Berliner Scholarship Fund Honors ARI’s First Executive Director

The Ayn Rand Institute has announced establishment of the Michael S. Berliner Scholarship Fund to recognize Berliner’s decades of productive work in pursuit of the Institute’s mission — as its first executive director, as an editor of books based on lecture courses by Leonard Peikoff, and as senior adviser to the Ayn Rand Archives. The following retrospective provides a glimpse of that career.

Ignited by The Fountainhead

A native of Columbus, Ohio, Berliner grew up playing the piano and pursuing sports. In the fall of 1958, when he was a junior at the University of Michigan, his girlfriend, Judy Block, recommended a novel that he just had to read. It was The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. “I’ll never forget it,” he recalled in an interview years later. “I didn’t leave my room for days, and when I finally walked out — it was shocking. It was as though I were having an actual physical reaction. I looked around, and everything looked different, everything looked clear to me for the first time in my life. I didn’t understand all of the implications, but it was the most intense reaction I’d ever had. And I knew that what had happened would have the most important effect on my life.”¹

After changing his undergraduate major from journalism to political science, Berliner went on to earn advanced degrees in education from Michigan (master’s) and philosophy from Boston University (doctorate). Twenty years of teaching followed, mostly in the Department of Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education at California State University, Northridge, in Los Angeles. Over the years he gravitated toward administration and away from teaching, readying himself unknowingly for a second career that would combine administrative skills with his interest in philosophy and Objectivism. In 1985, with the support of Leonard Peikoff, the Institute’s philosophic founder, Berliner became ARI’s first executive director.

Leading the Ayn Rand Institute

“For the first nine months, I was the only employee,” Berliner said. “It was a great adventure, with the goal of no less than changing the culture at its roots. The great challenge came from the uniqueness of ARI. There was no model for what we were about to try — there was no ‘Let’s Start the Renaissance Institute’ in the fourteenth century.”

He was bowled over by the contrast with academia. “I’d spent the previous two decades as a graduate student and then a university professor, where skepticism and dogmatism reigned,” he said. “So I was unprepared for, but greatly welcomed, the rational and ‘can-do’ attitude among the people I was dealing with in my new career.”

In those early years Berliner was the voice and public face of the Institute, writing op-eds and giving media interviews on controversial issues, spreading the word about ARI’s mission. “I liked the challenge of explaining the purpose and goals of ARI and giving compact answers to questions about Objectivism and philosophy in general,” Berliner said. “I liked ‘selling’ ARI. I could engage directly in intellectual activities in addition to the standard organizational responsibilities such as planning, budgets, and personnel.”

One of his favorite op-eds was “Man’s Best Came with Columbus,” a 1991 piece lauding Western civilization, inspired by the Rose Parade caving in to the Left and adding a Native American as co-grand marshal, alongside a descendant of Christopher Columbus. “But my favorite was ‘The Big Lie in Hollywood,’ from 1997, arguing that the ‘persecuted’ blacklisted screenwriters in the 1940s known as the ‘Hollywood 10’ were villains, not victims.”

In 1997 ARI mounted a multifaceted public response to President Clinton’s presidential summit boosting “volunteerism” and community service. ARI’s “Campaign Against Servitude” garnered national publicity on television, on radio and in newspapers. During this event, Berliner was widely quoted as saying: “The Founding Fathers wrote a declaration of independence, not a declaration of servitude.”

During its first fifteen years, the Institute inaugurated a series of programs under Berliner’s leadership, many of which endure to this day: essay contests encouraging students to read The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and Anthem — the Objectivist Graduate Center (forerunner of ARU) — ARI Press, whose first book was The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts by Harry Binswanger — “Ayn Rand Comes to Harvard,” a 1996 lecture series — ARI’s website, aynrand.org.²

At an event marking ARI’s tenth anniversary, a celebrant remarked that Berliner had the best job in the world. “It’s better than that,” Berliner quipped.

Upon Berliner’s retirement at the end of 1999, ARI’s board chairman Peter Schwartz paid him this tribute: “At the start, he was the Institute — as sole employee, he did everything from raising funds to organizing projects to typing letters. It is largely through Mike’s efforts that we have progressed from a one-man operation with a dubious future to a thriving, $2 million organization.” At his retirement, ARI’s staff had grown to twenty-six.

Post-retirement, Berliner’s energy has never seemed to wane, as he continues with the editing, writing, and archival work that he had pursued while heading ARI.

A Prolific Editor

For decades, philosopher Leonard Peikoff offered tape-recorded lecture courses on important topics to appreciative audiences around the world. Responding to popular demand for written versions of those courses, Peikoff decided to authorize trusted individuals to perform conversions to print. “To turn a lecture course into an accurate, clear, and valuable book,” Peikoff wrote, “a huge amount of time-consuming editing is required, a task that can be performed only by an individual with the necessary motivation, knowledge of the subject, and editorial skills. My own age and priorities make it impossible for me to undertake such a task.” Berliner was authorized to produce books from four of Peikoff’s courses.

Understanding Objectivism: A Guide to Learning Ayn Rand’s Philosophy was the first to be published (New American Library, 2012). In an editorial note to that book, Peikoff wrote: “If you like this book, I may add, do not give me too much of the credit. My course provided, let us say, the spirit, but Dr. Berliner gave it the flesh required to live.” Next came Principles of Grammar (ARI Press, 2020) and Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume (ARI Press, 2023). A fourth book, The Art of Thinking, was published in February, 2025. Berliner’s work on these volumes earned Peikoff’s approval and appreciation, including this tribute: “Without his editing, it would have been unlikely — probably impossible — for my courses to have turned into good books.”

