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 

Reading List for Objectivism by Neil Parille

    

In 2011, I wrote a post entitled A Reading List for Open Minded Objectivists. A lot has happened in the last fifteen years, including many of the links having gone dead. On the other hand, a lot has remained the same in the world of Objectivism, for example the continued use by Objectivists of bad sources in the history of ideas and the continued attacks on the existing biographies of Rand. However, some things have gotten better and I’ll acknowledge them. Finally, as a life-long bookworm, I’ll give some suggestions for books that I think might be helpful for those who are new to the study of Rand and Objectivism.

Objectivist Round-up, Mid-May 2026

1.    In a recent interview with Ayn Rand biographer Jennifer Burns and Lex Fridman, some biographical stuff turned up that I hadn’t heard of, such as the correspondence between Frank Knight and Milton Friedman on Rand.  Both Knight and Friedman (free market advocates) take issue with Rand’s belief (as they see it) that the outcome of free market relationships will inevitably be better from a strictly moral perspective.  Put differently, Rand seems to think that if you succeed in the free market, you probably deserve it.

2.    Looks like there is a new schism brewing between Craig Biddle and the Ayn Rand Institute.  Biddle says or implies that the ARI is “trashing” him for debating non-Objectivists.  Turnabout is fair play according to Biddle.

• Yaron Brook and Greg Salmieri had a friendly public discussion with Kantian-mystic Jordan Peterson at OCON 2018.
• Brook teaches at Peterson Academy.
• Brook publicly debated or had friendly discussions with: academic Marxist Richard Wolff, socialist YouTuber Vaush, and anarchist Michael Malice.

Objectivist Round-up, May 2026

1. Ayn Rand Institute philosopher Michael Mazza has some interesting ideas on studying philosophy.

a. He says it’s important to read non-Objectivist philosophers.

b. He recommends the History of Philosophy Without any Gaps podcast.  I hadn’t heard of this, but it looks good. 

c. He says it’s important to read philosophy for its own sake and it’s important not to read philosophy in light of Ayn Rand. 

Nothing wrong with these things, but it seems to be a subtle jab at certain forms of Objectivist writing and thinking.  The first writing on the history of philosophy from an Objectivist perspective was Rand’s For the New Intellectual and I can only imagine how many young Objectivists took Rand’s thumbnail sketches of various philosophers as the last word.  Mazza even says that Leonard Peikoff’s History of Philosophy should be used only as an analysis of the history of philosophy from an Objectivist perspective.  

Objectivist Round-up, Mid-April 2026

1. I wonder if there is a new schism brewing.  On the same day and on the same website, James Valliant and Leonard Peikoff published two essays criticizing, in effect, the Ayn Rand Institute’s support for open immigration (which tends to veer toward Harry Binswanger’s open borders position).  While Valliant seems to be Peikoff’s main conduit to the outer world of Objectivism, the pieces are quite different in writing style.  

Here is Valliant:

Still, there are many self-styled “Objectivists” who advocate precisely such a dereliction of government’s responsibility to protect Americans from foreign threats–those who advocate completely “open borders” and who oppose the deportation of even criminal aliens. They advocate abolishing all immigration law entirely–and they do so in the name of “Objectivism.”

It is vital to recognize in this context that many nations of the world define such basic crimes as murder and rape very differently than under American law. Some places are in a state of near anarchy and do not keep or collect data on criminals as the United States does.

This means that criminal border screening must include an active process of investigation that examines the individual’s previous conduct, not merely the willingness of a foreign country to be rid of them or to have them subjected to criminal charges.

Were there to be no screening for immigrants at the border, nothing would prevent another country from systematically expelling its own criminal populations into the United States.*

Students of Objectivism who oppose any border enforcement, or who advocate that there should be no deportations, whatever, are simply ignoring Objectivist political philosophy.

Here is Peikoff attacking a certain unnamed Objectivist for the “racism” charge”:

One anti-ICEr suggests that conservatives who defend ICE and deportation are really racists — presumably, in this case, because we are supposed to be hostile to brown bodies. In other words, this student of Objectivism (I don’t call him an Objectivist because he is clearly still learning what the philosophy is) is not only perpetrating an ad hominem, but also invoking as self-evident the WOKE explanation of all evil: RACISM.

Speaking for myself: as a teenager, I spent most Augusts in Canada lying on Grand Beach getting a great tan, all the kids did, and we all boasted how brown we looked.  Then, some years later, while dating in New York City, I applied bronzer liberally to my face and neck, wanting to look like someone who did not spend all of his time reading books (though it ruined my shirt collars).  And now I have married a person of multi-racial ethnicity, and to me Grace is the most beautiful woman I have ever known.

Interesting that Peikoff implies he is a “conservative.”**  Hard to say with certainty who Peikoff is criticizing, but it sounds like he’s talking about Yaron Brook.

Objectivist Round-up, April 2026

1. The Ayn Rand Institute all but calls for a nuclear attack on Iran:

Eliminating the threat from Iran’s Islamic totalitarian regime necessitates discrediting its ideology, making it a lost cause. Some may doubt this is possible, in the shadow of the Iraq and Afghanistan debacles, and indeed, it has been decades since America has followed the right approach. History, however, provides a compelling model.

Consider the lesson from the 1945 defeat of martyrdom-extolling imperial Japan, which offered an “unconditional surrender” only after two atom bombs. The historian John David Lewis has eloquently described American efforts to discredit and uproot the regime’s ideology from schools and government, and to block from political office former regime leaders.

2. Yaron Brook appears to think that the Trump administration is listening to him on the Iranian war and even taking his advice.  (Hat tip to Scott Schiff.)

3. Nikos Sotirakopoulos left the ARI after five years and is going out on his own.  He’s asking you to join his Patreon page.  If you are in a generous mood, you can be a founding member for a mere $3,082 a month.  

—Neil Parille