For over 40 years, ARI has preserved Rand’s legacy through archival and educational activities. Two years ago, ARI announced it would cement that legacy in actual concrete by building the Ayn Rand Center in Austin, Texas. Earlier this month, the Institute broke ground on the building. The Center will house the Ayn Rand Archives, classrooms, event spaces, studios, public gathering areas, a state-of-the-art immersive educational experience, and the home campus of ARI’s education program, ARU. It will play a vital role in preserving Objectivism and in spreading it to ever-larger audiences. To learn more about the groundbreaking event, the Center’s inspiring vision, and the founders behind it, watch our special Ayn Rand Institute Podcast episode with CEO Tal Tsfany and Senior VP Elan Journo. In addition to the discussion, the episode includes building simulations and video clips from the groundbreaking event.

Topics include:

• The plan for the Ayn Rand Center and the strategic vision behind it

• The architect and architecture of the Center

• Inspiring anecdotes on the building process and the Center

• Mailchimp founder Ben Chestnut’s donations and vision

• Tal Tsfany’s remarks at the groundbreaking event

Resources:

• Website of the Ayn Rand Center

Over the next few years, interested users around the world will get an increasingly complete picture of how Ayn Rand developed as a thinker and writer over time. Facilitating this opportunity is the Ayn Rand Archives’ ongoing effort to digitize, transcribe, and release Ayn Rand’s manuscripts on the public internet.

Ayn Rand’s handwritten material is not easy to read. Much of it is in cursive, a writing style that fewer and fewer people learn how to read. Even for those who can read cursive, her unique penmanship can still be a challenge, as many pages of material in her personal papers were notes or drafts never intended to be legible to anyone other than herself. Therefore, just putting the scans of these pages online would not achieve the Ayn Rand Archives’ goal of making this material globally accessible.

For that, we needed to add something: typed transcripts.

Transcripts, typed copies of the handwritten words on the page, truly unlock Ayn Rand’s archival materials. Our goal is to make these transcripts as accurate as possible to Rand’s original words.

Transcription notation

While there are some limitations on this in any given typed format, our current transcription platform allows us to get very close to the originals using various formatting conventions.

The following examples are taken from this page (shown above), this page, and this page, all part of Rand’s planning material for her first novel, We the Living.

Broadly, we have attempted to match what we see on the handwritten page in the typed version. This includes line and paragraph breaks, check marks or other symbols, a certain amount of left indentation, underlines, and deletions or strikethroughs.

Deletions

For readability, these last are always represented as strikethroughs in the transcript, even if Rand used heavier markings:

Insertions

These later additions made by Rand are presented as smaller, superscripted text in the transcripts:

Uncertain Words

When the handwriting is unclear but a reasonable guess is possible, the platform presents the word in brackets, with both the word and brackets italicized.

Regularization

In some cases, Rand either misspelled a word or name or used a less common spelling of something. These words are regularized in the transcript, meaning that the correct or common spelling is given. These are presented in italicized text with a dashed underline. Hovering over these words reveals the original spelling or phrasing as it appeared in Rand’s handwriting, which allows for improved reading and searching while still providing an accurate representation of the original.

Other regularization used throughout all transcripts (which is not formatted):

• Rand used a version of the plus sign (+) for an “and” symbol; the transcripts regularize this to the ampersand (&) symbol in order to be more machine-readable.

• Quotation marks are in the standard American English convention, with both opening and closing quotation marks appearing at the top of the word (“abc” or ‘abc’); Rand herself switched to this convention later in her life, but in much of her early writing (as seen above) she used the European convention of a lower opening quotation mark that appeared at the bottom of the word.

Nonstandard elements

Some elements of the handwritten text cannot easily be reproduced through formatting within this platform, or are otherwise best handled via transcriber notes, short, written descriptions of something on the original page. These are given as italicized comments within regular brackets:

Searchability

One of the biggest benefits of these transcripts is that they are full-text searchable. Anyone can read through the complete text of this archival material, but that is not necessary to find material of interest. Keyword searches, with or without a wild card (*), are possible.

Searches can be conducted within a particular set of Ayn Rand’s papers, such as just within her We the Living material:

But they can also be conducted on all the publicly available archival materials within our transcription platform:

Within the search results, users can look at “Works” (whole documents) that contain the search keyword, or they can look at individual pages which contain the keyword:

This search will become more powerful as we continue to release more of Rand’s archival material. Thanks to the power of these digital tools, this resource is not limited to a particular physical location of the Archives, but rather is accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

We are deeply grateful to our volunteer transcribers, whose efforts have made this entire project possible.

For any questions about the archival material available through this platform, or for more information about how to become a volunteer transcriber, please contact archives@aynrand.org.

The Ayn Rand Archives has set ambitious goals for making more of Ayn Rand’s archival material available, and we are pleased to announce the achievement of important milestones this year.

Volunteers in our transcription project have now provided rough draft transcripts for more than 7,000 pages. This ongoing volunteer support has dramatically increased the amount of material that we can make available online, and the first releases are accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

Our biggest announcement is that the first batch of transcribed Ayn Rand material is now available online:

• Users can explore the entirety of Ayn Rand’s planning material for her debut novel, We the Living.

• In addition, an archival supplement of material related to Rand’s “Screen Guide for Americans” is available, including drafts of short film reviews by Rand never published during her lifetime.

Thanks to the efforts of our volunteers, these materials are full-text searchable. We encourage users to explore the contents, and to share these links with anyone else who might be interested in this Rand material.

More material will be online later this year. We plan to release the complete planning material for The Fountainhead (including many pages beyond what is currently available online), as well as the archival materials from Russian Writings on Hollywood by the end of 2026.

