Environmentalists see inherent clashes between the “artificial and the natural worlds”—between human values and the alleged “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 actual human survival. Robert Bidinotto, a veteran environmental reporter and commentator, shows how environmentalist premises, codified in policies and laws, have caused the deaths of millions of people worldwide.

 Robert Bidinotto is an award-winning writer and lecturer who reports on cultural and political issues. A former Staff Writer for Reader’s Digest, he authored high-profile investigative exposes on environmental issues including global warming, the 1989 Alar scare, and the ozone depletion issue. He is author of The Green Machine, a monograph published by The Objectivist Center that critically examines the environmentalist philosophy and movement. He is editor of The Atlas Society Web site for the Center, and runs a new Web site, www.ecoNOT.com, focusing on environmentalism.

The characters in The Fountainhead speak often about 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? This lecture explores Rand’s development of these themes, which are so deeply allied that they are sometimes indistinguishable, and the literary means she used to develop them.

Susan McCloskey is the president of McCloskey Writing Consultants, a former professor of English literature, and a frequent lecturer at The Objectivist Center’s Summer Seminars.

Terrorism, war, conflicts with our allies… At a time of heightened risk and confrontation, it’s important to know what we stand for. Above and beyond our physical safety, America has always claimed to fight for its ideals. What are those ideals? What should they be? What are the values we should protect at home and promote abroad? And who are our allies in this mission? Does America still share a community of values with the Old World? Differences over Middle Eastern policy, as well as Europe’s increasingly statist, big-government policies, raise the question of whether Europe and America are drifting apart in culture and values. Is Western Europe still part of the West? These are the issues for a panel session with David Kelley, the Center’s executive director and Edward Hudgins, its Washington director.

Most critics of higher education emphasize the degradation and politicization of the academic disciplines, which indeed merit intense criticism.  There has been a yet more striking and ominous betrayal of mind, morality, empirical truth, and dignity, however, in the university in loco parentis (standing in the place of parents), where higher education has engaged in a systematic assault upon individual identity, individual rights, individual responsibility, legal equality, and human dignity.  Under the banner of group rights, group entitlements, and the fraud of academic multiculturalism, 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.  Our institutions of higher education must be exposed and brought to account.

Throughout his distinguished career as a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, Alan Charles Kors has been a courageous and effective defender of academic freedom. He 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 200 colleges and universities, private and public, large and small. Professor Kors 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.