media.