Two new publications based on or drawn from archival material are also available:

• Ayn Rand’s Immigration Story: I Chose to Be an American by Agustina Vergara Cid and Brandon Lisi

• “Screen Guide for Americans” by Ayn Rand, with a new afterword by Michael Berliner, and archival documents (also available in the online archival supplement)

In addition to these current releases, the second edition eBook of Letters of Ayn Rand has been available since December 2025, and a definitive Archives edition of Anthem, curated by Robert Mayhew, is forthcoming.

Our final announcement is that additional Ayn Rand audio, not previously available online, will be coming soon:

• Available now, exclusively in the new Ayn Rand Institute app, are approximately 14 minutes of audio from Ayn Rand’s appearance on the CBS show The Great Challenge in 1962. Rand, along with several other participants, responded to questions such as: “Do you believe that individual freedoms in this country are eroding?”

• Ayn Rand participated in the radio show Night Call with Del Shields on March 12, 1969, answering questions from Shields and from various listeners calling in. The full hour of this radio show will be available online in 2026.

Making a growing amount of Ayn Rand material available online is a vital, strategic goal for the Archives. It provides evidence of Rand’s development as a novelist-philosopher to individuals around the world, allowing them to explore more of her thought and to make objective judgments about her work. We will continue to share updates as we achieve the milestones we’ve set to reach this goal, and we hope that you will continue to find both enjoyment and edification as you explore these materials.

_{Photo credit: J. Paul Getty Trust / Getty Research Institute}

Many Ayn Rand fans wonder what it will take for Objectivism to have a significant cultural and political impact. Tal Tsfany, ARI’s president and CEO, offered an answer in his 2026 Objectivist Summer Conference address, “Spreading Objectivism: A Vision for ARI’s Future.”

Tsfany argued that, in Rand’s own view, developing the Objectivist community into an organized movement with significant cultural and political impact “requires trained — self-trained — teachers” who will lead “an educational campaign” in “a battle for men’s minds.” That’s why, Tsfany explained, ARI focuses its efforts on attracting and training new intellectuals.

To that end, Tsfany announced the launch of the Atlas Prize, a multi-stage competition based on Atlas Shrugged for 16- to 22-year-olds that carries a $100,000 prize. He also announced the launch of a redesigned library of Objectivist content, which includes a new high-production-value course by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, and a new Objectivist AI librarian, Aria. Tsfany also unveiled the newly structured curriculum of the ARU educational program.

These exciting initiatives are only a portion of ARI’s work, vision, and new initiatives. To learn more about them, including the Ayn Rand Center in Austin, the forthcoming master’s degree in Objectivism, and ARI’s Intellectual Incubator, watch Tal Tsfany’s 2026 OCON address.

In a 1961 interview, Ayn Rand was asked whether she considered herself primarily a novelist or a philosopher. “I would say I am primarily both, equally and for the same reason,” she replied, explaining that her purpose in both fields was “to define and present an ideal man, the specific, concrete image of what man can be and ought to be.” Nevertheless, readers often approach Rand’s philosophy mainly through her nonfiction writings. In doing so, they gain only an incomplete grasp of her philosophy.

To help readers gain a more complete grasp, ARU Press is pleased to announce the publication of The Moral Idealism of Ayn Rand: From “Anthem” to “Atlas Shrugged,” a new anthology of essays by Onkar Ghate, ARI’s chief philosophy officer. The book debuted on June 27 during Tal Tsfany’s State of ARI presentation at OCON 2026.

As Robert Mayhew, a leading scholar of Rand’s fiction, writes in the foreword to the anthology, there is an “intimate and inextricable connection between Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, and her novels.” Indeed, “in order to understand [her] views on such philosophical issues as free will, reason and emotion, and self-esteem, it is not enough to read her nonfiction; one must attend to her novels.”

Ghate does more than just attend. In eight essays, his volume examines how the heroes in Rand’s fiction strive to embody her moral ideal, translate it into action, and confront a world hostile to their values. For example, Ghate shows how, in Anthem, Equality 7-2521’s discovery of electricity leads him to grasp that his own mind is free and self-governed, breaking collectivism’s metaphysical hold over him. Turning to Atlas Shrugged, he argues that Dagny Taggart’s first ride on the John Galt Line shows her recognizing the “unity of spirit and matter,” that spiritual values should be made real in the material world through purposeful action. Likewise, Ghate examines Leo Kovalensky’s decline in We the Living, showing that even a man of real virtues can be spiritually destroyed if his devotion to life never fully develops.

While Rand’s novels are deeply philosophical, Ghate stresses that this does not make them didactic. In the opening chapter, he challenges the familiar charge that Rand’s fiction is “a conference talk, a classroom lecture, a sermon disguised as a novel,” arguing that such objections rest on faulty categories. Rand’s aim, Ghate explains, was to create “a new kind of story,” one in which the “discovery of philosophical principles drives the plot.” In Anthem, for instance, Equality 7-2521’s rediscovery of himself as an individual drives the actions he takes, the conflicts he enters, and ultimately makes his triumph possible.

The final chapter broadens the point that Rand’s fiction is not didactic through an analysis of John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged. According to Ghate, far from being “a digression” or “a pause in the action,” the speech is crucial to the novel’s plot and theme. As part of the producers’ strike, it is itself an element of the novel’s action. Further, by articulating the principles behind the strike, Galt explains the actions of the characters, from Francisco d’Anconia’s destruction of his own copper empire to Dagny’s search for the destroyer behind it all.

