July 10, 2007
Rand-o-rama
This week The Chronicle features three articles about the intellectual legacy of Ayn Rand. (The intro is here; to get to the main courses, follow the links in the right-hand column.)
In this 2004 interview, the Ayn Rand Institute’s director, Yaron Brook, briefly describes his “plan to help [objectivist] graduate students get placed in top-level philosophy departments around the country. The program is still in its infancy. It is very ambitious, and we will not know its success for many years.”
Is that kind of talk creepy and messianic? Or is it the commendable behavior of a group that believes it has a true and important set of ideas to bring to the world? That was one of the debates that occupied faculty members this spring at Texas State University at San Marcos, as they considered whether or not to accept a Rand-related donation.
Another of our articles casually mentions Rand’s “belief that democracies should respond to external attacks without much concern for civilian casualties.” That’s a broadly true characterization, but a few correspondents have pointed out that there is actually a raging debate about what kind of foreign policy Rand’s admirers ought to support. NYU’s Chris Matthew Sciabarra argues that the Ayn Rand Institute’s leaders have abandoned Rand’s radical and essentially noninterventionist policy framework. For the institute’s position, see here and here.
In 1999 The Chronicle explored the wider world of Rand studies, including scholars whose perspectives are far afield from the Ayn Rand Institute’s.
Three bits of miscellany: Last week Julian Sanchez made the case that Ratatouille is “essentially an animated version of The Fountainhead, except that cooking replaces architecture, Ellsworth Toohey eventually has a Grinchian change of heart, and Howard Roark is a rodent.”
Yesterday, Juliusz Jablecki of the Mises Institute posted a short essay contrasting the imaginary universes created by Rand and J.R.R. Tolkein. (If you’re puzzled by Jablecki’s references to “Hoppean natural order,” this 2005 Chronicle item about Hans-Hermann Hoppe will give you a taste.)
Finally, courtesy of YouTube, a 1959 Mike Wallace interview with Rand. Is that a pack of cigarettes on Wallace’s table?
David Glenn | Posted on Tuesday July 10, 2007 | Permalink
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