Category: Culture

Campus socialists: Afraid of a little competition?

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

New Individualist editor Robert Bidinotto has one of the best responses I’ve seen to the brouhaha about BB&T’s donations to college campuses.
He wrote to The New York Times:

I have never heard any howling about common university course requirements that have students read environmentalist or socialist “literature” — material often prepared or pushed by various “nonprofit” advocacy groups.
Would any of the protesters here complain about the classroom use of materials created by, say, the Sierra Club, NRDC, or St. Al Gore?
What’s the matter, folks? Afraid of a little competition in the marketplace of ideas?

I think this observation gets at the heart of what’s so ridiculous about certain professors’ protestations. The “academic autonomy” thing is mostly manure, because no one is being forced to do anything against their will.
See Robert’s full post for more.

HBO's "John Adams": Definitely Worth Watching

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Bob Hessen forwards the following, from a friend in NYC:

If you haven’t already watched the first two back-to-back episodes of “John Adams” on HBO, you must. It’s gripping drama. It is being shown repeatedly, all this week.
The first episode is about the Boston Massacre and the second is on the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I read the book by David McCullough, and it is very faithfully done. Plus, the production values, backgrounds and settings, including the use of Colonial Williamsburg makes it very realistic, visually.
What’s best about it is that the decision to pursue independence was made in the midst of great fear for their lives and property, and the steps were taken in spite of that. They were taking a giant leap into a dangerous unknown. When they finally take the vote on independence and it passes, there is this long silence as they grasp the enormity of what they have done. It’s a great choice by the director.
I’m hoping you get HBO. You don’t want to miss it.
I found that I had this slight anxiety at seeing something so nakedly and unabashedly pro-liberty. As if the overwhelmingly socialist powers that be might see this and do something to stop it or attack it (I don’t know what).
I guess it’s just that seeing it, I’m so taken by the contrast with today’s society. Here is a many-part drama where the characters disagree so vehemently with each other — about the best way to get human freedom. There’s no one thinking about giving anybody a free ride, no one thinking about the poor or homeless, no one talking about universal health care or some such hand-out from the government paid for by taxing us. It’s ALL about liberty.
That’s a bit obvious, but I can’t help being amazed by seeing it. You almost expect Bill Maher, or Al Franken or someone to come on at the end with a commentary that dismisses the whole thing as no longer relevant, but they don’t. I can’t get over it.

Looks like this mini-series may become available from Netflix at some point, for those of us who don’t get HBO.

"Atlas Shrugged Is the Book on That Subject"

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

For still more about the controversy (among liberal professors, at least) over BB&T’s grants to teach courses on capitalism, see the new article “MU divided on BB&T grant conditions” in the Charleston Gazette.
You gotta love this quote:

In 2007, WVU’s College of Business and Economics accepted a $1.7 million grant from BB&T, with an expectation Rand’s work would be included in the course.
“I don’t think there is business course or an ethics course that didn’t include [“Atlas Shrugged”], that is the book on that subject,” said Russell Sobel, professor of economics and chairman of entrepreneurial studies at [West Virginia University].

Sounds about right to me. Many successful entrepreneurs cite Atlas Shrugged as a significant influence on their work and, in some cases, their choice to become a businessman or -woman.
In that regard, Atlas Shrugged has become to the business world what The Fountainhead has long been to the world of architecture — certainly not the last word in the field, but often enough the first, when it comes to inspiring students and setting them on a path toward success.
With that in mind, it certainly makes sense to me that a business program would require students to read the novel, as an intrinsic part of the curriculum.

Buying a Spot on the Syllabus … for Atlas Shrugged

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Inside Higher Ed Editor Scott Jaschik kindly sent a link to his new story “Buying a Spot on the Syllabus,” which is indeed very interesting. He begins:

Some professors at Marshall University believe that the institution has crossed an ethical line by accepting a gift that requires that a specific book â?? Ayn Randâ??s Atlas Shrugged â?? be taught in a course.
While the criticisms have come from professors who are not fans of Randâ??s philosophy, they stress that their objection has nothing to do with this particular book, and that they would have no problem with a professor making the choice to include it on a syllabus. Their concern, they said, is a university accepting a gift that requires any book to be taught â?? when book selection should be a faculty prerogative.
â??Atlas Shrugged can be taught. Itâ??s the required part that is problematic,â? said Jamie Warner, director of undergraduate studies in political science. Under this precedent, she said, â??you could see neo-Nazis giving money and saying that you have to teach Mein Kampf.â??