The Moral Idealism of Ayn Rand is available now on Amazon in paperback and Kindle, with an audiobook to follow soon.

Three new mini-books debuted during ARI CEO Tal Tsfany’s keynote talk at Objectivist Summer Conference 2026 on June 27. Two of these short works, enriched by historical documents from the Ayn Rand Archives, explore Rand’s relationship with America and its ideals, and the third applies these principles to the space industry.

Screen Guide for Americans by Ayn Rand, with an afterword by Michael S. Berliner, is the first publication of Rand’s 1947 pamphlet to include archival facsimiles of materials that provide context for the text. In her pamphlet, Rand advised patriotic movie producers on how to defend their films against implicit unwanted communist propaganda. Berliner’s new afterword, written for this definitive edition, looks at how the “Screen Guide” related to Rand’s interest in film and political ideology, how it prefigures a profound moral issue that she explored in Atlas Shrugged and her nonfiction essays, and how she assessed the pamphlet’s impact.

While the original pamphlet was being prepared for publication, the House Committee on Un-American Activities took notice of it and invited Rand to testify. As Rand later reflected: “. . . That was the turning point for Red propaganda on the screen. It vanished after that completely. . . . And there I take credit, for the ‘Screen Guide for Americans’ did it.”

Ayn Rand’s Immigration Story: I Chose to Be an American by Agustina Vergara Cid and Brandon Lisi traces Rand’s journey from revolutionary Russia to her ultimate success as a writer in America, and includes archival facsimiles and photographs documenting her immigration process. Vergara Cid and Lisi show how Rand’s belief in America’s founding ideals sustained her through years of bureaucratic and existential hardship — and fueled her lifelong fight to defend the country she loved.

Freedom to Launch by Mike Mazza collects three essays, with a preface by the author, about the spectacular rise of the private space industry. “Set free to build and operate space launch vehicles, the private space industry has pushed the boundaries of space flight beyond what was once science fiction,” writes Mazza, who proposes reforms to further liberate the industry — ending government subsidies and securing property rights in space — that he argues would usher in the progress needed to make lunar vacations, or even trips to Mars, a reality.

All three mini-books are available now in paperback and Kindle eBook, with audiobook formats to release soon.

More of Ayn Rand’s archival material is now available online, including more than 120 pages of planning material for We the Living.

The Ayn Rand Archives has released the complete set of Rand’s planning material for her debut novel. The newly available content includes several outlines, individual chapter notes, and a variety of notes about the characters and setting, including details about life in the Soviet Union.

This release represents the latest milestone in an ongoing volunteer transcription project aimed at unlocking text from Rand’s handwritten papers. Over the past year and a half, volunteers using the FromThePage transcription platform have created complete, machine-readable transcripts of every single page. The platform hosts these documents and presents the transcripts and originals in a side-by-side view for easy reading and comparison. Thanks to those volunteer efforts, this material is now full-text searchable.

For anyone who loves We the Living and wants to view the material that Ayn Rand used to create the novel, they can now do so through this online access. To explore these documents and to discover new archival materials as they are released, you can view our institutional profile on FromThePage or follow the relevant links from the Archives’ webpage.

Many students discover Ayn Rand’s ideas and want to study them more seriously — but quickly run into a problem: Where should they begin? Which essays matter most? In what order should they be approached? And how can students know whether they are genuinely understanding and integrating the material?

To help answer those questions, ARI is launching Ayn Rand Essentials, a guided self-study course designed to introduce students systematically to Rand’s philosophy and prepare for ARI’s flagship Objectivism Seminar course.

The self-study course is open to anyone and is designed to be completed at a student’s own pace over three to six months. Students will work through a carefully curated sequence of readings, lectures, and assignments exploring key themes and ideas in Ayn Rand’s work.

The curriculum focuses on four broad areas: philosophy, ethics, politics, and contemporary cultural issues. Students will engage with key works such as “Philosophy: Who Needs It,” “The Objectivist Ethics,” “Man’s Rights,” “What Is Capitalism?,” “America’s Persecuted Minority,” and “The Anti-Industrial Revolution,” along with recorded lectures and supplementary material by Dr. Leonard Peikoff, Rand’s foremost student and author of the definitive Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

More than just a reading list, Ayn Rand Essentials is designed to cultivate active thinking and intellectual independence. Each reading or lecture is paired with context-setting material explaining why the work matters and what key ideas students should focus on. Students will complete short assignments aimed at strengthening their understanding and ability to apply the ideas. Assignments will be self-graded, with sample answers illustrating what strong work looks like.

The course will also feature regular Zoom Q&A sessions with faculty, giving students opportunities to ask questions, clarify difficult material, and deepen their understanding.

The new course reflects a broader effort by ARI to create a more structured pathway for students aspiring to study with us at ARU. At the same time, the course is not limited to future ARU students. Anyone interested in engaging seriously with Ayn Rand’s ideas can participate. Whether students are encountering Objectivism for the first time or seeking a more systematic understanding of Rand’s philosophy, the course offers a structured path through some of her most important works.

Learn more about this course and sign up here.

AynRandCon-Europe 2026, held in Porto, Portugal, attracted students and fans from Poland, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and 24 other countries, filling the lecture hall to capacity. The student-focused conference aimed to deepen attendees’ understanding of central Objectivist ideas and inspire students to consider an intellectual career. By the close of the three-day event, attendees reported an enriched understanding of Objectivism, and a significant number of students opted to continue studying with us, some of whom are considering an intellectual career.

