Ayn Rand Institute Annual Report 2023

I N S T I T U T E

ANNUAL REPORT

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© Leonard Peikoff (Ayn Rand Archives)

Our Mission

© Henri Glarner (Ayn Rand Archives)

The Ayn Rand Institute fosters a growing awareness, understanding and acceptance of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, in order to create a culture whose guiding principles are reason, rational self-interest, individualism and laissez-faire capitalism—a culture in which individuals are free to pursue their own happiness.

“The present state of the world is not proof of philosophy’s impotence, but the proof of philosophy’s power. It is philosophy that has brought men to this state—it is only philosophy that can lead them out.”

—Ayn Rand “For the New Intellectual” For the New Intellectual

Table of Contents 3 From Our Executives 5 Your Impact at a Glance 7 ARI Responds to Hamas’s War on Israel 9 More University Donors Should “Go Galt” 13 Books to Students SKYROCKETS 19 Ayn Rand University: Philosophy in Thought and Action Nation’s Unity (part 3 of 3) 25 Areprinted from The Ayn Rand Letter Rand and Oppenheimer: The Atomic Bomb

35 Movie that Wasn’t

reprinted from New Ideal

Continuing Celebration of 41 The The Fountainhead’s 80th Anniversary

49 Atlantis Legacy Upholds Your Values 53 AynRandCon-Europe 2023 Highlights 55 OCON 2023 Highlights 57 Meet Our Staff and Associates 59 Board of Directors of the Ayn Rand Institute 61 Fiscal Year 2023 Financials Publisher Rachael Mare

Contributing Editor Don Watkins

Art Director Jesse Hashagen

Senior Editor Tom Bowden

Copy Editors Donna Montrezza Jordan Glynn

Staff Writers Jonathan Divin Brandon Lisi Hailey O’Brien Ray Schuur

Associate Editor Amber Brown

From Our Executives Welcome to the Ayn Rand Institute’s annual report for 2023.

We want to start with the most important milestone that we all reach in our journey discovering Ayn Rand’s genius: reading Atlas Shrugged. On that front we made a significant leap this year. On top of the hundreds of thousands of Rand’s books we send every year to high school teachers across the US and Canada, last year the Ayn Rand Institute delivered more than twelve thousand copies of Atlas Shrugged directly to students who requested one—and we’re on target to triple that number this year.

As you know, every copy of Atlas Shrugged has the potential to change the trajectory of a life, and you help make that possible. The responses we get from those readers are inspirational. Here’s what a college undergraduate wrote to us recently: “I discovered Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged the summer going into my sophomore year. The day I began living was when I first opened it. That was two years ago. I’ve read almost all of Ayn Rand’s works, and my disposition has transformed in a colorful way since then. For one, I’ve discovered my life’s ambition and have mapped out how I will achieve it. I’ve been making tremendous progress. I’m happy now. I wouldn’t be here without Ayn Rand’s novels and Objectivist philosophy.”

With these new readers of Atlas Shrugged, we now have record numbers of students applying to our Atlas Shrugged essay contest— not only reading the book but grappling with the philosophic principles underlying it.

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At ARI we have created a vision and strategy to focus on what we can do to help bring about meaningful change across the culture, one mind at a time. We have translated our strategy into activities measured by clear metrics, guiding our year-over-year, month-over-month, dayby-day projects. The “most important numbers” that we have defined for ourselves are increasing in meaningful ways: the number of Atlas Shrugged readers, the number and quality of essay contest entries we receive, the number of reading groups we run around the world (both fiction and nonfiction), the number of students of Objectivism at ARU, the number of advanced students in our newly announced ARU Graduate Center. You can learn more about our numbers and their quality, starting on page 5.

We are helping to create the New Intellectuals who will fight and win the battle of ideas, armed with Rand’s life-serving, reality-based philosophy. If we continue down this path successfully, the impact will be inevitable and long-lasting. We are working to bring about a better world now and in the future. As Ayn Rand said, “Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.”

Sincerely,

Tal Tsfany Chief Executive Officer

Onkar Ghate Chief Philosophy Officer

2023 EDITION //

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YOUR IMPACT

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AYN RAND UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

These are young people passionate about learning how to live by Objectivism in all areas of their lives.

Read about this in more depth on pgs. 19–24.

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Ayn Rand University Graduate Center students

5 of them spoke at the Objectivist Summer Conference this year, 3 of them for the first time!

122,212

120,000+

[NOV. 2023]

SUBSCRIBERS 89,315 [JUN. 2023]

61,583 hours OF LEONARD PEIKOFF COURSES CONSUMED 90% of ARU students report having gone through a period of studying Leonard Peikoff’s courses (made free to the public by ARI) on their own before applying to ARU. Many new donors also comment on the value they’ve received from these courses.

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255

YOUNG PEOPLE ATTENDING READING GROUPS

Reading groups are offered to students 35 and younger who have a desire for a deeper understanding of Ayn Rand’s ideas.

2,560

ATLAS SHRUGGED

essay contest submissions The highest number of submissions in recorded history of the essay contest

AT A GLANCE All Books: 39k+ [HIGH POINT: NOV. 2023]

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Atlas Shrugged: 29k+ [HIGH POINT: NOV. 2023]

REQUESTS PER DAY FOR AYN RAND’S BOOKS direct from students eager to read them We’re able to follow up and offer resources to help with their reading and invite them to enter our essay contests . . . . . . and this number is growing steadily every day.

Read about this in more depth on pgs. 13–18.

210 pages from Ayn Rand’s papers released as part of the “Blueprints for The Fountainhead” online exhibit.

1.1 million+

FOLLOWERS ACROSS SOCIAL MEDIA

161 PUBLICATIONS

3 Books including Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume, lectures by Leonard Peikoff, edited by Michael S. Berliner

92 Articles

by ARU graduates

1.7 million+ VIEWS OF AYN RAND’S INTERVIEW WITH MIKE WALLACE

14 Reprints from Essays on Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”

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ARI RESPONDS TO HAMAS’S

War on Israel You can find a comprehensive list of resources ARI has developed for applying Ayn Rand’s ideas to this issue at

AYNRAND.ORG/ISRAEL.

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ours after Hamas launched its war against Israel on October 7—firing more than 3,000 rockets from the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds—Onkar Ghate, Chief Philosophy Officer, and Elan Journo, VP of Content, presented a hard-hitting, uniquely Objectivist analysis of the situation in a special episode of ARI’s podcast.

That episode of the New Ideal podcast, “The Hamas War on Israel,” drew more than 350 livestream viewers (with a further 5,200 views in 72 hours), making it one of our most-watched episodes.

By October 9, Journo’s 2018 book, What Justice Demands: America and the IsraeliPalestinian Conflict, was the #28 bestseller in Amazon’s “Political Freedom” category.

The newly issued paperback edition climbed to the #1 spot weeks later, remaining within the top 15 since then. Writing from an Objectivist perspective, Journo explains the essential nature of the conflict, what has fueled it for so long, and how to define America’s interests in this conflict and the Mideast. All royalties from this book— available in paperback, Kindle, and audio—go to support ARI’s work.

Two op-eds by Journo—“Hamas’s Savagery Reflects Its Nihilistic Goal” and “After Israel’s ‘Pearl Harbor,’ Nothing Less than Victory”—were published in the days following the attack. Ghate and Journo co-wrote an article—“More University Donors Should ‘Go Galt’” arguing that academia’s moral-intellectual corruption goes deeper than the Hamas war, and that alumni should heed a lesson from Atlas Shrugged by cutting off support for ideas hostile to their values, which is reprinted following this article.