Boy, she didn’t waste any time raising the specter of Hitler, did she? Cause, you know, it would never occur to universities themselves to distinguish between gifts from neo-Nazis and gifts from advocates of the free society. That would be a difficult decision for them, no?
Wonder if she even knows it was public — rather than privately-funded — education that constituted a major cornerstone of Hitler’s strategy for brainwashing young minds. (…And I’m just getting started with the liberal fascism analogies. Imagine if we really studied the dynamics at work, here.)
In any case, see the full article for more about this controversy, which we’ve actually seen here before.
In any case, Kudos to Jaschik for including this perspective in his article:

Calvin A. Kent is a vice president for business and economic research and distinguished professor of business at Marshall, and he will be teaching the course with Atlas Shrugged in the fall. Kent argued that the gift provides a great opportunity for the university, and that there are no academic freedom issues. Kent noted that there is no requirement that Marshall students take the course, and that he will include material beyond Rand.
â??The expectation is that this book will be used. I donâ??t think that is an unreasonable expectation,â? he said.
Kent said that he is a fan, having first read Atlas Shrugged in college, where he found it â??pretty profound,â? and said that he still views the book that way.
The threat to academic freedom, Kent suggested, isnâ??t from accepting a gift but from discouraging it. â??I would not go around telling the history department or the English department that they have no business using a particular novel or a particular historian,â? he said. â??For someone to tell us that we should or should not include something smacks of censorship.â? Asked about the argument that some professors would reject a gift requiring any book to be taught, Kent said heâ??s skeptical.
â??I think thatâ??s the way they are trying to spin it,â? he said. â??There are a lot of people out there who donâ??t agree with her philosophy. I happen to agree with most of it, but not all of it. The thing that has really got people upset is that they donâ??t like the book.â?

The bottom line? Universities are free to reject gifts from neo-Nazis, just as they’re free to reject gifts from wealthy entrepreneurs who want to see more students exposed to the pro-reason, pro-freedom principles in Atlas Shrugged.
By making spurious comparisons between such donors, however, liberal professors are revealing just how much they need to read — or re-read — Atlas Shrugged and understand its lessons about the role of consensual relationships in a free society.
These gifts from BB&T force no professor to teach Atlas Shrugged and force no student to take a course on Atlas Shrugged. The gifts simply provide educational options for each that did not exist before.
The bottom line: Offering someone money to do something is, in no way, fascistic. Taking money from the public treasury to fund politically-correct government school curricula, on the other hand….
Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot.

A Novel Based on Joss Whedon's 'Firefly'

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Fans of Joss Whedon’s excellent but short-lived TV series Firefly can now enjoy a novel with the same characters. Per Dave Itzkoff:

…the world of Joss Whedonâ??s space opera â??Firefly,â? which lasted just 14 episodes in the 2002-3 television season (and spawned the 2005 feature film â??Serenityâ?), lives again in Steven Brustâ??s novel â??My Own Kind of Freedom.â? According to the fan Web site Whedonesque.com, Brust, the Nebula-award nominated novelist and short-story author, originally wrote â??Freedomâ? on spec in 2005 for a proposed line of â??Fireflyâ?/â??Serenityâ? tie-in books; various economic realities prevented that from happening at the time. But now, Brust has made the novel available for free at his home page, The Dream Café.

And if you’ve not yet seen Firefly, you’re missing out big time. For an introduction, check out Monica White’s review at the Atlasphere.