Dr. Yaron Brook kicked off the first day with a talk clarifying Objectivism's distinctive understanding and defense of capitalism, highlighting the values of reason and freedom —  and the morality of self-interest. Dr. Onkar Ghate followed with a deep philosophic analysis of why people abandon reason for faith — and what it does to them and to societies at large — using Ayaan Hirsi Ali — a former Muslim and outspoken atheist who converted to Christianity — as a case study and drawing on a range of historical examples. Ghate argued that the battle between reason and faith, or science and religion, should be understood as a battle between philosophy and religion. What is at stake is whether one’s most fundamental starting points and justifications rest on a rational, scientific, philosophic foundation — or a mystical one.

The second day focused on morality and why ambitious thinkers should consider an intellectual career. Ghate explored Rand’s rational egoism, and Tal Tsfany delivered a lecture on self-discovery, passion, and the power of ideas to change the world. Finally, a panel featuring Brook, Ghate, Tsfany, and Elan Journo explored what it takes to pursue an intellectual career.

Our outreach extended well beyond the conference itself. In the weeks before, Dr. Aaron Smith led a series of online discussions to prepare students and give them a preview of what studying with us can offer. After the conference, high-potential students were invited to follow-up discussions with Smith, deepening their development while giving us the opportunity to stay in touch before the new academic year begins.

In addition to its intellectual and aspirational values, AynRandCon-Europe met a social need for many of its attendees. During the lengthy breaks between lectures and our organized social events, attendees had plenty of time to forge connections with one another. Many reported joy and excitement at meeting so many new people who share their values, and the atmosphere was lively and vibrant throughout.

Between the caliber of the speakers, the quality of the attendees, and the beautiful Renaissance Hotel venue, AynRandCon-Europe 2026 set a new bar — and left us already looking forward to the next one.

Image credit: Nick Brundle Photography / Moment / via Getty Images

“The intellectual is the eyes, ears and voice of a free society.” — Ayn Rand

We just launched the Atlas Prize for Independent Thought — a competition challenging 16–22-year-olds to analyze, question, defend, or critique the ideas in Atlas Shrugged featuring a $100,000 top prize.

This is not your typical essay contest; it’s a multi-round intellectual gauntlet in which contestants prove their potential through an essay, an oral exam, and — if they qualify — a finals event in New York City.

The goal: to find the next generation of new intellectuals — young people with the potential to become philosophical “heavyweights” who can change the world with the power of their ideas.

But this all hinges on getting the Atlas Prize in front of the right audience: young minds who demonstrate not only intelligence and ambition, but intellectual integrity.

That’s where you can help.

We’re looking for creators and influencers — YouTubers, Substackers, podcast hosts — who have the ear of intellectually serious young people. A mass following is not necessary; in fact, niche creators may be even better as long as they have an audience of the right people.

Do you know anyone who fits that description? A name and a line of context are all we need; a warm introduction would be even more appreciated. Please send ideas to atlasprize@aynrand.org.

Thank you in advance for your help. Together, we can find the next generation of Objectivist intellectuals.

Compromise runs deep in our culture. We praise diplomats who negotiate with authoritarian regimes, politicians who “find common ground,” and the friend who counsels “meeting halfway” with someone we know is wrong. The case for compromise is framed as a practical one: holding firm gets nothing done, while giving ground gets results.

Ayn Rand thought this view deserved a closer look. In “The Anatomy of Compromise,” now available online for the first time, she examines what happens when two sides holding opposing principles attempt to collaborate, and why the consequences are devastating.

Rand identifies three rules governing the outcome of such collaboration. The first: in any conflict between two parties who share the same basic principles, the more consistent one wins. As an example, she points to the Republicans and Democrats, both driven by their shared commitment to altruism toward ever-greater statism. The Republican advocacy of different means to the same ends is powerless to stop the Democrats.

Rand’s other rules explain why only the evil and irrational side benefits from such compromises. Her dissection of how the United Nations lends moral sanction to dictatorships is striking. So is her argument for the urgent need for the rational side of any conflict to define its principles openly, lest it cede the advantage to its opponent. Readers wondering why decades of attempts to negotiate with Iran keep failing — and why the latest round will likely fare no better — will find her argument illuminating.

You can now read “The Anatomy of Compromise” here, or find it in her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

Find a passage from the beginning of the article below.

A major symptom of a man’s — or a culture’s — intellectual and moral disintegration is the shrinking of vision and goals to the concrete-bound range of the immediate moment. This means: the progressive disappearance of abstractions from a man’s mental processes or from a society’s concerns. The manifestation of a disintegrating consciousness is the inability to think and act in terms of principles.

A principle is “a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend.” Thus a principle is an abstraction which subsumes a great number of concretes. It is only by means of principles that one can set one’s long-range goals and evaluate the concrete alternatives of any given moment. It is only principles that enable a man to plan his future and to achieve it.

The present state of our culture may be gauged by the extent to which principles have vanished from public discussion, reducing our cultural atmosphere to the sordid, petty senselessness of a bickering family that haggles over trivial concretes, while betraying all its major values, selling out its future for some spurious advantage of the moment.

You can read her full essay here, or in her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

ARI’s Intellectual Incubator invests in early-career intellectuals committed to relentless growth and to impacting their fields. We catalyze their growth through training, mentorship, and work opportunities. One example: We hire Incubator members to develop and teach micro courses in their areas of expertise. Such courses are an opportunity to strengthen their ability to communicate complex ideas with clarity and precision.

The first micro course concluded earlier this month. David Bakker, a graduate student in mathematics and philosophy of science, taught Joseph Fourier’s The Analytical Theory of Heat, using the French mathematician’s work as a case study in the process of scientific discovery.