Journo went on to appear in a number of radio and podcast interviews, including the Michael Shermer Show, with a significant scientifically oriented following. On YouTube, we published Nikos Sotirakopoulos’s talk from the Objectivist Summer Conference 2023, “The Left’s Long War on Israel,’’ which points to Ayn Rand’s

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distinctive philosophic insight about “hatred of the good for being the good.” This lecture went viral, racking up more than 500,000 views in less than a month, while also helping ARI’s channel eclipse the 100,000-subscribers milestone.

The following week, “Did Israel Steal Palestinian Land?,” an episode in our podcast miniseries on the Middle East, brought Objectivist ideas to an even larger audience.

In less than five days it garnered 1 million views, making it the fastest growing video in the channel’s history.

This 35-minute video with Elan Journo and Nikos Sotirakopoulos rebuts the misleading narrative of shrinking Palestinian lands and the claim that Israel stole them. In doing so, the presenters explicitly apply Objectivism as a philosophic framework for unpacking this controversial issue, referring early on to the fallacy of context-dropping identified by Ayn Rand. At press time, this video had 1.9 million views and climbing.

“The stellar performance is not only a tribute to the timeliness and quality of the hard-hitting commentary,” said Ben Bayer, ARI’s director of content, “but it also reflects 16 years of carefully curating ARI’s YouTube presence, respecting intellectual property rights and publishing videos that are challenging yet rational, civil, and respectful of viewers’ intellects. It also reflects years of study and intellectual preparation by our experts, especially Elan Journo. We’re now seeing the payoff for all that long-term effort.”

It is your support that has made it possible for ARI to create impactful resources applying Objectivism to highly consequential issues—resources that indicate some of the immense value of Rand’s philosophy of reason as a guide to thought and action. Thank you.

2023 EDITION //

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MORE UNIVERSITY DONORS SHOULD “GO GALT” ARU instructors argue that academia’s moral corruption is wider than Penn and Harvard, deeper than the Hamas war

BY ONKAR GHATE AND ELAN JOURNO

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B

ravo to the ultra-wealthy UPenn alumni who cut off their financial support of the university amid the Hamas war on Israel.

Cliff Asness, co-founder of the hedge fund AQR Capital Management, rebuked the university for tolerating “an antisemitic Burning Man festival” on campus in September and then drawing “vague equivalences” between Hamas’s murderous Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s self-defense, thus lending “direct succor to evil.”

Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management, lambasted UPenn for its “selective tolerance of hate” and for conduct that “normalized and legitimized violence.”

David Magerman, a computer scientist and entrepreneur, said he’s “deeply embarrassed by my association and support of UPenn,” and has refused to “donate another dollar.”

Let’s hope this starts a nationwide groundswell, because the problem is wider than UPenn and deeper than antisemitism.

For more than a century, Western intellectuals have been warring against the Enlightenment ideals that animated America’s political achievement: reason and science, individual rights, the pursuit of happiness, and free-market capitalism.

At first, intellectuals tearing down this unprecedented political achievement promised a superior alternative in the form of some type of collectivist utopia— communist, fascist, or socialist. World War II revealed the full horror of their promise. Intellectuals, Ayn Rand observed, were confronted with a choice: radically rethink their philosophic ideas or abandon the quest for progress. In the humanities, too many chose to abandon progress. This was the embrace of nihilism: to tear down—to deconstruct — actual achievements, without any serious thought of how to create something better.

Harvard students who declare that Israel is an “apartheid” state “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” and that what “the coming days will require is a firm stand against colonial retaliation,” are simply applying the wider lessons they have learned in many of their classrooms. Their language, unsurprisingly, is echoed across North American campuses.

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Even Hamas has got the message. In 2017 Hamas revised its charter to paint its founding goal of annihilating Israel with a new veneer of academic respectability.

Though Israel arose despite the obstruction of colonial powers, Hamas now says it seeks to destroy not Israel but “the Zionist project” which “is a racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist project based on seizing the properties of others” that “must disappear from Palestine.”

Observe that neither Hamas nor those Harvard students feel the need to offer a genuine, positive alternative.

Elected in 2006, Hamas promptly proceeded to kill or expel political rivals and establish a religious dictatorship, terrorizing and torturing people in Gaza. Do these students care? Even after the Oct. 7 massacre, they do not deign to condemn Hamas. And where are their protests against the vicious regimes in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran, who oppress millions, women and children emphatically included?

All the students seem to care about is tearing down Israel, the only relatively free and prosperous nation in the region. This, they have been taught, should be their object of concern.

The oppressed/colonized framing the students deploy is but a successor of multiculturalism, a long-standing academic doctrine that admonishes us to view all cultures as equal, even though from the standpoint of life and progress they obviously are not. This doctrine was never about lifting up the less-developed; it was about denying the objective superiority of production over stagnant traditionworship; of science over religious superstition; of freedom over dictatorship.

Paving the way for multiculturalism was a multi-decade regression to tribalism.

By teaching students that they are determined by their unchosen racial/ethnic “identity” and their natural and cultural environments, academia robs them of individual agency. If your mental content is defined by your blood, heritage, gender, or environment—rather than your independent thought and choices— there’s no hope of communicating across tribal lines. This dehumanizing framework is a recipe for conflict, since it deems others unreachable by reason. Witness the fervent self-segregation of students into racial, ethnic and other groups, and the growing hostility on campuses toward free speech and the intellectual necessity to offer rational arguments.

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In his op-ed about UPenn, Marc Rowan acknowledged that “fault also lies with many of our alumni leaders and Trustees, myself included,” for letting “the academic, moral, and objective truth” be “traded for a poorly organized pursuit of social justice and politically correct speech.” True, but this is just the tip of an iceberg concealing at least a century’s worth of moralintellectual corruption.

Irrational ideas have corrupted academia; imagine the unbounded benefits of funding rational ones.

The anti-Enlightenment, antiAmerican animus on campus has been for decades richly funded by donors to UPenn and universities nationwide.

Whether because of an overgenerous benevolence, or a projection of their own positive experiences on campus, business leaders have been funding ideas and people that subvert their own values. It’s right to be outraged by the antisemitism and anti-Israel atmosphere currently on display across campuses. But every donor should recognize the true depth of the problem, and the moral responsibility of scrutinizing what their wealth is enabling.

In “The Sanction of the Victims,” Ayn Rand’s last lecture, the author of Atlas Shrugged counseled business leaders not to give money in support of “ideas which you consider wrong, false, evil. It is a moral crime to give money to support your own destroyers.”

To withdraw one’s sanction—to “Go Galt”—is in part to reject the prevailing ethic of self-sacrifice, to reject the role of a victim enabling his own destroyers, and to take seriously the life-and-death significance of philosophic ideas. Irrational ideas have corrupted academia; imagine the unbounded benefits of funding rational ones.

Dr. Onkar Ghate, a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, is a contributing author to many books on Rand’s ideas and philosophy. Elan Journo, a senior fellow at ARI, is author of What Justice Demands: America and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. They are members of the faculty of the Ayn Rand University.

A version of this article was originally published on October 29, 2023, in the Orange County Register and other Southern California Newsgroup papers.

2023 EDITION //

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BOOKS FOR STUDENTS

SKYROCKETS ARI Now Distributing 100 Books Per Day 13

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REQUESTS PER DAY FOR AYN RAND’S BOOKS

direct from students eager to read them

Austin Kilgore (center), pictured with ARU students Joey Caso (left) and Marius Bjørnebekk (right) at the 2023 Objectivist Summer Conference.

