Kelley and Thomas Attend Conferences

TOC's executive director, David Kelley, and its manager of research and training, William Thomas, attended the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in New York City, held on December 28 and 29. They also attended the Ayn Rand Society's discussion of Viable Values, a book which was written by University of Texas philosopher Tara Smith, and which was reviewed by Will Wilkinson in Navigator July/August 2000. The discussion panel included summer seminar alumnus Irfan Khawaja (currently a lecturer at the College of New Jersey) and David Schmidtz (professor of philosophy at the University of Arizona). "Smith was impressive," reports Thomas, "forthrightly and competently defending the Objectivist view of values."

In addition, Thomas attended the meeting of the Society for Social Philosophy, which was discussing a paper on individual rights by long-time Rand scholar Douglas Rasmussen, a professor of philosophy at St. John's University. "It was like a secret meeting of Rand scholars," Thomas says. "Several notable libertarians and Objectivists attended. If only there were more meetings like this at philosophy conferences, where ideas on liberty are well understood and Rand's name is tossed around as that of a theorist everyone is naturally familiar with." At the APA conference, Thomas and Kelley met with prospective TOC-event speakers and circulated book proposals on Objectivism to publishers in attendance.

On January 12 and 13, Kelley returned to New York to attend the annual conference of the National Association of Scholars and deepen TOC's connection to the wider culture of intellectuals who share a basic commitment to Enlightenment ideas of reason and intellectual freedom. "[University of Pennsylvania history professor] Alan Kors gave a very powerful speech at the conference banquet on the need to fight for academic freedom and resist political correctness," Kelley stated.