Objectivist Round-up, July 2026

1. The Ayn Rand Institute has a preview of OCON 2026, which is being held this month.

2. With a deal between the United States and Iran seemingly imminent (which best I can tell pretty much maintains the status quo ante), the ARI is outraged. Yaron Brook is calling for Trump to be impeached for failing to obtain congressional approval. He’s calling for the CIA and the Mossad to infiltrate the Iranian military to start a coup. Netanyahu has to go as well. Not too long ago he said Netanyahu was doing a good job.

3. Speaking of Brook, he now says he fears an alliance between the Left and Islamism. He’s calling for Europeans to vote for Center and Center Right parties because of this. A year or two ago he said that Islamism in Europe had been defeated with the defeat of ISIS.

Objectivist Round-up, June 2026

1.    Ayn Rand Institute archivist Brian Lisi has an interesting discussion of Rand’s speaking career.  
2.    OCON 2026 will be held later this month in New Orleans.   As I’ve mentioned before, psychologist Steven Pinker will be taking part in an hour-and-one-half panel discussion.  Pinker’s best-known book is probably The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.  I don’t know much about Pinker, but he has said that intelligence is largely genetic and some gaps in IQ among ethnic groups might have a genetic component.  I thought this was anathema in Objectivism.  
3.    At OCON, Shoshana Knapp will be giving a talk on Ayn Rand’s writing on Marilyn Monroe.  (Monroe would have been 100 this month.)  I’ve always thought that Rand’s brief piece on the death of Monroe was one of the more unusual things she wrote.

—Neil Parille