BioShock and Its Ayn Rand-Inspired Themes

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Kotaku Managing Editor Brian Crecente has written a lengthy and interesting article — “No Gods or Kings: Objectivism in BioShock” — on the intersections between the new BioShock game and its Ayn Rand-inspired themes.
Ayn Rand Institute President Yaron Brook is quoted several times in the article.
The article begins:

The sunken city of Rapture, a world of art deco aesthetics, neon sales pitches and looming architecture, is home to more than just murderous splicers and lumbering Big Daddys, it’s also a surprising breeding ground for introspection.
BioShock may have been conceived as a study in nuance, a place for gamers to discover and explore at their own pace, but its dip into the ethical morass of Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophies has brought her beliefs back into the mainstream spotlight and even piqued the interest of the Ayn Rand Institute’s president, Yaron Brook.
Brook, a former member of the Israeli Army military intelligence and award-winning finance professor at Santa Clara University, first took notice of the game when he discovered his 18-year-old son playing it. It’s a fact that didn’t bother Brook despite his son’s objectivist beliefs and the game’s not so positive take on the philosophy.
“My son has to find his own way in life,” he said. “There are certain games I wouldn’t want him to play, like Grand Theft Auto, games that celebrate criminality. But a game that might lead him to think and have him challenge his ideas, I’m fine with.
“Luckily for me he doesn’t agree with the game, he still seems to believe in objectivism”
Objectivism as a central theme in BioShock was actually the result of a confluence of ideas and happenstance. The heart of the game started, as do most of Ken Levine’s games, as the answer to a problem.
“How do we make an environment that feels really complete?” Levine said. “That’s where we came up with a space ship for System Shock. In BioShock we said what can we do similarly and simulate fully as we could a space ship.”
The answer was an underwater city, but that simply formed the game’s outline, the walls that kept a player from remembering they were in a confined space.
Levine wondered what sorts of people might live in an underwater city, what would drive someone from the rest of the world.
“I started thinking about utopian civilizations,” he said. “You have these traditional utopian notions. I’ve always been a fan of utopian and dystopian literature.
“The more I started thinking about making a compelling place and compelling villain, someone who had a real concrete set of beliefs made sense.”
Enter Objectivism. Levine said he had been reading Ayn Rand’s books over the past few years and was fascinated with her “intensity and purity of belief.”
“The surety she has in her beliefs was fascinating,” he said. “She almost spoke like a super villain, like Dr Doom.”
And her characters, Levine believed, projected that same intensity.
“I started to wonder, what happens when you stop questioning yourself? It becomes a set of accepted truths, instead of something you’re constantly using in the lab of reality.”

Keep reading for much more, including Yaron Brook’s explanation of why the game’s characters are unnecessarily flawed.

Universities 'Worry' about Teaching Atlas Shrugged

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Some interesting back-story here about BB&T’s support for pro-capitalism courses at universities around the country.
This article is from Marshall University, where apparently some faculty members are uncomfortable with the idea that someone besides themselves might be deciding what students are required to read.
…Cause, you know, faculty members are so objective and disinterested in promoting an ideological agenda. Riiiight.

Some Faculty members have expressed concerns over the BB&T grant that required the teaching of Ayn Rand’s text “Atlas Shrugged.”
The grant money will be used to create the BB&T Center for the Advancement of American Capitalism at the Lewis College of Business.
Components of the curriculum are to include a course to focus on Rand’s text as well as Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” and a lecture series advocating economic and political freedom, according to a university issued press release.
The University Curriculum Committee is traditionally responsible for approving new course additions, but not for determining the content of the courses, said Calvin Kent, vice president of Business and Economic Research.
This new course is experimental and can exist for two semesters before applying to the curriculum addition process.
“The concern is you have industry proscribing the course. Now if you had industry giving money for a building, if you had industry giving money for a scholarship, that’s a little different than for a specific curriculum,” said Larry Stickler, Faculty Senate Chairman, at an executive committee meeting Monday.
Continue reading “Universities 'Worry' about Teaching Atlas Shrugged”

Walter Donway: "The Struggle for Poetry's Soul"

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Walter Donway just sent the following announcement, which explains the significance of his essay as well as anything I might hope to write:

My brief essay “The Struggle for Poetry’s Soul” just went up on the popular Atlasphere web site. In the essay, I try to suggest why it is important to restore the traditional craft and enduring values of poetry, being lost today in the blizzard of “free verse,” deliberate difficulty, and rejection of popular values such as rhyme and storytelling in so much of contemporary poetry.
With whatever talent I may have, I am trying to explore the diversity, power, and beauty of the traditional discipline and forms of poetry in Touched By Its Rays.
As I suggest in my initial poem in that book, “A Prelude,” perhaps some young person of real talent, and with a whole life ahead of him or her, will read my poems and envision what a great poet might accomplish in days ahead. That is one meaning of Touched By Its Rays.
Of course, a great many contemporary poets, and nearly all critics and teachers of poetry, would be deeply offended by my remarks.