Over the course of five weeks, Bakker guided students through Fourier’s intellectual journey: how his experimental observations led to the formulation of mathematical laws, how those laws were developed into the heat equation, and how the solution provides genuine physical insight.

Students engaged directly with both the technical and conceptual dimensions of mathematical physics, working through the material inductively. Rather than beginning with finished equations, they started from Fourier’s own observations and gradually reconstructed his reasoning, allowing them to grasp how the theory emerges from the concretes.

In May and June, the Incubator will offer two new micro courses on the intellectual history of the United States, a timely topic on the eve of America’s 250th anniversary. The courses are open to current and former ARI students.

In Political Philosophy of the Founding, Dr. Tristen Fleig, who also attends law school, will guide students through key documents and debates of early American history. Conventional university courses cover the figures and timeline of the Founding, Dr. Fleig says, but they rarely “help students grasp what animated these figures or events. I’ve designed my course so that students can get that experience of just what ideas and principles inspired these men to embark on the radical mission to create a wholly unique nation.”

The Republic of Producers: Natural Rights and the Rise of Capitalism in America, taught by Mohamed Ali, a graduate student in philosophy, will offer a complementary perspective on the philosophical currents that defined America’s creation. “My course follows natural rights theory from Locke through Paine and Jefferson and uncovers the specific legal and social changes it produced in the first half-century of the American republic,” says Mr. Ali. “For anyone who has wondered how philosophy produces real consequences in the world,” says Mr. Ali, “the early American republic offers the clearest possible answer.”

“Core to the design of the Incubator is the recognition that doing intellectual work — writing, editing, teaching, lecturing — is essential to catalyzing growth,” says Elan Journo, a senior vice president at ARI, overseeing the Incubator. “Crucially, micro courses are not simulations or classroom exercises. We hired David, Tristen, and Mohamed as instructors, and we expect them to produce new knowledge and effectively impart it to students. I believe micro courses hold great promise, and I’m eager to see more Incubator members teach them in future.”

Learn more about these courses and sign up here.

Image credit: tongstock / iStock / via Getty Images

We live in a world filled by human achievement in science, technology, and industry. Yet, instead of admiration, progress often meets culture-wide suspicion or attack. What explains this response?

Ayn Rand offers an answer in her essay “The Age of Envy.” Originally anthologized in her book The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, and now available online for the first time, she argues that hostility to values more generally is nothing less than the defining spirit of our time.

What is this spirit? Rand calls it “hatred of the good for being the good.” It is a drive not to attain the good but to punish and destroy it. Once this motive is named, it can be seen everywhere in the culture, from classrooms to boardrooms.

As one illustration, Rand draws a striking contrast between early conceptions of socialism and modern egalitarianism. However evil and destructive in practice, socialism at least pretended to aim at raising the standard of living for all. By contrast, today’s egalitarians show little interest in achievement or production, seeking instead to level all distinctions, rejoicing in the downfall of the successful. Rand goes on to show how other modern ideologies, such as multiculturalism and environmentalism, are manifestations of the same underlying psychology.

What is the underlying psychology? Rand traces it to a troubled relationship with self-esteem, in which the sight of achievement is experienced not as an inspiration but as something to resent or evade.

A culture driven by hostility to the good demands explanation. Read “The Age of Envy” to see how she accounts for it.

Find a passage from the beginning of the article below.

A culture, like an individual, has a sense of life or, rather, the equivalent of a sense of life — an emotional atmosphere created by its dominant philosophy, by its view of man and of existence. This emotional atmosphere represents a culture’s dominant values and serves as the leitmotif of a given age, setting its trends and its style.

Thus Western civilization had an Age of Reason and an Age of Enlightenment. In those periods, the quest for reason and enlightenment was the dominant intellectual drive and created a corresponding emotional atmosphere that fostered these values.

Today, we live in the Age of Envy.

“Envy” is not the emotion I have in mind, but it is the clearest manifestation of an emotion that has remained nameless; it is the only element of a complex emotional sum that men have permitted themselves to identify.

Continue reading the essay here, or find it in Rand’s book Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution.

The recent clash between Anthropic AI and the Trump administration has resurfaced a fundamental question: do scientists only supply the means to satisfy society’s demands, or should they also evaluate the ends their technology is used to achieve?

The answer to this question turns on evaluating the relationship between science and ethics. Ayn Rand examined it decades ago in her essay “To Young Scientists,” originally delivered as an address to MIT students and now published online for the first time.

Rand’s essay targets the doctrine that reason can discover facts but not judge questions of value. By accepting this doctrine, she argues, scientists come to treat ethical questions as subjective, often leaving the applications of their work to be determined by statist authorities. Rand insists that ethics is subject to rational, objective judgment. Scientists, she contends, need such judgment most urgently precisely because of the power their work unleashes.

“To Young Scientists” calls on scientists to recognize that the integrity of science depends not only on technical rigor but on the conscious exercise of moral responsibility. Read Rand’s essay to explore the full argument and to judge its relevance for yourself.

Find a passage from the beginning of the article below.

We are living in an age when every social group is struggling frantically to destroy itself — and doing it faster than any of its rivals or enemies could hope for — when every man is his own most dangerous enemy, and the whole of mankind is rolling, at a supersonic speed, back to the Dark Ages, with a nuclear bomb in one hand and a rabbit’s foot in the other.

The most terrible paradox of our age is the fact that the destruction of man’s mind, of reason, of logic, of knowledge, of civilization, is being accomplished in the name and with the sanction of science.