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oday, young people are part of a culture that discourages them from independent thinking, teaches them to be ashamed of pursuing their own interests, and ultimately leaves them struggling to find purpose and meaning.

But Ayn Rand’s novels have a unique power to inspire young lives.

And now, ARI is bringing that life-changing inspiration to young people like never before.

Meet a bright, young student named Austin Kilgore. He told us, “When I started high school, I was floundering. For a while, I had been interested in space and physics, but by the time I hit high school, I was on a different track.” Following what he thought was a career interest, Austin was pursuing jazz music. “But it fell apart.

I was confused, thinking, ‘What do I want to do?’”

2023 EDITION //

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Then he took a course from a professor who really loved The Fountainhead.

Encouraged by his professor, Austin decided to read the novel. “It seemed like it’d be fun—and it was. After reading it, I thought, ‘This is exactly what I needed.’”

He went on to read Atlas Shrugged and found inspiration in the heroic characters of Howard Roark and Hank Rearden.

“What I liked most about them is the very serious viewpoint they have about their work. It’s not just a thing they do; it’s their life. I love how much enjoyment they’re able to get out of it, but it’s not a light enjoyment, it’s a very deep, spiritual enjoyment. It matters to them.” Admiring these characters and guided by a vision of the moral ideal they offer, Austin was able to home in on what he saw as his central purpose. Ayn Rand’s characters showed him a life of meaning.

in aerospace engineering, and he’s enjoying his jam-packed schedule at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, as well as classes with ARI’s Ayn Rand University. He has ambitions to work for SpaceX when he graduates.

All of this began with reading The Fountainhead. A flame that might have gone out is now rekindled and burning brighter than ever.

It is thanks to your donations that stories like Austin’s are happening more quickly and more costeffectively than ever before . . .

ARI is now putting over 100 books per day straight into the hands of young people. This is more than fi five times larger than just one year ago.

Remembering his past interests in space and physics, along with one inspiring journey to the Kennedy Space Center, Austin decided to return to studying both subjects.

Blending his passion for space and rockets with the moral vision of Roark’s dedication to his work in architecture, Austin committed to pursuing a degree

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ARI’s Books for Students program delivers Ayn Rand’s novels directly to students who are requesting them and is seeing skyrocketing numbers of requests.

ARI is now putting over 100 books per day straight into the hands of young

All Books: 39K+ HIGH POINT (NOV. 2023)

people. This is more than five times larger than just one year ago, and more than twenty times larger than when the program started back in March 2021. There are several reasons for this.

First, ARI now uses technology to automate processes that were once done by hand. By streamlining our backend workflows, we’re not only putting out more books, we’re putting out those books even faster than before—and at less cost. Further, this has freed up our resources to spend more time and money on reaching more newcomers, particularly through direct advertising. Overall, it has made ARI more cost-efficient than ever: it now costs close to just $8 to get one book directly into the hands of a student who has requested it from ARI. Second, ARI has integrated interest in our essay contests on Rand’s novels with the request for a book. This means, for instance, that when a student finds our essay contests on The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged online, they immediately have

Atlas Shrugged: 29K+ HIGH POINT (NOV. 2023)

All Books: 24K+ SWING POINT (JULY 2023)

Atlas Shrugged: 15K+ SWING POINT (JULY 2023)

2023 EDITION //

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the opportunity to request a free copy of that novel. The effect is two-fold: not only has the number of books in the hands of students increased, but this past year has seen the most submissions to our Atlas Shrugged essay contest as far back as we have records. This year alone has seen over 2,000 entries, more than triple the average submissions in the past five years. This ultimately means more young people reading and thinking about Ayn Rand’s work and ideas—and more changed lives.

Rand’s fictional characters have the power to ignite young minds. “Having someone I could look up to and be inspired by, specifically Roark,” made a profound difference in Austin Kilgore’s life. It gave him an exalted vision of life’s potential. He says: “I thought: ‘This is

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what you could be, this caliber of person, this is how ambitious you could be, this is how happy you could be, this is how meaningful your work could be to you.’”

Aptly, in her essay “Apollo 11,” Rand reminds us of this point. “Whatever his particular ability or goal, if a man is not to give up his struggle, he needs the reminder that success is possible; if he is not to regard the human species with fear, contempt, or hatred, he needs the spiritual fuel of knowing that man the hero is possible.”

Rand’s novels project her unique conception of “man the hero,” and with your help, we’re introducing thousands upon thousands of students—students starved of inspiration, ideals, purpose— to that sublime vision of life’s potential. 

HELP US SUPPORT SKYROCKETING BOOK REQUESTS ARU student Austin Kilgore demonstrates the kind of difference Ayn Rand can make. Every 20 minutes a student requests a book by Ayn Rand or Leonard Peikoff.

A $200 donation today helps us deliver Ayn Rand’s novels to more and more eager young readers like Austin.

Visit aynrand.org/donate.

AYN RAND UNIVERSITY: Philosophy in Thought and Action “The New Intellectual . . . will know that men need philosophy for the purpose of living on earth.”

—Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual

For more on ARI’s dynamic journey this past year and the Institute’s vision and strategy for the future, watch Tal Tsfany’s talk on YouTube:

AYNRAND.ORG/VISION2023

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143

AYN RAND UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

These are young people passionate about learning how to live

by Objectivism in all areas of their lives.

O

bjectivism is a philosophy for living, but successfully using Ayn Rand’s philosophy to build a great life is a significant achievement.

It is not always obvious how to translate Rand’s ideas into action.

Ayn Rand University takes this problem of integrating thought and action seriously. ARU has been rapidly expanding its programs to help its students turn their understanding of Ayn Rand’s radical philosophy for living on earth into action to create successful and happy lives.

The best way to appreciate how ARU’s new programs deliver on this promise is to look at how they have already changed the lives of two individuals, Brandon Lisi and Robertas Bakula.

Brandon’s teenage years were consumed by a life of politics, canvassing for Tea Party candidates, debating politics, and fighting for freedom.

But this focus on politics, with all its negativity, took a toll.

Brandon’s central purpose was to become a historian of American history, and it was hard for him to project how to achieve that purpose in today’s world. It was tempting to just take any job and settle. But while in a job interview for a company refurbishing basements, Brandon felt sick to his stomach.

Was this all he could look forward to in life?

Robertas, unlike Brandon, did not have a central purpose he was living for. He was conventionally successful working in sales and using his free time to enjoy the simple pleasures of life. As far as he could tell, he was living a successful life.

2023 EDITION //

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Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that his enjoyment of life was fleeting and that his world felt empty.

Both of these young men’s lives were changed by reading Atlas Shrugged.

Brandon was inspired to reread Atlas Shrugged after seeing how it helped transform a friend’s life. Robertas was challenged by the heroes of Atlas Shrugged to rethink what a successful life is—and he was inspired to pursue it.

But reading Atlas Shrugged gave them more questions than answers: How do I figure out what I want out of life, how do I navigate this irrational world, and how can I achieve success in living?

To answer these kinds of questions, Brandon and Robertas signed up for Ayn Rand University.

A major lesson that Brandon learned from ARU was to be less concerned about politics and more focused on how to develop himself and his career. Going through Rand’s work on the cardinal value of purpose in Onkar Ghate’s seminar on Objectivism helped Brandon further develop his central purpose: telling philosophically interesting stories from

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American history. One of Brandon’s favorite quotes from Atlas Shrugged is, therefore, Francisco telling Dagny that “There’s nothing of any importance in life—except how well you do your work.

Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that” (Atlas Shrugged, p. 98; emphasis added).

With these lessons learned, Brandon went back out into the world, worked hard to complete a master’s degree in history, did archival and curating work, and landed a dream job teaching and telling philosophically thought-provoking stories from history for the Sharon Historical Society.

Tal Tsfany was so impressed by Brandon that he hired him as ARI’s new assistant archival researcher, where he now researches and writes about Ayn Rand’s intellectual life.

From feeling nauseated at the prospect of refurbishing basements for a living to getting up every morning thinking he convinced Tal into giving him the best job in the world, Brandon Lisi is thriving.

After taking the ARU writing course taught by Keith Lockitch, Robertas

Brandon Lisi (left) and Robertas Bakula (right) are using the Objectivist training and support they received at ARU to develop promising careers.

realized how much he enjoyed communicating ideas to others and that he wanted to become a public intellectual with a focus on individual rights in economics. Even though Robertas had recently acquired a master’s degree in philosophy, politics, and economics, he still felt ill-prepared and hesitant to enter the fray of economic debates. But Don Watkins, in his capacity as ARU’s head coach, guided Robertas in continuing a process of careful thinking about how to integrate philosophy and economics, helping him connect with mentors, and convincing Robertas not to dread but to embrace the challenge of persuading others as itself a challenging and fulfilling part of a career as a public intellectual.

Robertas took this lesson to heart and continues to work hard to master

economics and his communication skills. Robertas is now a research associate at the American Institute for Economic Research, where he spends every day loving his work of communicating important ideas to the public and to students.

These are just two examples of how ARU students have been able to achieve success in living by turning their understanding of Objectivism into promising careers. Such successes are made possible by our new programs that focus on solving the problem of integrating thought and action for our students.

It is by fostering such successful and happy individuals that we will reclaim this earth for the living. 

2023 EDITION //

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ARU STU DE

Pictured, left to right: Alex Bakker, David Bakker (TA), Roxana Higgins (OCON attendee and reading group participant) and Alexander Becker

Daphne Busek

Ray Schuur (TA)

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Pictured, left to right: Clytze Sun, Sebastian Gamboa, Michael Ebenstein, Hale Konopka (OCON attendee, not an ARU student), and Gilad Herzfeld

NTS & Teaching Assistants Nicolas Krusek (TA)

Pictured, left to right: Ziemowit Gowin (TA) and Jessica Grunert Mike Mazza (TA) Ricardo Pinto (TA)

Agustina Vergara Cid (TA)

Daniel Schwartz (TA)

Samuel Weaver (TA)

2023 EDITION //

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© Leonard Peikoff (Ayn Rand Archives)

Part Three

A NATION’S UNITY

BY AYN RAND, REPRINTED FROM THE AYN RAND LETTER, NOVEMBER 1972

“J

ust as one cannot order a child to love his mother, and if one does, one will make him hate her—so one cannot order or urge a nation to unite,” said Ayn Rand to her audience at Boston’s Ford Hall Forum on October 22, 1972. She was explaining how welfare statism pits citizens against one another in pressure-group warfare, violating the individual rights needed for peaceful social coexistence.

With the presidential election just weeks away, Rand accused candidate George McGovern of attacking the political principle of individual rights upon which America was founded, rendering futile his desperate plea for “national unity.” Rand’s analysis, though anchored in the facts of one presidential contest, relies on timeless principles still relevant today.

We are pleased to republish “A Nation’s Unity,” following the three-part format she adopted in The Ayn Rand Letter (October 9 and 23, and November 6, 1972). Having published part 1 in our Spring 2023 issue and part 2 in our Fall 2023 issue, we offer the concluding part here.

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“To confront Americans with the patronizing ‘kindness’ of a combined social worker and small-time Lord of the Manor, is such an impertinence that a landslide defeat is the least McGovern deserves for it.”—Ayn Rand, A Nation’s Unity (Bettmann via Getty Images)

A

s a political candidate, George McGovern is a fiction-like concretization of certain abstractions: he is the perfect embodiment of the soul of modern American intellectuals. (This is not to say that he is an intellectual; but neither are they.)

It is not an attractive soul, and he projects too many of its essential characteristics: pretentiousness, uncertainty, inconsistency; borrowed notions and, therefore, contempt for ideas; a vacuum of values and feeling, hidden under the tritest sentimentality;

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a patronizing attitude toward the people; a seething hostility; and, above all, an enormous distance from reality.

I offer in evidence the fact that a campaign which had been announced as a crusade for momentous issues, for revolutionary change, for reestablishing integrity and credibility in government—a crusade in the name of “New Politics,” led by a candidate publicized as an “idealist”—started at the bottom of the old politics and went on down. No issues were raised or discussed, except for a few evasive snatches. We have heard nothing

but personal denunciations, insults, attacks, and irresponsible smears.

(A smear is an accusation without particulars or proof—such as the claim that the Nixon Administration is “the most corrupt in our history.”)

A campaign dedicated to “love” has dissolved into shrieks of hatred, and the worst kind of rabble-rousing: the attempt to arouse hatred for the rich.

Is this the road to national unity?

But McGovern has miscalculated.

There is no rabble in America—only the synthetic rabble imagined by the intellectuals and manufactured by the universities (out of a small percentage of students). The intellectuals’—and McGovern’s—view of the people is a measure of their distance from reality.

They do not see a modern nation: they see a nation of helpless peasants and cruel, overbearing masters—and they long to play the role of overbearing, but kindly masters. They have perceived nothing in the last two hundred years.

(This is an example of philosophically induced blindness: the philosophy still guiding modern intellectuals is of the pre–French Revolution era. Their souls are still in Europe. They have missed the achievements of two great men: Aristotle and Christopher Columbus.)

The patronizing attitude which regards the people as “the masses”—as helpless, whining, begging masses that plead for handouts from a benevolent ruler and wait for his permission to drag the rich to the guillotine—is so dated that it would not work even in modern Europe. To preach that view in America is grotesque.

The American people, including the poorest, have never regarded themselves as humble mendicants waiting to be helped. Nor have they ever resented the rich and the successful; to most Americans, the successful are not objects of envy and hatred, but of inspiration.

An American worker, properly, identifies with his boss, the industrialist, rather than with a welfare recipient. And, I would venture to guess, so do many welfare recipients—excepting the group organizers or the professional bums who see welfare as a way of life.

Americans are men of action; they do not indulge in self-pity, and they do not accept passive resignation to suffering. In the face of hardships or misfortunes, their automatic response is to act, to fight, to solve the problem—an attitude for which they are so frequently condemned by the mystics of the intellectual “elite” of European barrooms

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and basements. To confront Americans with the patronizing “kindness” of a combined social worker and smalltime Lord of the Manor, is such an impertinence that a landslide defeat is the least McGovern deserves for it.

Here is a recent example of McGovern’s view of the people and of national unity— as reported by The New York Times (October 21, 1972). McGovern stated: “Let’s face it. This election is more than a contest between George McGovern and Richard Nixon. It is a fundamental struggle between the little people of America and the big rich of America, between the average working man or woman and a powerful elite.” I read this to my husband and said: “There are no little people in America.” He answered: “Well . . . there’s George McGovern . . .”

It is obvious that McGovern had counted on hatred—on deliberately stimulated class hatred and hatred for Richard Nixon—to unite the nation. It is revulsion against George McGovern that is uniting it now. Americans do not want any masters—rulers, kindly or otherwise.