UPDATES – Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

I’ve been working for several months now with Stephen Hicks of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship to create their new web site, which we just launched recently.
They’re doing some terrific work to promote an Objectivist-inspired vision of entrepreneurship, and I highly recommend signing up for their beautiful Kaizen newsletter (instructions below).
Below is an announcement Dr. Hicks recently sent out to members of his mailing list. We’ll also be publishing some of their interviews soon at the Atlasphere, so stay tuned for those as well.

My new Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship at Rockford College is now one year old, and I am writing to let you know of our accomplishments to date, highlighting especially the Objectivist connections.
This month we launched our website: www.EthicsAndEntrepreneurship.org. The website was designed by Joshua Zader, whom you may know as the founder of the Atlasphere. The CEE website has information about our programs and publications — and a web log that will track developments in business ethics and entrepreneurship. I invite you to check it out and to subscribe to its RSS feed to follow our activities over the coming years.
The second issue of Kaizen, our glossy newsletter, was also published this past week. In our first issue we featured an interview with architect John Gillis. In our second we interview painter Michael Newberry. The interviews focus on the excitement and challenges of entrepreneurship in the worlds of architecture and painting and include full-color images of Gillis’s and Newberry’s major works.
I invite you to check them out on our website. Each future issue of Kaizen will feature an interview with a successful, entrepreneurial achiever, along with news of CEE’s activities.
I am happy also to announce that CEE has hired four talented people with Objectivist connections.
Shawn Klein as full-time instructor in Philosophy. Shawn is a Ph.D. candidate and has been a frequent and popular lecturer at TAS conferences. He is teaching courses for us in Business Ethics, Ethical Theory, and is developing a new course in Sports Ethics.
John Reis is adjunct professor of Philosophy. John is a long-time Objectivist with twenty-five years of business experience in Chicago, and he has been an adjunct professor at Elmhurst College for many years. John is putting that experience to good use for us at Rockford College by teaching our course on Business and Economic Ethics.
Anja Hartleb-Parson, our research and publications manager, is a Ph.D. student in political philosophy who has participated in both TAS- and ARI-sponsored conferences. We are pleased that while she is pursuing her doctorate Anja has been helping us with our publications projects and has lectured for us on Objectivism and issues in political philosophy, including the Kelo case, free speech, and Ayn Rand’s We the Living.
We also hired he very talented Christopher Vaughan, who directed and edited my video documentary on Nietzsche and the Nazis. Chris also directed and edited the twelve-minute promotional video about the Center which appears on our website, and he developed the design for our Kaizen newsletter. Chris is working with me on a number of new, creative projects, which you will hear more about over the coming year.
In its first year CEE has reprinted and made available at Amazon.com four important essays by Objectivist scholars. The essays are on topics directly relevant to CEE’s mission in business ethics and entrepreneurship. The essays’ primary audience is students in the various courses CEE sponsors at Rockford College. But we are also making them available through other outlets, as we would like them to have as wide a reading audience as possible.
Tara Smith’s “Money Can Buy Happiness” is republished from the journal Reason Papers.
David Kelley’s “The Entrepreneurial Life” and “Is It Nobler to Give than to Create?” are re-published together from Navigator magazine.
David Mayer’s “Thomas Jefferson: Man versus Myth” is republished from MayerBlog.
And my own “Ayn Rand and Contemporary Business Ethics” is republished from the Journal of Accounting, Ethics, and Public Policy.
These four essays are the beginning of what CEE plans will be a continuing series of essays by professionals on key issues in business ethics, entrepreneurship and related fields. I hope you find the series to be of interest.
We have had a busy and productive first year and are working hard on our next projects.
Let me close inviting you to receive a complimentary print copy of our newsletter, Kaizen. If you are interested, please send your postal address to us at CEE [at] Rockford.edu. And please spread the word. Your support is appreciated.
Sincerely,
Stephen
Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Executive Director, The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship

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