Berliner found the challenges of editing Peikoff’s work personally rewarding. “I had constantly to keep in mind that I’m applying a sort of minimalism: minimal changes,” he explained. “When I get to a passage that isn’t completely clear to me, I must remind myself that my job is to help convey Dr. Peikoff’s material rather than my understanding of what he said in a lecture. So each book is a double challenge: turning oral into prose, and doing it with material created by someone else.”

Each editing project starts with a careful comparison of the transcript with the original recording. Then he makes decisions about cutting conversational words and passages, and sometimes larger sections that are repetitive. Then he goes over the manuscript four or five more times with his copyediting colleague Donna Montrezza, with each responding to the other’s suggestions and questions.

“Of the four books that I’ve done, my favorite is Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume,” Berliner said. “The original presentation was tightly worded, making ‘rewriting’ less needed. But the content pulled me in. I felt almost as though I were back in grad school — but grad school as it ought to be. With each reading, I learned more and more about the ideas of the main philosophers pre-Kant. One philosopher would start with a previous philosopher and try (unsuccessfully) to solve the problems that stymied that previous thinker.”

In 2013, at Berliner’s suggestion, Peikoff decided to publish The Cause of Hitler’s Germany, representing approximately half of his earlier (1982) book The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America. “It was Dr. Berliner who first thought of such a possibility, who initiated the project, and who oversaw the development of its various stages,” Peikoff explained in a preface. “He wanted a book that would focus only on the Nazi aspects: on their intellectual origins in German philosophy, and then on their manifestations in Weimar culture and, as a result, in the world of Hitler.”

An Archival Writer

From Berliner’s early days leading the Institute, he nurtured the Ayn Rand Archives, which grew from an unorganized assortment of boxes and memorabilia to a professionally curated archives. He spent untold hours in the Archives, sifting through materials page by page, assembling data into massive finding aids that researchers relied upon to locate material for their projects.

Much of Berliner’s post-retirement research has been based in the Archives. Having published Letters of Ayn Rand in 1995, based on archival holdings of Rand’s personal correspondence, Berliner turned in retirement to preparing an expanded second edition, with copious commentary and dozens of new letters. This volume is currently online at the Ayn Rand Archives website and is being readied for publication as a Penguin ebook in 2025.

Meanwhile, Berliner’s original research and scholarship enabled him to contribute six chapters to a series of books edited by Rand scholar Robert Mayhew, published between 2004 and 2012, featuring scholarly analysis of Rand’s four novels.³ Four of Berliner’s chapters draw from archival holdings and provide surveys of the reviews each novel garnered (“Reviews of Anthem,” “Reviews of We the Living,” “The Fountainhead Reviews,” and “The Atlas Shrugged Reviews”). Another chapter addresses the mistaken view that Howard Roark, hero of The Fountainhead, was closely modeled on the architect Frank Lloyd Wright (“Howard Roark and Frank Lloyd Wright”).

As a devotee and scholar of both the operetta genre and Rand’s musical history, Berliner was especially qualified to write “How Music Saved a Life: Ayn Rand and Operetta” (chapter 13 of Illuminating Ayn Rand) and“The Music of We the Living.”⁴ And with his colleague Anu Seppala, Berliner also wrote Russia to America: A Guide to Ayn Rand Homes and Sites, a lavishly illustrated geographical survey of important places in Rand’s life, many of which he had visited and photographed.

In order to celebrate Berliner’s dedication to ARI’s mission over the course of a productive lifetime, contributions to the Michael S. Berliner Scholarship Fund will go to support intellectuals studying at ARU or engaging in other varieties of serious study and promulgation of Objectivism. Special effort will be made to identify recipients whose academic and career interests align with Berliner’s passions of writing, editing, and archival work.

“We’re delighted to honor Dr. Berliner’s work across decades,” said Elan Journo, ARI’s vice president of content. “He built up the Institute from a shoestring operation to a growing, impactful organization introducing new generations to Rand’s work, all the while writing and speaking for ARI on the airwaves and in newspapers. On a personal note, I admire Dr. Berliner’s pioneering archival scholarship, and I appreciate his ongoing commitment to the Ayn Rand Archives. And it bears underscoring: Dr. Berliner’s masterly editing of Leonard Peikoff’s lectures into books has brought that invaluable material to new audiences.

“We are truly grateful to Dr. Berliner for his inspiring contributions to the advancement of Ayn Rand’s philosophy. The new Michael S. Berliner Scholarship Fund — with its emphasis on fostering new intellectuals — serves both to recognize the achievements of its namesake and fuel the educational mission he helped set in motion.”

A special word of thanks is owed to the donors who enabled creation of this new scholarship fund.

To contribute to the fund, please submit your donation and write “Mike Berliner Scholarship Fund” in the comments section.

1. Judy Block became Berliner’s wife in 1961 and went on to a distinguished career as a professor at the UCLA School of Medicine and earned international renown for her work in cardiovascular research. Their daughter, Dana, became a lawyer and is currently Litigation Director at the Institute for Justice. Sixty years of marriage ended with Judy’s death in 2021.
2. Berliner’s service on ARI’s board of directors began in 1994 and ended in 2013, with the last seven years as co-chair.
3. The first book in the series was Essays on Ayn Rand’s “We the Living” (2004), followed by Essays on Ayn Rand’s “Anthem” (2005). Next came Essays on Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” (2007) and Essays on Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” (2009). (An expanded version of the We the Living volume was issued in 2012.) The books feature contributions from some of the world’s most knowledgeable Objectivist scholars, with essays on Rand’s creative process, her literary influences and inspirations, the novels’ publishing and adaptation histories, comparisons to other fiction, and deep analysis of important themes and characters.
4. Berliner published “Ayn Rand’s Musical Biography” in New Ideal in 2021.