Nor do they want any “redistribution of wealth.” Americans are a futureoriented people. It was not the socialistic

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rich, it was the workers who protested angrily against McGovern’s proposal to expropriate inheritances. Men who may never save more than a few thousand dollars to leave to their children, rebelled against the notion of forbidding multimillion-dollar legacies. Do you think that this is optimistic self-delusion? No, it is hard-headed realism. Americans know the importance of having all doors and all roads kept open to them.

McGovern and his intellectual supporters are obviously stunned and bewildered.

They do not know which way to turn or how to explain the people’s attitude. It seems incredible, but apparently they really thought that the people would follow them—which shows what degree of isolation from reality they had reached in their tight little cliques, their “ingroups,” their esoteric fads, their private establishments, their unintelligible sign language. After years of talking only to those who agreed with them, they came to believe that no one else existed and are now in a state of shock.

A very revealing article by James Reston appeared in the Times (September 10, 1972) under the title: “What Kind of People Are We?”

“Americans are men of action; they do not indulge in self-pity, and they do not accept passive resignation to suffering.”—Ayn Rand, A Nation’s Unity (Astronaut Eugene Cernan drives a lunar rover on the surface of the Moon, December 1972. Corbis Historical via Getty Images)

“Candidates for the Presidency make certain assumptions about the condition of the nation and the world, and particularly about what kind of people we are, and what we think, or at least what we will swallow.”

The Administration assumes—Mr. Reston points out bitterly—that “a majority of the people are fairly well off” and are opposed to McGovern’s programs. “. . . it would be difficult to prove that the President has misjudged the popular mood.

‘Welfare,’ which used to be a symbol of America’s compassion, is now regarded by many not only as an administrative mess, which it is, but

almost as a racket in which money is taken from the people who work to support the people who won’t work.”

Which is precisely what it is. What else can it be? Mr. Reston doesn’t say.

And further: “Indifference to the massacre of human life [in Vietnam], provided it is not American lives, is not exactly the ideal that set the American nation apart as the most unselfish and compassionate society in history, but so far in this election there has been remarkably little response to Mr. McGovern’s arguments that we should end the war, reform the tax structure, redistribute the wealth, reconcile the races and the generations and cut the

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“McGovern has miscalculated. There is no rabble in America—only the synthetic rabble imagined by the intellectuals and manufactured by the universities (out of a small percentage of students).”—Ayn Rand, A Nation’s Unity (Archive Photos via Getty Images)

defense budget—and do all these things because unity and justice at home are essential to the spiritual and physical security of the nation.”

This is an unusually clear demonstration of the reason why altruism is incompatible with individual rights, with justice, and with national unity. Altruism demands sacrificial victims. What sort of unity can one establish between victims and executioners? What sort of unity does Mr. Reston envision? He demands that we unite on a program to “end the war”—by surrender; to “reform the tax structure”—by guaranteeing unearned

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incomes for some people at the expense of others; to “redistribute the wealth”— by confiscation; to “reconcile the races and the generations”—by preferential quotas; to “cut the defense budget”—by relying on the good will of Soviet Russia.

Such is the nature—and the loathsome evil—of altruism, which is now on public display in the form of a program that an unconscionable candidate has had the effrontery to offer to the American people. An obscure Balkan nation would not accept it. A pack of cornered rats would not accept it. But the altruists believed that the American people would.

Mr. Reston is wrong when he declares that “there has been remarkably little response to Mr. McGovern’s arguments” (unless by “response” he means “agreement”). The response—as shown by the polls—has been overwhelming; it represents the American people’s rejection of totalitarianism the first time they got a clear smell of it.

“It would be unfair and even silly to indict the character of a whole people on the basis of the evidence in this campaign,” says Mr. Reston—and proceeds to do it. Or rather, he struggles not to accept the fact that the American people could reject altruism, clearly implying that if they did, he would indict them. “The people,” he declares, “can’t see his [McGovern’s] ideals and his proposals for his blunders.

Maybe they long for the unity and justice and change he wants . . .” He then blames McGovern for having failed to present his “ideals” effectively, with the implication that if the people had understood those “ideals,” they would have leaped joyously into a global sacrificial furnace.

“Nevertheless,” he declares, “the main question remains. Even if he argued his ideals effectively, would the American

people in their present mood respond?”

He is not too certain. I am. No human beings can accept altruism fully and consciously—i.e., accept the role of sacrificial animals—the American people least of all. Their response to McGovern’s program is a magnificent assertion of independence and self-esteem.

It is obvious that altruism is the intellectuals’ only hope and their only weapon—a rusted, blunted, bloody weapon. It is embarrassing to hear the maudlin sentimentality of all those skeptics and cynics when they attempt to deal with values. Here is another sample from the Times (October 4, 1972). According to William V. Shannon, George McGovern has shown “a candid, un-neurotic friendly personality,” and is “an experienced politician moving in the mainstream of the country’s liberal tradition.” After trying lamely to justify McGovern’s switches and compromises, Mr. Shannon declares: “But in any event a political leader’s programs are not like a builder’s blueprints. Rather, they are signposts on the road he hopes the country will travel. Through all the partisan smoke

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and clamor, Mr. McGovern’s signposts are perfectly clear. He would lead the way to an America of peace, compassion and concern—for the hungry child and the ailing old persons, for the overtaxed fed-up worker on the assembly line and the hard-pressed small farmer, for the malnourished Indian on the forgotten reservation and the unseen war orphan in a distant land.”

What about compassion and concern for those who seek happiness in life? When will they have time for it? But an altruist wouldn’t know what I’m talking about.

In another aspect of his statement, however, Mr. Shannon hints at a valid point. It is true that political programs today are not like blueprints, but more like signposts. In a mixed economy, dominated by the philosophy of Pragmatism, a political candidate does not dare proclaim clear-cut principles; he has to pay lip service to the notions of every pressure group and to the opposite of his own convictions, if any. This means that we, the voters, have to learn the art of lip reading and make a choice, in effect, between two hypocrites—by means of the signposts that indicate the

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nature of their hypocrisy, as well as the road they actually want us to travel. This is not a procedure conducive to national unity, but, at present, we have no other.

By that criterion, both Mr. Nixon and Mr. McGovern are hypocrites. Both have paid tributes to Americanism (i.e., free enterprise) and to altruistic statism. But here is the difference between them: Mr. Nixon, though not a champion of free enterprise, yearns in that direction, and does not mean his tributes to altruistic statism. Mr. McGovern does not mean his tributes to Americanism.

In an alternative of this kind, there is only one choice for those who value individual rights. As you know, I am not an admirer of Mr. Nixon—but whatever his flaws, they are nothing when compared to his adversary’s “perfectly clear signposts.” It is against statism that we have to vote. It is statism that has to be defeated—and defeated resoundingly.

The American people, apparently, understand this. Left without any guidance, any intellectual leadership, any conceptual understanding, on the basis of nothing but their sense of life,

“A very revealing article by James Reston appeared in the Times (September 10, 1972) under the title: ‘What Kind of People Are We?’”—Ayn Rand, A Nation’s Unity (© The New York Times; Ayn Rand’s handwritten notes © Leonard Peikoff [Ayn Rand Archives])

they knew when to say “No” loudly and clearly. Now, more than ever, after this election, they will need the help of every honest, articulate person to translate their knowledge into firm, consistent, conceptual terms—because their sense of life is a magnificent foundation, but not a sufficient weapon to save the country. Now, more than ever, they will need a new philosophy.

