Skye Cleary (with whom I’ve had a few brief and pleasant interactions in her capacity as the editor of the APA’s blog) recently wrote a piece at Aeon encouraging philosophers who are disturbed by what they take to be the “pernicious” effects of Rand’s ideas to “treat the Ayn Rand phenomenon seriously,” because “ignoring it won’t make it go away.” Vilifying Rand without reading the detail, or demonising her without taking the trouble to refute her, is clearly the wrong approach. I couldn’t agree more.

The members of the ARS’s Steering Committee serve three year terms, and 2017 marked the end of Darryl Wright (Harvey Mudd) and Jason Rheins’ (Loyola, Chicago) terms on the Committee. To replace them, Robert Mayhew (Seton Hall)and Carrie-Ann Biondi (Marymount Manhatten) have joined the Committee.

Recently the Institute for Humane Studies’ “Learn Liberty” site featured a debate between Matt Zwolinski (University of San Diego) and Stephen Hicks (Rockford University), both of whom have been participants in past sessions of the Ayn Rand Society. Notably, past ARS contributor Harry Binswanger (the Ayn Rand Institute) has also weighed into the debate in the comments section. Zwolinski leads off the debate by raising critical points about Rand’s ethical egoism, the consistency of her egoism with her theory of rights, and her view of property and value-creation.

On his popular blog, Brian Leiter (U Chicago) recently posted a link to another blog post by Robert Paul Wolff (UNC, Chapel Hill). Leiter’s tongue-in-cheek title, “The Profundity of Ayn Rand,” is one of many dismissive treatments of Rand he’s posted over the years. Even so, Leiter has not always been dismissive of scholars of Rand.

Two weeks ago at the American Philosophical Association’s Eastern Division Meeting, the Ayn Rand Society held an “Author Meets Critics” session on Tara Smith’s 2015 book Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System. Dr. Smith’s critics were Timothy Sandefur (of the Goldwater Institute), Onkar Ghate (of the Ayn Rand Institute), and Mark Graber (of the University of Maryland’s School of Law). Mr.

Creative commons-licensed image courtesy of Wikimedia. I’ve been invited to take part in a discussion at Cato Unbound on Kant’s relation to classical liberalism. My post, which went up there today, is a response to a post by Mark D.