It took centuries and volumes of writing to bring our culture to its present state of bankruptcy — and volumes would have to be written to expose, counteract, and avert the disaster of a total intellectual collapse. But of all the deadly theories by means of which you are now being destroyed, I would like to warn you about one of the deadliest and most crucial: the alleged dichotomy of science and ethics.

You can read the full essay here, or in her book, The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought.

In popular culture, “selfishness” evokes brutes, gangsters, and dictators — people who trample others in pursuit of their whims. Why, then, did Ayn Rand choose such a loaded word to denote virtues like rationality, independence, and integrity?

That was a question Rand herself was sometimes asked, and she confronts it head-on in her introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness, now available online. She argues this is not merely a semantic dispute, but an issue with profound moral implications. For, as she sees it, “the attack on ‘selfishness’ is an attack on man’s self-esteem.”

Rand contends that the conventional use of “selfishness” rests on a destructive “package-deal” that lumps together fundamentally different types of people. It treats the ruthless thief and the principled, ambitious creator as moral equivalents, simply because both claim to benefit from their own actions.

Once this package-deal is accepted, the moral landscape collapses. Playing into the hands of altruism, it leaves us with the choice between sacrificing oneself and preying on others, leaving no room for a “concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting man” who rationally seeks his own happiness. For Rand, reclaiming the concept of “selfishness” is therefore not a rhetorical stunt, but a necessity for defending the right to your own existence.

Read her introduction to understand why getting this concept right is an important step in reclaiming your own life.

Find a passage from the beginning of the article below.

The title of this book may evoke the kind of question that I hear once in a while: “Why do you use the word ‘selfishness’ to denote virtuous qualities of character, when that word antagonizes so many people to whom it does not mean the things you mean?”

To those who ask it, my answer is: “For the reason that makes you afraid of it.”

But there are others, who would not ask that question, sensing the moral cowardice it implies, yet who are unable to formulate my actual reason or to identify the profound moral issue involved. It is to them that I will give a more explicit answer.

It is not a mere semantic issue nor a matter of arbitrary choice. The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word “selfishness” is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual “package-deal,” which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.

You can read her full essay here, or in her book, The Virtue of Selfishness.

This article was originally published in the Ayn Rand Institute's 2025 Annual Report.

Since its founding, the Ayn Rand Institute has been committed to identifying promising intellectuals and offering them world-class training in understanding and applying Objectivism. 

As a result, ARI has been instrumental in supporting the development and careers of intellectuals who have gone on to have an impressive impact — both at ARI and in the wider culture. 

Consider Onkar Ghate, who trained in the Objectivist Graduate Center (OGC) when Harry Binswanger, Peter Schwartz and Leonard Peikoff were leading it, and whose ongoing intellectual leadership at ARI, directly supporting the growth of each new generation of Objectivist intellectuals, cannot be overstated. Or consider Yaron Brook, who also studied in the OGC and then was ARI’s executive director for nearly twenty years and is today a world-renowned speaker and host of The Yaron Brook Show. Then there’s Alex Esptein, a past fellow at ARI, who has gone on to write two bestsellers in the field of energy policy, regularly speaks in front of Congress to affect policy change, and advises top business leaders on how to defend themselves against unjust attacks on their companies and industry. And there is Gena Gorlin, an influential therapist and academic in the field of psychology, who has built a thriving audience of entrepreneurs for her newsletter and forthcoming book.

Our aim has always been ambitious: to prepare promising thinkers to deepen their understanding of Ayn Rand’s philosophy so they can apply that knowledge to advocate rational ideas. 

But we’ve been asking ourselves an important question: since the world desperately needs more Objectivist intellectuals, what would it take to train not just dozens, but hundreds? What would it take to elevate our already transformative and rigorous training program and radically scale it?

Our answer: an “intellectual incubator,” an ambitious new upgrade to our intellectual training, which combines the longstanding rigor of our training program with the entrepreneurial ethos of Silicon Valley.

Intellectual Incubator: A Startup for Intellectual Careers

At its core, the Intellectual Incubator builds on what ARI has always done best — rigorous, systematic training in Objectivism. For decades, we have refined our methods for teaching students how to think philosophically, how to use Objectivism to analyze cultural events and trends, and how to communicate ideas with clarity and impact. What differentiates the Intellectual Incubator is an enhanced focus on uniting ideas and action.

In the past, our intellectual training has provided years of intensive study before participants attempted to reach a public audience. The Incubator flips that script. Participants are expected to write, speak, and build platforms immediately, learning while doing and receiving expert guidance as they go.

For this reason, the Intellectual Incubator is designed for self-driven, early-career intellectuals who want to have a major impact on the culture. It is built for those who are motivated to chart their own paths rather than follow a prefabricated track, who want training tailored to their specific strengths and challenges, and who are eager to move fast, experiment, and put their ideas into practice from the start. For this reason, participants are encouraged to launch their own writing outlets, blogs, podcasts or events — to engage real audiences and test their ideas in the market.

The Intellectual Incubator is a strategic priority for ARI. Our leadership is investing time, energy and resources into making it the most successful intellectual training pipeline we have ever built, and our goal is to rapidly scale the program. We want the intellectuals we train to multiply their impact: we want each intellectual we train to be able to train five more, who in turn can train five more, and so on. 

New Offerings in the Intellectual Incubator 

The Incubator is designed to accelerate the growth of the Objectivist movement at an unprecedented rate. To make this possible, we’re leveraging everything we’ve learned over the decades to create an exciting suite of new offerings to support each participant’s intellectual development.

• Participation in ARI’s Atlas Circle Initiative

Members of the Incubator are invited to participate in ARI’s Atlas Circle Initiative. We encourage members to produce written and spoken content defending the morality of business and capitalism, while also offering them opportunities to collaborate and learn from business leaders. 