A year ago, I was being asked whether I held any hope for the future of this

country. I gave my answer, under the title “Don’t Let It Go,” in the November 22 and December 6, 1971, issues of this Letter. I would like you to read my answer or reread it now. It dealt with the sense of life of the American people.

In the present campaign, the American people have confirmed and surpassed my best hopes.

If I were religious, which I am not, I would say: “God bless America.”

I am saying it, anyway. 

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RAND AND OPPENHEIMER: The Atomic Bomb Movie That Wasn’t Ayn Rand interviewed Robert Oppenheimer in 1946 while researching a planned screenplay called “Top Secret.”

Read the full online version at

AYNRAND.ORG/OPPENHEIMER American physicist Dr. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967), points to a picture of the atomic bomb explosion over Nagasaki, Japan, as scientist Dr. Henry D. Smyth (1898–1986) and Maj. Gen. Kenneth D. Nichols (1907–2000) look on. (Undated photo from the 1940s; Hulton Archive via Getty Images)

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161

PUBLICATIONS

3 books, 92 articles

by ARU graduates, and 14 reprints from Essays on Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”

W

ith the release of Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer, the story of creating the atomic bomb has received renewed attention. Almost seventy years ago, Ayn Rand headed up one of the earliest projects aimed at adapting that story to film.

“Top Secret,” conceived and partially written by Ayn Rand in 1946, was intended to dramatize the idea that important inventions like the atomic bomb are possible only to free minds in a free society. Rand’s research included two interviews with J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who served as director of the Los Alamos Laboratory. Documents housed at the Ayn Rand Archives—including Rand’s conceptual proposal, her research, her interviews, and her partial screenplay—provide a fascinating glimpse of the film that might have been.

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Ayn Rand and “Top Secret” In 1944, Rand signed a contract to write screenplays for Hal Wallis, the Hollywood producer who had brought Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon to the big screen. In late 1945, just after World War II ended, Wallis asked Rand to write a screenplay about the Manhattan Project.

Before undertaking the assignment, Rand needed Wallis’s understanding and support. In a twenty-six-page document called “An Analysis of the Proper Approach to a Picture on the Atomic Bomb,” Rand explained that the movie’s theme should be: “Man’s greatest achievements are accomplished through free, voluntary action.” She emphasized that key scientists on the project became refugees because “Statism destroys, exiles and paralyzes men of genius . . . they could produce what they produced only in a free country.”

Wallis accepted the proposal, and Rand plunged into the research phase, consulting with a technical advisor and reading Atomic Energy for Military Purposes, the official government report on the bomb’s development. She also sought interviews with key figures, including J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Interviewing Oppenheimer Years later, in biographical interviews now preserved in the Ayn Rand Archives, Rand described her first meeting with Oppenheimer. She recalled that he seemed apprehensive, appearing worried (as she put it) about the “resentment of scientists for creating this weapon.” When Rand assured Oppenheimer that her screenplay was to “show that the atom bomb was a great achievement of the human mind,

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J. Robert Oppenheimer (ullstein bild Dtl. via Getty Images).

and that it can be done only by free minds,” the mood in the room suddenly changed. According to Rand, “What disarmed me was the way he looked at me after that. He literally said, ‘Oh, is this what you want to show?’ From then on . . . he began to talk much more warmly, personally, much more eagerly.” They spoke for about an hour, and when the time was up, Oppenheimer requested that she “stay a little longer,” and a second interview was scheduled for seven days later.

In their follow-up meeting, Rand asked Oppenheimer whether the Los Alamos scientists worked under orders. “He looks at me,” Rand later recalled, “and in the way the best of my characters would have said it, he said, ‘There was never an order given at Los Alamos,’ and in that quiet, morally indignant tone.”

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The first and last pages of Rand’s general outline for “Top Secret” (© Leonard Peikoff [Ayn Rand Archives]). Find the full outline published in chapter 9 of Journals of Ayn Rand.

Drawing on her research and interviews with Oppenheimer and other key figures, Rand began writing the screenplay (and completed seventy-two pages). This first part of the script includes scenes depicting the struggles of important nuclear scientists—including Enrico Fermi, Albert Einstein, Lise Meitner, and Niels Bohr— against growing statism in Europe.

In March 1946, much to Rand’s surprise and disappointment, Wallis sold all rights to the “Top Secret” project to MGM for $100,000. MGM then shelved it, and Rand’s screenplay was never completed or filmed. Readers who are curious to examine the published versions of Rand’s analysis, research, and outlines may consult chapter 9 in Journals of Ayn Rand.

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Although the project’s end came as a blow to Rand, the timing was in one sense propitious. Her creative imagination was teeming with possibilities for the project that would become her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, and she spent the next few months planning and outlining that novel. Interestingly, Rand’s experience with Oppenheimer helped inspire the character of Dr. Robert Stadler in Atlas Shrugged. In a series of notes written in the summer of 1946, she considered whether Oppenheimer could properly be described as the type of creator who works for his own destruction: “. . . he is so sure of what is right and that he is capable of deciding it, while others are not, that he must force it on those inferior others, for their own good. In such an attitude, there is the natural impatience of the intelligent man who can’t bear to see things done wrong, when they can be done right and he knows how to do it. But this attitude is applied to a crucial error in thinking—that one man can decide what is right (or good) for another.”

Current controversies surrounding Nolan’s film, Oppenheimer, raise an interesting question: What kind of movie might Wallis and Rand have made together if “Top Secret” had come to fruition? Archival holdings permit well-founded speculation that the result could have been a masterpiece, if it had embodied Rand’s distinctive theme. As an expression of that theme, consider a line of dialog that Rand had planned for the final scene. After the bomb has fallen on Hiroshima, Oppenheimer’s young security guard looks to the sky and says: “Man can harness the universe—but nobody can harness man.”  Brandon Lisi, MA in history, is an assistant archivist and researcher at the Ayn Rand Institute.

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THE CONTINUING CELEBRATION OF

THE FOUNTAINHEAD ’S 80 TH ANNIVERSARY

View the full exhibit “Blueprints for The Fountainhead” online

AYNRAND.ORG/ARCHIVES.

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© Henri Glarner (Ayn Rand Archives)

210 PAGES

from Ayn Rand’s papers released as part of the “Blueprints for The Fountainhead” online exhibit

P

ublished in 1943, The Fountainhead has impacted the lives of millions of readers over the past eighty years. The novel tells the story of Howard Roark, a fiercely independent architect who refuses to sacrifice the integrity of his innovative designs despite intense social and economic pressure to conform. Rand’s passionate tribute to individualism brought her international fame and has now sold more than eight million copies in more than thirty languages. Decades later, it’s a mainstay in many high school literature classes.

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The story of how Rand wrote this timeless classic is a narrative on par with the best literature. From her youth in Soviet Russia through her struggles in America to learn English and develop her craft, Rand clung to a single goal: to portray her ideal man in fiction. With The Fountainhead and Howard Roark, she achieved that goal.

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First edition cover of The Fountainhead (1943) May 7, 1943 Bobbs-Merrill

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“The Skyscraper” No date Ayn Rand Handwritten draft of a story treatment (c. 1927) that Ayn Rand wrote while working for Cecil B. DeMille

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© Leonard Peikoff (Ayn Rand Archives)

Now, with the help of manuscripts housed in the Ayn Rand Archives, you can go behind the scenes and observe the years-long process by which Rand conceived, plotted, wrote, and edited her first bestseller. The online exhibit “Blueprints for The Fountainhead” offers a guided introduction that takes readers through the whole story, accompanied by more than two hundred manuscript pages (and their transcripts), which help to examine the story in more detail. With commentary from the Institute’s archivists, the exhibit allows fans of the novel to explore the intellectual scaffolding—the handwritten notes and outlines—that Rand used to erect the edifice called The Fountainhead.

