August-September Logbook

Logbook—August-September 2005

Graduate Seminar Explores Ethics and Politics

The Center held its 2005 Graduate Seminar in Objectivist Philosophy and Method from July 31 through August 5 in Washington, D.C., on the campus of George Washington University. The Graduate Seminar is a new program the Center introduced in 2004. It brings together a small group of highly promising advanced students to give them intense training in both the content of Objectivism and employing the distinctive Objectivist method of philosophical analysis, with its emphasis on reality, context, and the hierarchical relationships among ideas.

Senior Fellow David Kelley and Director of Programs William R Thomas led the program, dividing up the teaching duties over the course of the week. They created a fresh seminar curriculum from scratch for this year’s meeting, focusing the 2005 seminar on ethics and politics exclusively. “Our pedagogical emphases were on structure (understanding the core Objectivist principles, arguments, and logical structure), method (canons of good philosophical analysis and argument, common problems, and differences from other approaches), and insight (deeper levels of understanding Objectivism, new connections, and problems to be addressed),” comments Kelley. Topically, the subjects covered moved in a spiral: the seminar began with a discussion of the theory of individual rights, then turned back to the foundations of ethics to dig through the arguments in favor of the moral and cultural presuppositions of freedom, such as the value of each individual’s life as an end in itself and the virtues of dealing with others by trade rather than force or mooching.

In advance of the course the students were assigned the equivalent of a semester’s worth of reading, and with the seminar meeting twelve times over the course of the week, the students spent about a semester’s worth of time in class as well. The students wrote and later revised short papers offering or assessing Objectivist arguments in ethics and politics, and Kelley and Thomas integrated their discussion of the papers with the discussion of related topics on the syllabus. Several of the students planned to revise their papers for publication.

The seminar readings drew from three areas: Objectivist scholarship, criticisms of the Objectivist literature by knowledgeable scholars, and mainstream essays that offer useful insights or summarize the state of play in current scholarship. The authors of the readings included staff and friends of the Center, rival Objectivist scholars hostile to the Center, and prominent academics. “Our first concern in assigning readings is quality,” remarks Kelley.

Nine students attended the seminar, hailing from graduate programs at Arizona State University, Boston College, Brown University, CUNY, Oxford University, Temple University, the University of Waterloo, and the University of Wisconsin.  The ninth student was from the Center staff. Among those in attendance were the recipients of the Center’s graduate scholarships for 2004–2006: political science Ph.D. student Christopher Baylor, psychology Ph.D. student Walter Foddis, and philosophy Ph.D. student Shawn Klein.

The seminar had a budget of $7,000 this year. The funds were used primarily to provide the students with free room and board while in Washington, and also to provide limited travel stipends to aid those who had a long trek to make in order to attend. The cost of bringing each additional student to a week-long seminar is about $600.

The seminar was well received by the students, who reacted positively to its breadth and depth, as well as to its spirit, which combined intellectual openness with a rigorous commitment to understanding Objectivism. Kelley and Thomas remained encouraged that programs of this kind will foster the development of a new generation of Objectivist intellectuals, from whom the mission of the Center will benefit for years to come.

Media Maven

It was a busy couple of media months for Edward Hudgins, the Objectivist Center's executive director. Since June he has participated in sixteen radio shows and four T.V. shows, and has had op-eds printed or posted in at least seven publications.

By far the greatest number of appearances concerned space policy. With the return to flight of the space shuttle after the explosion of the Columbia two and a half years ago, and with the problems the Atlantis had on this flight, Hudgins was called on to discuss both the future of the space program and wider issues concerning science and culture. Notable TV appearances were on MSNBC's Connected Coast- to Coast show and the Fox News Channel's Your World with Neil Cavuto. Notable on radio was his hour-and-a-quarter stint on the "Jim Bohannon Show," which is syndicated on over two hundred stations and on Radio Free Europe. He also appeared on “Liberty Watch,” a radio show on KVOI radio in Tucson, Arizona, discussing the Objectivist vision of a future society.

Hudgins also talked about the Americans with Disabilities Act, on the fifteenth anniversary of its passage, on NPR radio stations in New Hampshire. He observed that, while perhaps well-meaning, the act thrusts huge, unnecessary costs on businesses and local governments, generates a mountain of nuisance lawsuits, limits the liberties of some in the name of helping others, and, in fact, actually harms many of the individuals it seeks to help.

On the ink-and-paper front, Forbes magazine printed an extended quote from Hudgins for the lead in its “Other Comments” section of the September 5 issue. Even better, Steve Forbes's lead “Fact and Comment” editorial in that issue was mainly a point-by-point recitation of Hudgins’s views on space policy, based no doubt on a long interview he had with Forbes's office.

Turning to op-eds, Hudgins's piece on "Flushing the Koran or Reason Down the Toilet" appeared in a Mississippi business journal. His article on "Your Castle No Longer," printed in the Washington Times, denounced the Supreme Court's Kelo decision allowing government to take private property for so-called economic development reasons as a form of fascism that is a wakeup call for a return to individual rights. He got three pick-ups for his July 4 piece on "What Is Independence?" including one in the Dallas Morning News. That piece discussed intellectual independence as a virtue necessary to support political independence. A Fredericksburg, Virginia paper printed his piece on the terrorist bombings in London. Also, the Hawaii Reporter posted his piece on "Fascism in a Lei." That op-ed denounced a proposal before Congress that would set up a special race-based government in the Aloha State, remove many natives of that state from the protections of the U.S. Constitution, and could allow Hawaii to secede from the union.

