Ayn Rand Institute Live!

We celebrate great inventors for their creations—the lightbulb, the sewing machine, the computer, the smartphone. Great innovators are often great capitalists, too. They often invent new business models, corporate organizations and other commercial mechanisms for producing, retailing and advertising their new products and services. In this talk, Adam Mossoff discusses the often-overlooked value-creating commercial innovations of great inventors in U.S. history. Recorded live as part of The Objectivist Conference on August 29, 2021.

“More than any other author,” Ayn Rand wrote, O. Henry represents “the expectation of finding something wonderful around all of life’s corners.” He became world-famous for his ingenious plot twists, exuberant wordplay, and cheerful benevolence. It all began, in fact, in Austin—where he lived, loved, worked, and first expressed his glowing literary universe. (No advance reading required.) Recorded live as part of The Objectivist Conference on August 30, 2021.

An understanding of human anatomy makes possible modern medicine, surgery and even representational art. But the knowledge is hard-fought: the story of the early anatomists is a story of grave robbing, murder, heresy and heroism. This talk will introduce some of the individuals who have advanced our understanding of human anatomy, and relate the struggles and triumphs they faced along the way. Recorded live as part of The Objectivist Conference on August 28, 2021.

A theme in Ayn Rand’s fiction is that the failure to understand evil is a source of error and unhappiness for good people. Drawing on the Objectivist corpus this talk will explore the nature of evil, including: the ways in which actions, motives, ideas and people can be evil; the respects in which evil is and is not important; and how understanding evil can help us to appreciate the good and to foster the best in ourselves and others. Recorded live as part of The Objectivist Conference on September 01, 2021.

Today, the energy industry—the industry that powers every other industry—is under unprecedented attack, with widespread calls to eliminate fossil fuels and continue the strangulation of nuclear power.In this talk, Alex Epstein, author of The New York Times bestseller The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, will draw on his new book Fossil Future and explain why the root cause of this attack is bad philosophy, and why the root solution is good philosophy. Recorded live as part of The Objectivist Conference on September 01, 2021.

Conservatives complain about “over-regulation,” but all governmental regulation—regulation as such—is destructive and evil. Ayn Rand wrote that the premise of regulation is “the concept that a man is guilty until he is proved innocent by the permissive rubber stamp of a commissar or a Gauleiter.” Dr. Binswanger will argue that government must have “probable cause” before it can use force against someone—and he will discuss how this applies not only to business activity, but also to immigration, “public health” and gun ownership. Recorded live as part of The Objectivist Conference on August 31, 2021.

Ayn Rand was not a crusader against theism, but a creator and defender of a rational philosophy for living on Earth. Every fundamental of her philosophy, however, has negative implications for theism and religious belief. This lecture examines the radical nature of her atheism, with special attention given to the idea of God, the arguments for God’s existence, and what Ayn Rand means in claiming “that nobody actually believes in God.” (Companion to Mayhew’s OCON 2014 lecture “Ayn Rand’s Sacred Atheism.”) Recorded live as part of The Objectivist Conference on August 30, 2021.

This talk examines the virtue of integrity in several lights. In particular, it highlights: · the practical role and selfish benefit of living with integrity · integrity as an ongoing, active commitment rather than simply forbearance from sin · the role of probing introspection in energizing integrity · integrity’s relationship to the virtue of pride In the end, we will see how living with integrity is essentially what selfishness looks like in a conceptual being. Recorded live as part of The Objectivist Conference on August 28, 2021.

Tal Tsfany, ARI’s president and CEO, will review ARI’s mission to spread Objectivism and the progress made during 2020-21. ARI’s strategy for the future will be presented together with many data points and insights, collected through newly implemented technologies and methodologies. Mr. Tsfany will answer questions about the direction ARI is taking.

John Allison, Yaron Brook and Tara Smith each have a unique perspective on the role that Objectivism has played in their lives and work. Join these panelists as they celebrate the 30th anniversary of Leonard Peikoff’s masterwork and reflect on the impact that OPAR has had on their understanding of Objectivism and their ability to apply it successfully in their careers—in business, in public intellectual activism and in academic philosophy.

The publication of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand in 1991 was a landmark event. As a longtime student and friend of Leonard Peikoff, Yaron Brook will give some thoughts on the impact that OPAR has had on his own intellectual development and on the Objectivist movement.

Americans today are divided on many issues. But one thing almost everyone seems to agree on, from BLM protestors to January 06 demonstrators, is that they have a right to take to the streets in protest. What if this is a mistake? What if there is no right to protest, at least not in the way traditionally understood? And what if this misunderstanding fuels escalating conflicts in America? In this talk, Ghate explores these questions and offers a distinctive account of what forms of public protest are consistent with the principle of individual rights and which are not.This talk was given as part of Free Speech Week at the Salem Center for Policy, The University of Texas at Austin on Thursday, October 21, 2021.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dizzyingly complicated. In this talk, Elan Journo — author of an upcoming book on the conflict and America's stake in it — looks at how intellectuals conceptualize and debate the issue, and spotlights the distinctive value of an Objectivist perspective on it.Elan Journo is a fellow and director of Policy Research at the Ayn Rand Institute. This talk was delivered on Monday, June 12, 2017, at Objectivist Summer Conference 2017 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

One of the biggest threats America faces—we are told—is the assault on our workforce: the loss of American jobs to immigrants, to foreign competition fueled by free trade, and even to technology that will make all kinds of jobs obsolete. In this talk the Ayn Rand Institute's executive chairman, Yaron Brook, argues that this fear is entirely misplaced—that a proper grasp of the virtue of productiveness shows that far from fearing and opposing free trade, immigration and robots, we should be eagerly embracing all three. This talk was delivered on Thursday, June 15, 2017, at Objectivist Summer Conference 2017 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Brook is joined onstage for the Q&A period by Onkar Ghate, ARI senior fellow and chief content officer.

In the 2016 election, there was widespread concern about "fake news" and media bias. This talk explores the guidance Objectivist epistemology offers for being an objective consumer of the news. How do the requirements of integration and reduction help guide one's acceptance of the reports of others? How do we avoid uncritical reliance on the media without becoming skeptics of journalism as such? How do we avoid bias without abandoning concern for our values?This talk is by Ben Bayer, fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute and former teacher of philosophy at Loyola University New Orleans. His research focuses primarily on questions about the foundations of knowledge and the freedom of the will. This talk was delivered on Monday, June 12, 2017, at Objectivist Summer Conference 2017 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.