Members are receiving ongoing training from Yaron Brook and other senior intellectuals on how to speak and write persuasively in defense of business. The aim is for participants to iterate quickly, test ideas, receive feedback, refine arguments, and develop the resilience and creativity required of a public intellectual.

• Re-Release of Leonard Peikoff’s Course: Confusion Papers

As a part of the Incubator, ARI is reviving one of its most transformational educational experiences: Leonard Peikoff’s original “Confusion Papers” seminar. Long regarded by Objectivist intellectuals as intellectually transformational, the course is being re-released as a self-paced program for Incubator members, led by Ben Bayer and Alex Silverman. 

Members will have the opportunity to complete the original assignments, receive feedback from today’s leading Objectivist teachers, and participate in live discussion sessions devoted to each paper. 

• New Skills Workshops 

As part of fostering a startup ethos, we expect members to initiate seminars and workshops to help them level up in various skills and in their areas of expertise. Recently, Incubator members launched the Writing Lab, where they and others in the ARI community have the opportunity to submit essays and articles for feedback from our team of Objectivist intellectuals. The Writing Lab offers participants the opportunity to network within the ARI community and to share best practices for building a platform and growing an audience. 

Soon, a Speaking Lab will be launched to provide similar opportunities for practice and feedback in giving oral presentations. Also, those pursuing longer-form projects have the opportunity to participate in workshops to discuss and receive feedback on their ongoing work and research.

What Makes This Vision Possible

The Intellectual Incubator is only possible because of the vision and generosity of ARI’s supporters. Over the years, a number of donors have stepped forward to sponsor the careers of our most promising intellectuals, enabling them to focus on their training and intellectual work without compromise. Two such sponsors are Larry Berkelhammer and Ed Thompson, whose commitments have made it possible for Objectivist intellectuals to participate in full-time intellectual training. 

We are now inviting others to join them in this work of intellectual philanthropy. A sponsorship can underwrite a full year in the program for a young intellectual, giving him or her the resources to commit entirely to development and work. For those who want to have the deepest impact, a sponsorship can extend to cover multiple years, further equipping early-career intellectuals with the skills, confidence and momentum to make their mark.

Meet the New Generation

Already, the program is attracting promising intellectuals who represent the future of the Objectivist movement. Here are just a few of the new members and their personal missions as part of the Incubator.

Tristan de Liège writes and speaks about issues related to productive work and well-being. “My focus is on how we conceptualize the value of work, and how we should relate to others in the context of work and trade,” he comments. “I'm working to mount philosophic opposition against such misguided policy ideas as universal basic income and accompanying myths, for instance that it's self-destructive to shape one’s life around productive work. 

“I also aim to defend merit-based hiring practices and defuse DEI policies based in irrational, egalitarian philosophy. I’m interested in arguing against the idea that dedicating yourself to your work means or implies sacrificing yourself to duty or embracing suffering and pain. Instead, I want to showcase that work and achievement should be joyful, self-interested and rewarding.” 

Ibis Slade writes about issues in American history. “I work as an integrator writing about history and ideas, showing how the American Enlightenment’s vision of man as rational and self-made was carried forward by the ‘Founding Sons’ of the nineteenth century,” Ibis says. “My aim is to connect their cause for individual rights to the deeper values that make such progress possible. In the Incubator, I want to develop this account, sharpening my ability to tell the moral story of human progress.”

Samantha Watkins started her career as a public school teacher before working as a marketing writer for a Montessori startup. At ARI, she writes and speaks on issues in education. “My focus is on how different teaching methods impact a child’s developing character and how freedom would empower parents, teachers and children to pursue the best possible education,” she says.

“As a part of ARI’s Intellectual Incubator, my mission is to leverage Objectivism to radically increase demand in the culture for a rational approach to education — from defining the proper purpose of education, to analyzing the concrete methods that achieve that purpose, to advocating political freedom, which enables innovation.”

A BOLD STEP FORWARD

The Incubator is a bold upgrade to our intellectual training. Our aim is to create a multiplier effect.

Your single sponsorship can help cultivate a new voice for Objectivism and rational ideas. And because the Incubator is designed to scale, with each intellectual trained going on to mentor and multiply their impact, your sponsorship does more than launch one career. It helps to ignite a chain reaction of influence that will ripple outward into academia, education, journalism, business and beyond.

For those who share Ayn Rand’s conviction that ideas shape the world, there is no more leveraged investment than the sponsorship of a promising new intellectual. 

The Intellectual Incubator is ARI’s most enterprising investment in the future. Sponsorships are the fuel that enables that investment and helps multiply its dividends.

Image Credit: REDPIXEL.PL / Shutterstock

ARI is delighted to announce a special virtual workshop focused on writing and publishing op-eds — including information on pitching to editors and crafting a compelling article, as well as tips for starting out as a commentator.

This workshop will feature a panel discussion between three accomplished op-ed writers: Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security; Agustina Vergara Cid, associate fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute; and Elan Journo, senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. Each brings years of real-world experience, crafting timely, persuasive commentary and placing it in major publications.

The panel is open to all and will take place on January 21 at 4:00 p.m. ET. To register and receive attendance information, please click here.

We encourage you to submit questions in advance using this Interest Form so the panelists can tailor the workshop to the writing challenges you most want to understand.

This event is hosted by ARI’s Writing Lab, a monthly workshop series for aspiring writers and emerging intellectuals in the Intellectual Incubator and in the broader ARI community. Writing Lab members gain access to feedback from ARI’s intellectual staff, opportunities to network with fellow writers, and special sessions like this one, focused on the practical skills needed to build a career as an intellectual.

