TOC to Hold Fall Conference in Manhattan
Save the date: November 1, 2003.
The Objectivist Center will again sponsor one of its popular fall conferences in New York City, hosting "A Meeting of Minds," a one-day symposium that will take place on Saturday, November 1. The conference will be held at the American Management Association, located at 48th Street and Broadway. The advance-registration regular fee for the conference is $125, while students will be admitted for $75. After October 17, the regular fee rises to $150 and the student fee to $100. This fee includes admittance to a full day of lectures, coffee breaks, lunch, and access to the exhibit hall.
Speakers for the event include Alan Charles Kors, David Kelley, Susan McCloskey, Ed Hudgins, and Robert Bidinotto.
Alan Kors will speak on "The Betrayal of Individual Liberty and Dignity on America's Campuses." Throughout his distinguished career as a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, Kors has been a courageous and effective defender of academic freedom. In his talk, Kors will explain why the most striking decline in contemporary higher education has not been the degradation and politicization of the academic disciplines, much as those developments merit criticism. A more ominous betrayal of mind, truth, and morality has been the systematic assault upon individual identity, individual rights, individual responsibility, legal equality, and human dignity. Under the banner of group rights, group entitlements, and multiculturalism, Kors believes, colleges and universities coercively seek to impose a frightening anti-individualist and illiberal orthodoxy on students, revealing a cold contempt for the critical minds of those whom they entice to matriculate. Kors will argue that it is for this sin above all that our institutions of higher education must be exposed and brought to account.
Kors is a founder and co-director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which has defended students and teachers against infringements of their freedom of speech by more than two hundred colleges and universities, private and public, large and small. He has earned an international reputation for his work on the Enlightenment era in European intellectual history. In addition to numerous publications, he has recorded two courses for the Teaching Company: "The Birth of the Modern Mind" and "Voltaire: The Mind of the Enlightenment." Among many other honors, he has served on the Council of the National Endowment of the Humanities.
The fall conference will also offer a panel discussion, "America in the World," focused on certain philosophical issues that have been raised by the war on terrorism. The panel's assumption is that at a time of heightened risk and confrontation, it is important to know what one stands for—and it is especially important for Americans, who have always claimed to fight for ideals, above and beyond physical safety. Thus, we need to know: What should those ideals be? What values should we protect at home and promote abroad? And who are our allies in such missions? Does America still share a community of values with Western Europe? Do Franco-German differences with America over Middle Eastern strategy—as well as Europe's increasingly statist, big-government policies—mean that Europe and America are drifting apart in culture and values? These are the issues that will be addressed by panel members David Kelley, the center's executive director, and Edward L. Hudgins, its Washington director.
To commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the publishing of The Fountainhead, Susan McCloskey will deliver a talk entitled "Love and Work in The Fountainhead." The characters in The Fountainhead speak often about love—love of the world, of themselves and one another, and especially of their work. Indeed, the characters earn their places in the novel's moral hierarchy in part through their ways of loving and working. What do "love" and "work" mean in the novel? Why do even the best characters struggle to find happiness in their experiences as lovers and workers? In this lecture, McCloskey will explore Rand's development of these themes—which are so deeply allied that they are sometimes indistinguishable—and the literary means Rand used to develop them.
Susan McCloskey, a former professor of English literature and a frequent lecturer at The Objectivist Center's summer seminars, is the president of McCloskey Writing Consultants.
Robert Bidinotto will speak on "Death by Environmentalism." Environmentalists see inherent clashes between the artificial and the natural worlds—between human values and the allegedly intrinsic value of untouched nature. Environmental regulations to restrict man's impact on nature have had grave consequences…not only for human economic activity but for human survival. Bidinotto, a veteran environmental reporter and commentator, will show how environmentalist premises, codified in policies and laws, have caused the deaths of millions of people worldwide.
As a former staff writer for Reader's Digest, Bidinotto authored high-profile investigative exposés on environmental issues including global warming, the 1989 Alar scare, and the ozone-depletion issue. He is the author of The Green Machine, a monograph published by The Objectivist Center that critically examines the environmentalist philosophy and movement, and he now runs a Web site, www.ecoNOT.com, focusing on environmentalism.
If you plan to attend the conference and will need hotel accommodations, you are strongly encouraged to make reservations as soon as possible, since the New York City Marathon will be taking place on Sunday, November 2, and hotel rooms are going quickly.
If you have not yet received a brochure for the conference, please call the center at 1-800-374-1776 or visit our Web site at www.objectivistcenter.org for more information.
If you are interested in exhibiting at the conference, please contact Jamie Dorrian at jdorrian@objectivistcenter.org.