Board of Trustees Makes Major Commitment

The Objectivist Center Board of Trustees held a meeting on September 28, 2005. After Ed Hudgins spoke about advocacy, Robert Bidinotto spoke about his plans for The New Individualist, and David Kelley spoke about potential new academic programs. Longtime trustee Ed Snider challenged the board to raise more money for the work of the Center. He offered to put up an additional $75,000 this year to fund the Center’s future. There was a big if associated with the pledge, though—Snider will donate the money if by the end of the year there are $75,000 in additional contributions beyond the amount normally given by the trustees.  The board members immediately pledged to raise that amount.

In its new Washington, D.C., location, the Center has maintained many of its existing programs while also making some changes. It has continued its summer seminar, graduate scholarship, advanced seminar, and graduate seminar. Ed Hudgins has continued to write op-eds and “Reports from the Front.” We have renamed our publication The New Individualist and hired Robert Bidinotto to revitalize the magazine. We have freed up David Kelley’s time to work on The Logical Structure of Objectivism, new work in epistemology, and cultural commentary. We can do even more with additional money. We can send more op-eds. We can transform The New Individualist into a magazine with a large subscriber base and a presence on the newsstands. We can provide David Kelley and William R Thomas with support staff, enabling them to write and teach more. We can have Objectivist intellectuals as visiting scholars, as Stephen Hicks was when he wrote Explaining Postmodernism. (Watch for an announcement about Hicks’s future writing in the next issue of this newsletter.)

If you would like to join with Ed Snider and our board in making this a reality, you can make donations in our November campaign, or at any time before the end of the year. Please consider giving at a higher level to help us do this exciting work.

Klein and Baylor Awarded Graduate Scholarships

The Center’s graduate scholarship program recently wrapped up its second year. This year’s scholarships were awarded to Shawn Klein and Christopher Baylor. The awards are given to graduate students in philosophy and allied areas and are intended for use for research or to assist the student and enable him to focus on his studies. The program was started with a financial grant from Center trustee Ashwin Vasan. This year the program was funded by general donations to the Center, with a portion coming from funds allocated for scholarships.

Shawn Klein has received a scholarship for the second straight year of the program. He is a doctoral student in philosophy at Arizona State University, as well as an adjunct professor at Mesa Community College. He has also taught philosophy at Arizona State, Marist College, and Mount Saint Mary’s College. Klein has presented a course on “The Basics of Objectivism” at the last two summer seminars. In addition, he gave the talks “Virtue Ethics,” and “Was Aristotle and Egoist” at prior summer seminars.

Klein received his bachelor’s degree at Tufts University and his master of arts in philosophy at Arizona State. He co-edited and contributed to Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts (Open Court, 2004). Klein’s primary professional interest is teaching philosophy.

The second scholarship this year was awarded to Christopher Baylor, who is currently working on a Ph.D. in American politics at Boston College, focusing on the American presidency and public opinion. He presented some of his views in this area at the 2005 Summer Seminar in a talk entitled “The American Media Versus Capitalism.”

Baylor received his master of arts in history from Brown University and has taught part-time at several Boston-area colleges, including Quincy College, Curry College, and Cambridge College. He has also taught advanced placement United States history, world history, and American government at a private high school and served as a consultant to the Educational Testing Service.

Congratulations to Shawn and Chris. We hope to see them with their Ph.D.s and teaching at colleges in the future. You can help to pay for future scholarships by donating to the Center.

The Center Is Hiring a Director of Development

The Objectivist Center is seeking a Director of Development, to work in the Washington, D.C., office. The position’s primary responsibilities will include writing fundraising letters, making calls to donors and prospective donors, and developing prospects. Substantial non-profit fundraising experience is desirable, as is knowledge of Objectivism. The salary is negotiable. Please contact Community Relations Director Bill Perry at 1-800-374-1776 or send a resume to wperry@objectivistcenter.org

Sightings

Summer seminar lecturer Jay Friedenberg has co-authored a college textbook entitled Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Study of Mind with fellow Manhattan College professor Gordon Silverman.

The work draws together great thinkers’ musings about thought, addressing questions such as “What is mind?” “How does it operate?” and “What is cognition?” The table of contents indicates a wide variety of interesting subjects, including approaches from philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, evolution, and linguistics. There is also discussion of artificial intelligence and robotics. The text is published by Sage Publications and can be ordered through the publisher’s website:  www.sagepub.com.

The Objectivist movement is not confined to America, where Ayn Rand worked and wrote. The principles of reality, reason and rational self-interest are promoted in Germany, the Netherlands and surrounding countries by the Atlas Institute Europe. Headed by Andreas Tauber, the Institute was founded at the Ayn Rand Conference held April 30-May 1 2004 by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Gummersbach, Germany.

Tauber’s activity promotes Objectivism, most recently in a talk at the Libertarian International Conference in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2005.  He visited the United States this August and stopped in at the Objectivist Center and Atlas Society to meet with our staff and exchange ideas. A German language edition of Atlas Shrugged has bee available under the title Wer ist John Galt? (Who is John Galt?). The Fountainhead can be found under the title Der Unsprung and Anthem is available as Hymne.