If you’re interested in joining the Writing Lab or want to learn more about ARI’s Intellectual Incubator program, please contact us at incubator@aynrand.org.

Image Credit: David Espejo / Moment / via Getty Images

As a novelist and a philosopher, Ayn Rand held that Romantic art, especially literature, is vital to the formation of man’s moral character. In her 1965 essay “Art and Moral Treason,” Rand explores the distinctive human need for Romantic literature and shows how modern culture works to undermine it. Sixty years after its original publication, ARI is proud to announce that it has arranged with publishers to make this important essay available online for the first time.

In Rand’s analysis, while Romantic art teaches man to associate morality with values, heroism, and pleasure, the culture — today as in her time —  teaches him to associate it with sacrifice, commandments, and pain. A child who admires fictional heroes is often met with cynicism and told that “life is not like that!” or urged to “come down to earth!” Modern culture suppresses his moral ambition.

The essay can help one recognize how one’s own idealism might have been blunted — and suggest how to begin re-nurturing it. It offers a powerful, positive account of the value of Romantic art, and in particular, it shows why morality cannot be learned solely from abstract discussions, without experiencing the concrete embodiment of a moral life in the form of a Romantic hero.

You can read the full essay here, or in Rand’s book The Romantic Manifesto.

Find a passage from the beginning of the essay below.    

When I saw Mr. X for the first time, I thought that he had the most tragic face I had ever seen: it was not the mark left by some specific tragedy, not the look of a great sorrow, but a look of desolate hopelessness, weariness and resignation that seemed left by the chronic pain of many lifetimes. He was twenty-six years old.

He had a brilliant mind, an outstanding scholastic record in the field of engineering, a promising start in his career — and no energy to move farther. He was paralyzed by so extreme a state of indecision that any sort of choice filled him with anxiety — even the question of moving out of an inconvenient apartment. He was stagnating in a job which he had outgrown and which had become a dull, uninspiring routine. He was so lonely that he had lost the capacity to know it, he had no concept of friendship, and his few attempts at a romantic relationship had ended disastrously — he could not tell why.

At the time I met him, he was undergoing psychotherapy, struggling desperately to discover the causes of his state. There seemed to be no existential cause for it. His childhood had not been happy, but no worse and, in some respects, better than the average childhood. There were no traumatic events in his past, no major shocks, disappointments or frustrations. Yet his frozen impersonality suggested a man who neither felt nor wanted anything any longer. He was like a gray spread of ashes that had never been on fire.

You can read the full essay here, or in Rand’s book The Romantic Manifesto.

The Ayn Rand Institute is pleased to announce three courses coming in winter of 2026 to its ARI Live Courses platform: Objectivism through Ayn Rand’s Fiction, Part 1; The Philosophy of Objectivism, Part 2; and Introduction to the Objectivist Ethics.

Objectivism through Ayn Rand’s Fiction, Part 1 is designed for readers who want to understand Rand’s novels — and her philosophy — at a deeper level. Many students of Objectivism turn quickly to Rand’s nonfiction, leaving her fiction behind. That’s a mistake. Her fiction is where her philosophy took form, and it contains a rich treatment of many of Objectivism’s central principles. In this course, students will explore Rand’s treatment of individualism, values, work and purpose, emotions, physical force, and the benevolent universe premise. The course features recorded lectures by Onkar Ghate, with live instruction by Ben Bayer.

The Philosophy of Objectivism, Part 2 builds on the foundation laid in Part 1, continuing a systematic study of Objectivism as an integrated philosophy. Its goal is to help students learn how to better understand various principles of Objectivism and philosophical issues more generally, so that they can better apply the philosophy in their thinking and life. The course features recorded lectures by Onkar Ghate and live discussions led by Mike Mazza.

Introduction to the Objectivist Ethics, based on recorded lectures by Tara Smith, examines the foundations of Ayn Rand’s moral theory and the central questions it raises. Topics include the objectivity of value, the causal character of moral guidance, the nature of flourishing, the roles of values and virtues, and egoism. Live discussions will be led by Tristan de Liège.

Registration for courses is now open.

The “New Right” authoritarian movement has inspired an outpouring of cultural commentary, but much of it treats the movement as novel and unprecedented. However, authoritarianism has a long intellectual history, rooted in ideas hostile to reason and individualism.

In the ARI Live winter 2026 course Reactionary Authoritarianism: From Mussolini to the ‘New Right,’ Nikos Sotirakopoulos and Elan Journo will examine the philosophical and historical origins of modern authoritarian movements. Tracing the path from anti-Enlightenment thought to fascism and Nazism, the course will show how reactionary ideas gained mass appeal, inspired collective sacrifice, and culminated in violence and war. Understanding these origins will help students place today’s authoritarian currents in their proper intellectual context.

Sotirakopoulos brings a distinctive perspective to the subject. In his youth, he was drawn to authoritarian ideologies himself, embracing communism before later discovering Ayn Rand’s philosophy. That experience informs his analysis of the appeal of collectivism across the political spectrum. As he now puts it, the “New Right” and Marxists are “both variants of collectivism,” united by their hostility to modern industrial society and freedom.

Sotirakopoulos’ personal perspective, together with Journo’s philosophical analysis, will equip students to cut through surface-level labels and grasp the deeper forces driving today’s political ideologies.

The course starts on January 12, 2026 and runs for eight weeks. Live classes meet on Mondays, 12-2:30 PM ET.  Registration is now open.

Image Credit: Heinrich Hoffmann/ullstein bild via Getty Images