New Ideal, from the Ayn Rand Institute Ayn Rand Institute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXGhis0_6Jw









Podcast audio:















In this episode of New Ideal Live, Ben Bayer interviews Harry Binswanger, a philosopher and longtime friend of Ayn Rand’s, about his observations as a graduate student at Columbia during the 1968 protests and how those protests compare to those taking place now at Columbia and other campuses.







Among the topics covered:









* How the 1968 protesters hoped to bring about a communist revolution;







* Why the university tolerated the protesters and ceded to their demands;







* Binswanger’s role in opposing the activists;







* Ayn Rand’s analysis of the student protest phenomenon;







* The long-term legacy of the student protests;







* Why today’s protests are worse than the 1968 protests.









Recommended in this podcast are Ayn Rand’s 1968 radio commentary “The Student Rebellion at Columbia” and Ben Bayer and Onkar Ghate’s article “Ending Campus Protests Protects Free Speech.”







The podcast premiered on May 15, 2024. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.

https://youtu.be/8NdmIOYTB4s









Podcast audio:















In this episode of New Ideal Live, Ben Bayer is interviewed by Ziemowit Gowin about his article on the phenomenon of academic plagiarism following the resignation of Harvard University president, Claudine Gay. They discuss why academia’s greater interest in combating issues such as sexism and racism over academic dishonesty is consistent with their deeper view of morality.







Among the topics covered:









* Bayer's personal experience combating student plagiarism as a former professor;







* How the morality of altruism creates an indifference to academic dishonesty;







* How plagiarists cheat themselves of the value of knowing and living in reality;







* How altruism prevents us from seeing how plagiarists harm those they deceive;







* Why we need moral virtues, like honesty, for achieving personal values in life;







* How academic plagiarism relates to the deeper topic of individual value creation.









Recommended in this podcast are Bayer’s “The Real Problem with Plagiarism,” “Why Scientific Progress in Ethics Is Frozen,” and “The Old Morality of the New Religions,” and the Ayn Rand Lexicon’s entry on “Honesty.”







The podcast was recorded on May 16, 2024. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.

https://youtu.be/RGhQLpYXo6Y









Podcast audio:















In this episode of New Ideal Live, Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo discuss the ongoing anti-Israel campus protests and analyze the demand that universities divest from Israel.







Among the topics covered:









* How the divestment crusade is animated by hatred of Israel, not concern for the Palestinians;







* The dishonest claim that Israel practices apartheid;







* How the protesters whitewash Hamas' vicious treatment of homosexuals;







* Why Christianity is the root of the celebration of Palestinian weakness and the hatred of Israeli prosperity;







* The US government's outrageous financial support for corrupt organizations;







* Why the violation of Palestinians’ rights by some fanatical Jews doesn’t amount to apartheid.









Recommended in this podcast are Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and her essays “For the New Intellectual” and “The Age of Envy,” Peter Schwartz’s “Hamas and the Tyranny of Need,” and Journo’s book What Justice Demands: America and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.







The podcast was recorded on May 8, 2024. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.







Image credit: KelseyJ/Shutterstock.com.

https://youtu.be/Bg9BFE1-49Y









Podcast audio:















In this episode of New Ideal Live, Onkar Ghate and Nikos Sotirakopoulos discuss Milton Friedman’s impact as a public intellectual and how his advocacy of the free market differed from Ayn Rand’s radical philosophical case for capitalism.







Among the topics covered:









* Why Milton Friedman is an essentially positive influence on free market thought;







* How Friedman’s moral conventionality reinforced the ideas he tried to oppose;







* The importance of stating the ideal when advocating for gradual reform;







* Why questions of morality are at the root of economic issues;







* How Friedman’s amoralism and pragmatism blinded him to the statists’ motivation;







* Ayn Rand’s critical evaluation of Friedman;







* Why the abolitionist movement is a model for moving the world toward freedom.









Mentioned in this podcast is Onkar Ghate and Yaron Brook’s course “Cultural Movements: Creating Change” and Ayn Rand’s essay “Tax Credits for Education.”







The podcast was recorded on May 2, 2024. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O0HkJbbj4E









Podcast audio:















In this episode of New Ideal Live, Onkar Ghate and Ben Bayer discuss the protests on university campuses against Israel’s war of self-defense and what they say about the state of our culture.







Among the topics covered:









* Why the anti-Israeli campus protests are rightly labelled as being pro-Hamas;







* How there is a double standard in the public’s response to mass protests in general;







* How the anti-Israeli protests are motivated by altruism and hatred of Israel’s success;







* Why the campus protests are a crisis of education rather than of free speech;







* How the mass occupation of public spaces violate our rights.









Mentioned in this podcast is Ayn Rand’s 1968 radio talk “The Student “Rebellion” at Columbia University.”







The podcast was recorded on April 24, 2024. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.

https://youtu.be/FjsC7I-Qa4A









Podcast audio:















In this episode of New Ideal Live, Mike Mazza and Aaron Smith discuss Mazza’s recently published article about why academic philosophers tend to get Rand’s ideas wrong so frequently and the parochialism involved in many of their critiques.







Among the topics covered:









* What Mazza aimed to explain in this article;







* Why responding to academic critics is important;







* What it means for philosophers to engage in parochialism;







* How the methods of academic philosophers are poorly suited to understanding Rand;







* The inductive structure of Rand’s arguments;







* The multiple factors behind philosophers’ dismissal of Rand’s ideas;







* Why the parochialism issue is particularly important to identify;







* Why historians of philosophy tend not to make the mistake of parochialism;







* How even Objectivists can be parochial and what they should do to avoid it.









Mentioned in this podcast are the New Ideal articles “Why Can’t Professional Philosophers Get Rand Right?” by Mazza and “Why Massimo Pigliucci Gets Ayn Rand Wrong” by Smith, plus the book A Companion to Ayn Rand edited by Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri (specifically Chapter 1, “An Introduction to the Study of Ayn Rand”). The podcast was recorded on April 18, 2024. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.