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© Leonard Peikoff (Ayn Rand Archives)

The Ayn Rand Institute is proud to make these original documents available to the public for the first time in their proper context. Exhibits like these give unprecedented visibility to Rand’s work, promoting her legacy for years to come.

Most importantly, this undertaking would not have been possible without the generous support of our donors, some of whom even volunteered on the project, helping to transcribe and proofread hundreds of pages of handwritten notes.

And this is just the beginning: The Ayn Rand Institute is hard at work making even more of Rand’s intellectual legacy available online to all who wish to engage with it. Future exhibits will continue to promote a new appreciation of Ayn Rand and her legacy. 

Explore the exhibit further at aynrand.org/archives.

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“Second-Hand Lives” notebook December 4, 1935 Ayn Rand The first page of Rand’s original notes on the story that would eventually be titled The Fountainhead

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ATLANTIS LEGACY UPHOLDS YOUR VALUES DURING YOUR LIFETIME AND BEYOND

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“[Objectivism] has affected my life in all kinds of ways.

It became a way of living our lives to the best extent we could.”

—Kathryn Eickhoff-Smith

L

ongtime ARI donor and distinguished economist Kathyrn EickhoffSmith and her late husband A. James “Jim” Smith, Jr., were close friends of Ayn Rand. Mrs. Eickoff-Smith first met Rand in 1962; she became her financial advisor and remained close with Rand until her death in 1982. A few years after Rand passed away, Mrs. EickhoffSmith and her husband were at a Jefferson School conference when the formation of the Ayn Rand Institute was announced. The couple immediately supported the Institute—their enthusiasm rooted in the fact that Ayn Rand and her work profoundly impacted them both.

Mrs. Eickhoff-Smith’s introduction to Rand’s work came from a man who would never know just how transformative that introduction truly was.

“I was 22 years old when a man I was dating decided to move to Chile where there was less regulation of business. He gave me a copy of Atlas Shrugged, saying he thought it was hopeless to try and get through all the garbage I had been exposed to in college. He was wrong, though I never got to tell him so or to thank him for changing my life.” She pursued the ideas in Rand’s work and they shaped her life—leading her to meet her future husband and impacting her career trajectory. “[Ayn Rand’s ideas] got me connected with Alan Greenspan on an ongoing basis. I worked with him for 23 years at Townsend-Greenspan & Co., Inc.”

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Today, Mrs. Eickhoff-Smith wants to ensure Rand’s ideas continue to be shared.

She supports ARI’s mission to foster awareness, understanding, and acceptance of Objectivism through her donor membership as well as through Atlantis Legacy, ARI’s planned giving program.

Anyone can become a member of Atlantis Legacy; it doesn’t require huge sums of money. Membership includes two steps: (1) include ARI as a beneficiary in a will or living trust, and/or an insurance policy, retirement plan, bank account, etc., and (2) inform ARI that you’ve made such arrangements.

A charitable bequest to ARI offers you the opportunity to make a substantial gift without depleting assets you may want during your lifetime. A bequest may also reduce or eliminate estate taxes.

Ayn Rand wrote that “the spread of ideas is an enormous job.” While the Institute has achieved much in its relatively short history, the enormous task of transforming the intellectual bedrock of the culture will not be accomplished without a commitment well into the future. Advancing the right philosophy is a long-term endeavor, requiring equally long-term support. Planned giving is crucial because it maximizes that long-range support.

That’s a commitment that Mrs. Eickhoff-Smith has made, precisely because of the profound impact Objectivism has had on her own life. Through the Atlantis Legacy, she can ensure the advancement of her ideals for years to come. 

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A. James “Jim” Smith, Jr., and Kathyrn Eickhoff-Smith

By supporting Atlantis Legacy, Kathryn Eickhoff-Smith is ensuring Rand’s ideas continue to be shared.

To learn more and to help spread Objectivism far into the future, please visit

ATLANTISLEGACY.ORG. If you have further questions or would like to inform us of your wishes, please call (949) 222-6550 or email development@aynrand.org.

2023 EDITION //

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AYN RAND 20 CON 23 Athens, Greece

“Howard, when you look back, does it seem to you as if all your days had rolled forward evenly, like a sort of typing exercise, all alike? Or were there stops—points reached—and then the typing rolled on again?”

“There were stops.”

“Did you know them at the time—did you know that that’s what they were?”

“Yes.” (Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead) Indeed, there are landmarks in our life; moments with gravitas that we know right then and there that they are to be remembered. For many of us in the Objectivist community, walking in the steps of the titans of ancient Greek philosophy, sitting on the rocks they sat on, and listening to philosophy lectures where they taught, were such moments. The whole of AynRandCon-Europe in Athens in April of 2023 was a series of memorable highlights: • Robert Mayhew and Gregory Salmieri teaching about Aristotle in the Lyceum, where that giant of philosophy walked and taught • Listening to a lecture by Robert Mayhew in an ancient theater under the Acropolis, followed by a play with selected scenes from Antigone by Sophocles • Observing the intellectual thirst of current and future ARU students queuing up to ask questions of ARI speakers • Watching a breathtaking sunset in Cape Sounion We’ll always remember Athens, but let’s create new memories by the canals and the alleys in Amsterdam at AynRandCon-Europe 2024. See you there!

—Nikos Sotirakopoulos, Visiting Fellow and Director of Ayn Rand Institute Europe

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2023 EDITION //

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This year’s conference invigorated and inspired long-time attendees and newcomers alike by celebrating Objectivism as a philosophy for living on earth.

Jordan Glynn, a first-time attendee, reflects on his conference experience.

When I was invited to attend OCON on an OCON First-Timer Scholarship, it seemed like a fantasy: the chance to spend five days with other Ayn Rand fans in a setting dedicated to meeting like-minded people. Judging by the number of other first-timers who walked around in a delighted, overwhelmed haze at the opening reception, I wasn’t the only one feeling nervous and excited.

Though a longtime fan of Ayn Rand, I was new to the Objectivist community and, being an introvert, had my share of anxiety about participating in such a large conference. Fortunately, those concerns proved baseless.

I attended the first-timers’ breakfast, which was abuzz with anticipation for the upcoming conference, with many of us speculating which would be our favorite talks or speakers (mine was Yaron’s, as I predicted!). Another firsttime attendee shared her path to embracing Objectivism with me, and our table soon welcomed two more newcomers.

Our conversations flowed as we swapped stories and perspectives.

One woman, despite being new to Ayn Rand’s work, had embarked on a transformative journey from dharmic Buddhism to Objectivism, attributing her newfound worldview to Atlas Shrugged.

Ultimately my OCON experience was delightful and enriching. The talks were insightful, and the conference defied my initial expectations and left me with lasting connections. To the donors who make such incredible experiences possible, all I can offer is the humblest: thank you.

TO REGISTER FOR NEXT YEAR’S CONFERENCE, VISIT

OCON.AYNRAND.ORG.

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2023 EDITION //

56

MEET OUR

Staff and Associates ARI’s mission is to foster a wide acceptance of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, and create a culture of reason and freedom—a mission that wouldn’t be possible without our amazing staff members. We reached out to our junior fellows—the new intellectuals-intraining—and asked what it means to them to work at ARI—and got some inspiring answers.

