| | To Russ K... you write: "Intersting how you can start off by talking about a thread on HPO and end with condemnation of ARI representatives."
Actually, you'll find no condemnation of any ARI representatives, but you will find criticism of Andrew Bernstein, who happens to be a member of ARI.
In fact, if anything, I'm PRAISING Peikoff, Mayhew, Binswanger, and Ridpath for being ecumenical enough to publish in professional non-partisan journals, for the same reason that the door remains open for them to contribute---anytime they wish---to THE JOURNAL OF AYN RAND STUDIES, which is also a professional non-partisan journal.
JARS is a journal, by the way, that in its short three-year existence, is indexed in whole or in part by The Philosopher's Index, Political Science Abstracts, International Political Science Abstracts, Sociological Abstracts, Social Services Abstracts, the MLA International Bibliography, and the MLA Directory of Periodicals. I do not state these facts as an "argument from authority"; rather, I state them because these are among the very same abstracting services indexing the journals for which Peikoff, Binswanger, Ridpath, and Mayhew have written. It's not easy to add indexing services to a professional journal. You have to work hard at maintaining standards of scholarly discourse in order to qualify and maintain the service. We have been, and we remain, a professional NON-PARTISAN journal---just like those journals I mentioned in my original article.
You state: "One of the facts listed, Leonard Peikoff's article published by a catholic sponsored instituation proves wrong the premise that there is a boycott on publishing in institutions when there is disagreement."
But THAT wasn't the point of my article; some ARI-affiliated scholars CLEARLY publish in venues where there is disagreement. My point was that those who are defending the boycott of JARS are doing so on the premise not of content, but precisely because they do not wish to be seen in the same publication with other individuals who are "persona non grata"---as if being published in a journal with PEOPLE with whom you'd rather not associate gives "sanction" to those people or their works or the institutions to which they belong. This is NOT a disagreement over content; it is a repudiation of JARS based on the fact that it publishes PEOPLE like, for example, David Kelley or George Walsh or any number of other recognized scholars who have something to say about Objectivism---but who are critical of the Ayn Rand Institute. When you call for a boycott (note: boycott means that you are trying to organize "together in refusing to deal with, buy, etc. so as to punish or coerce") of a journal because you don't want to "knowingly associate" with PEOPLE, you are engaging in partisanship, you are embracing a vestige of tribalism.
Russk writes: "What's not being endorsed by the ARI are institutions or individuals that purport to be authorities on Objectivism or promote the ideas of Ayn Rand and work against these things."
The Journal's purpose is not pro- or con- on Objectivism; it is to bring scholarly attention to Ayn Rand's ideas by subjecting them to the give-and-take of a dialogue among people from different traditions. We are not an organized "institution" promoting "Objectivism," we are not a group of like-minded individuals---not even among the Board of Advisors will one find agreement on central issues of importance in Objectivist philosophy. But one will find among our advisors and contributors, people like Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, who have been at the forefront of Rand scholarship for 30 years, ever since they dared to publish a critique of Robert Nozick's "On the Randian Argument" in THE PERSONALIST. One will find historian Robert Hessen and philosopher John Hospers, both of whom enjoyed long periods of association with Ayn Rand. One will find philosophers Lester Hunt, Tibor Machan, and Eric Mack, economist Larry Sechrest, literary theorists Mimi Gladstein, Stephen Cox and Kristi Minsaas, aestheticians Michelle Kamhi and Louis Torres, and so on and so on and so on.
These people don't "purport to be authorities on Objectivism." They ARE authorities; you may disagree with them on any number of issues---but to say that they are not authorities is to insult the years of work that each of these individuals has devoted to Rand studies.
I have a question, however: Den Uyl, Rasmussen, Hunt, and yes, even Sciabarra all belong to the Ayn Rand Society of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. It too is a non-partisan organization. And one will find plenty of ARI-affiliated scholars among its speakers and members, including Binswanger, Gotthelf, Schwartz, Bernstein, and others. How is it that these people can belong to THAT organization (though, truth be told, if you attend any of their meetings, it does appear like an Italian wedding---where the in-laws and out-laws are not even looking at each other, let alone talking to each other)?
A friend of mine asked me: Has the Ayn Rand Society received a special dispensation?
I honestly don't know.
But do you not see total inconsistency here? Is it that ARI-affiliated scholars can belong to a loosely organized society that includes people who are "persona non grata," but that they can't contribute to a publication that includes these very same people? If Bernstein is willing to call a boycott because JARS entails "knowingly associating" with people whom he repudiates---and these very same people are members (in some instances FOUNDING members) of ARS, to which he too belongs, why not boycott the Ayn Rand Society?
Hypocrisy is not pretty.
And by the way, as I said on hpo, I'm not a hypocrite. I send an annual check to the Ayn Rand Institute, and I am a subscriber to The Intellectual Activist. But I also contribute money and/or time and energy to The Objectivist Center, SOLO, and to any number of organizations connected to Objectivism. I do this because as a Rand scholar, I could not dream of cutting myself off from organizations that publish work on Rand. I think Rand scholars need to tap into all of this material if they are to come to terms with the complexity of Objectivism.
Finally: yes, CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL still features Branden's essays. So does THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS. Now... go look through the last few years of THE INTELLECTUAL ACTIVIST or old copies of THE OBJECTIVIST FORUM or any number of recent lectures given by ARI-affiliated scholars at their conferences or at the Ayn Rand Society---and if you can find any visible references to Nathaniel Branden's "approved" essays (forget about his post-Rand corpus), I'll give you a quarter. (Truth be told: there is a single reference to a single essay of Branden's in a Darryl Wright lecture given before The Ayn Rand Society. It is in his citations. In the body of his lecture, however, he states something to the effect of "as an essay published in THE OBJECTIVIST says"... as if the mere mention of Branden IN THE LECTURE is a sin.)
Alternatively, go look through NAVIGATOR, THE FREE RADICAL, David Kelley's works, or my works, or the works of Machan, or Rasmussen, or Den Uyl, or Kamhi and Torres---and tell me if you see any lack of citations to ARI-affiliated scholars. Tell me if you see the same PARTISANSHIP there, as is fully visible in ARI publications.
These people may disagree with various aspects of the ARI vision of Objectivism---but they ENGAGE the arguments.
That's one of the demands of scholarly objectivity.
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