Throughout 2024, the Ayn Rand Institute continued its commitment to publishing high-quality substantive articles and podcasts featuring staff and affiliated intellectuals. Whether in written or podcast form, we work to apply Ayn Rand’s philosophy to a wide variety of topics, from politics and foreign policy to more abstract philosophy. As 2024 is closing, we would like to offer a small selection of some of our best pieces and podcast episodes, as well as four episodes of ARI Bookshelf, a new series showcasing our faculty discussing important books. We are also proud to include a list of the books published in 2024 by the Ayn Rand Institute Press.

Articles

Why Can’t Professional Philosophers Get Rand Right?
(February 21, 2024)

Honest and objective interpretation of other thinkers is core to the job of a philosopher. In this exhaustive essay, Mike Mazza offers a detailed analysis of professional philosophers’ treatment of Ayn Rand’s philosophical arguments. He shows that their parochial assumptions about philosophical methodology ruin the objectivity of their commentary on Rand.

Ayn Rand’s Unique View of America
(February 27, 2024)

In her captivating short essay, Agustina Vergara Cid tells us the story of her decision to migrate to America. As she explains, Ayn Rand’s philosophy and its evaluation of America helped inspired her decision. What makes America great, in Rand’s eyes, is its founding ideal of the principle of individual rights.

The Real Problem with Plagiarism
(May 29, 2024)

The debate over plagiarism raged after Harvard president Claudine Gay stepped down over allegations of plagiarism. But as Ben Bayer argues, academia’s lenient attitude towards plagiarism comes not primarily from DEI but from a more general approach to morality that makes academics blind to the real moral problem with plagiarism.

The Evil of Ethnic Studies: Hostility to Israel Is Tip of the Iceberg
(November 20, 2024)

What is ethnic studies and why does it target Israel? Sam Weaver argues that the academic field, obsessed with critiquing any form of “power” or “dominant narrative,” attacks Israel because of its hatred of civilization as such.

Podcasts

The Outrageous Public Support for the Pro-Hamas Protests
(April 24, 2024)

Although the heinous attack on Israel on October 7 should be condemned by everyone, many campus protesters in 2024 had the audacity to support the evil Hamas regime. Onkar Ghate and Ben Bayer explain why the anti-Israeli campus protests were indeed pro-Hamas, and how they stemmed from a wider educational crisis.

DEI’s Secret Appeal
(May 22, 2024)

What accounts for the dominance of DEI in American universities and corporate businesses? Onkar Ghate and Nikos Sotirakopoulos explain this phenomenon, showing both the questionable grounds and terrible consequences of “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion.”

How to Defend Free Speech
(September 18, 2024)

Even though free speech is one of the most important values in a free society, defending this value is often hindered by a failure to understand its nature. Agustina Vergara Cid interviews Greg Salmieri about his article “Free Speech as a Right and a Way of Life” published in The First Amendment: Essays on the Imperative of Intellectual Freedom, a volume published this year by ARI Press.

The Vicious Antitrust Case Against Google
(September 25, 2024)

The DOJ antitrust suit against Google is an example of criminalizing businesses for being successful. Ben Bayer and Robertas Bakula discuss this unjust attack on Google and the immorality of antitrust laws as such.

ARI Bookshelf

The Visionaries by Wolfram Eilenberger
(August 6, 2024)

The Visionaries examines parallels in the lives of four ostensibly anti-totalitarian female philosophers from the mid-twentieth century: Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Ayn Rand. Ben Bayer, Jason Rheins, Greg Salmieri, and Shoshana Milgram compare Rand’s principled opposition to all forms of collectivism to the others’ selective opposition mixed with support for socialism. They also discuss the book’s mixed interpretation of Rand, among other topics.

Freely Determined by Kennon M. Sheldon
(September 10, 2024)

Freely Determined is a unique work by a contemporary psychologist that both argues against determinism and for the claim that mental health depends on a belief in one’s own agency. Panelists Gena Gorlin, Jason Rheins, Greg Salmieri, and Ben Bayer discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Sheldon’s approach.

Why Trust Science? by Naomi Oreskes
(October 11, 2024)

When and why can we trust science if we are not experts ourselves? Why Trust Science? argues that the social character of science makes it trustworthy. Our panelists – Mike Mazza, Daniel Schwartz, Ben Bayer, and Jason Rheins – evaluate Oreskes’s claims, and delve into broader topics in the philosophy of science.

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
(November 4, 2024)

Coates’ book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has sparked controversy for its sympathy for the Palestinian cause. In this episode, Elan Journo, Greg Salmieri, Mohamed Ali, and Ibis Slade explain how the book offers a starkly non-objective account of the conflict, deriving from Coates’s distorted views on morality and Western civilization.

New books

Why Act on Principle? by Leonard Peikoff

This volume is a collection of fourteen enduring philosophic essays written by Leonard Peikoff, the preeminent Ayn Rand scholar and heir to her estate.

The First Amendment: Essays on the Imperative of Intellectual Freedom by Tara Smith

Smith’s essays explore and unpack crucial issues, such as the actual nature of religious freedom and the pervasive errors regarding key concepts in the free speech debate, including the concepts of “freedom” and “censorship.” 

Finding Morality and Happiness Without God by Onkar Ghate

Ghate presents the positive case for a secular morality of self-interest, grounded in reason, while blasting the religious view that morality is a matter of faith.