Kirk Barbera

Onkar Ghate

Stewart Margolis

Carla Silk

Development Account Manager

Chief Philosophy Officer and Senior Fellow

Development Account Manager

Chief Operating Officer

Ben Bayer

Ziemowit Gowin

Amanda Maxham

Junior Fellow

Director of Content and Fellow

Junior Fellow

Mentorship Strategist and Special Projects Manager

Aaron Smith

Mike Mazza

Nikos Sotirakopoulos

Tom Bowden Research Fellow

Jonathon Brajdic Education Programs Specialist

Jeff Britting Physical and Analog Archivist

Nelson Gilliat Outreach Manager

David Gulbraa Donor Services Specialist

Audra Hilse

Associate Fellow

Donna Montrezza Copy Editor

Digital Archivist

Hailey O’Brien

Jeff Janicke

Digital Marketing Assistant

Amber Brown

Business Operations and IT Coordinator

Development Marketing Manager

Elan Journo

Ricardo Pinto Junior Fellow

Ibis Slade

Instructor and Fellow

Visiting Fellow and Director of ARI Europe

Anna Steinberg Director of Development

Clytze Sun Data Scientist

Tal Tsfany

Jason Rheins

Software Engineer

Vice President of Content and Senior Fellow

Kathy Cross

Elizabeth Judge

Senior Legacy Giving Manager

Marketing Project Manager

Director of Content Production

Associate Fellow

Yonatan Daon

Duane Knight

Romy Salgado

Steven Warden

European Activist

Grants Manager

Senior Accountant/ HR Assistant

Jonathan Divin

Tristan de Liège

Steven Schub

Online Community Specialist

Junior Fellow

ARU Coach

Director of Coaching and Mentoring

Simon Federman

Brandon Lisi

Ray Schuur Junior Fellow

Samuel Weaver

Archives Coordinator

Assistant Archivist and Researcher

Vinny Freire

Keith Lockitch

Information Technology and Engineering Manager

Vice President of Education and Senior Fellow

Aaron Fried

Rachael Mare

Director of ARU Growth and Technology

Director of Marketing

Marcos Carbonell

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Instructor and Fellow

Lucy Rose

Daniel Schwartz Visiting Fellow

Jeff Scialabba Director of ARU Operations

Kate Sherwood ARU Coordinator

President and Chief Executive Officer

Agustina Vergara Cid

Junior Fellow

Don Watkins

Associate Fellow

Alex Wigger Content Production Specialist

Geraldine Yumping Controller

Nikos Sotirakopoulos – Director of ARI Europe and Visiting Fellow “Teaching at Ayn Rand University, I’ve experienced everything I was missing when I taught at conventional universities. The students are engaged, their eyes are focused, and they take their education seriously. Atlas Shrugged is the book that changed my life, and this is my calling: to bring Objectivism, the philosophy that can change the world and the lives of individuals, to an even larger audience.”

Steven Warden – Junior Fellow “I’m working hard toward becoming a moral and political philosopher. I consider Ayn Rand one of the most important and distinctive thinkers that any upcoming philosopher should know and engage with. Thanks to my association with ARI, I am now working with, and learning from, some of the most renowned experts in Objectivism. I hope that, soon, readers will come to know me through my own work on values and liberty.”

Ziemowit Gowin - Junior Fellow “Working for ARI has been my dream since I learned about Ayn Rand and Objectivism. In practice it means that on a daily basis I can spread the ideas that are important to me. I work in a great environment of dedicated people from whom I also learn. As a junior fellow, I deepen my knowledge of Rand’s philosophy and acquire crucial skills such as writing, public speaking, and teaching.”

Ray Schuur – Junior Fellow “At ARI, I have the unique privilege and pleasure of being trained as a public intellectual. We have a supportive community here at ARI where we are encouraged to speak out with moral clarity on pressing cultural-political problems that face us today. This helps me in my work on healthcare reform, where I intend to advance a moral defense of the biopharmaceutical industry and advocate greater freedom for doctors and patients to produce and consume healthcare as they see fit.”

Ibis Slade – Junior Fellow “I had given up on a life I wanted—it seemed that life was passionless and my future a lost cause. It was through Ayn Rand, Objectivism, and the diligence of ARI that all of that changed.

Through the educational opportunities and training experiences I got through ARI as a junior fellow, for the first time I had a future— and an intellectual career path—to look forward to and the life I wanted became real. Working for ARI shows me that the people I dreamed of are real—and they know me.”

2023 EDITION //

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THE AYN RAND INSTITUTE John Allison Executive-in-Residence at the Wake Forest University School of Business and retired Chairman and CEO of BB&T. Member of the Cato Institute’s Board of Directors.

Harry Binswanger Yaron Brook Chairman of the Board of Directors, former CEO of ARI, Co-Founder of BHZ Capital LLC and host of The Yaron Brook Show

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// AYN RAND INSTITUTE ANNUAL REPORT

Philosophy professor and associate of the late Ayn Rand

Onkar Ghate Chief Philosophy Officer and Senior Fellow at ARI. He is the Institute’s resident expert on Objectivism.

Board of Directors Larry Salzman Director of Litigation, Pacific Legal Foundation

Robert Mayhew Professor of philosophy at Seton Hall University

Tal Tsfany President and CEO of ARI

Tara Smith Professor of philosophy at University of Texas at Austin

2023 EDITION //

60

STATEMENT OF

FINANCIAL POSITION STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL POSITION AS OF SEPTEMBER 30, 2023 (IN THOUSANDS)

ASSETS $22,863 – Current Assets $7,216 – Long-Term Assets

LIABILITIES & NET ASSETS $1,622 – Current Liabilities $1,603 – Long-Term Liabilities $26,854 – Net Assets

$30,079 – Total Assets

$30,079 – Total Liabilities & Net Assets

Thanks to our donors, ARI is able to offer promising students interested in Ayn Rand a wide range of programs and resources designed to spark their intellectual curiosity and independent thinking. Through our free books, events, and educational programming, we offer students opportunities to engage with Ayn Rand’s writing and philosophy, showing them how to apply abstract ideas to solve concrete, real-life problems.

Pictured here are (from left to right): ARI instructor and fellow Aaron Smith and students who were able to attend AynRandCon-Europe in Athens on scholarships made possible by donor support: Ani Marmalidze, Kato Sheshelidze, Nino Sirbiladze, and Tamari Khuberashvili.

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// AYN RAND INSTITUTE ANNUAL REPORT

STATEMENT OF

ACTIVITIES STATEMENT OF ACTIVITIES AS OF SEPTEMBER 30, 2023 (IN THOUSANDS)

REVENUES

EXPENSES

50%

$8,087 – Contributions (Standard Giving) 44% $7,239 – Contributions (Atlantis Legacy Gifts) 94% $15,326 – Total Contributions

49%

$5,287 – Education Programs

34%

$3,718 – Outreach

5%

$565 – Other

4%

$586 – Program Revenues

5%

$546 – Fundraising

2%

$305 – Investment Returns and Other Revenues

7%

$805 – Management and General

$16,217 – Total Revenue

88%

$9,570 – Total Program Services

$4,934 – Capitalized Expense under Long-Term Assets

$15,855 – Total Expenses $362 – Transfer to Reserve Fund

Investment Returns and Other Revenues

2

%

Program Revenues

Contributions

94

%

Management and General

7% Fundraising

4%

Total Program Services

88%

5%

REVENUES

The financial statements reflected represent preliminary figures only.

EXPENSES

2023 EDITION //

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