CEOs Pushing Ayn Rand Studies Use Money to Overcome Resistance

[Joanne98]

April 11 (Bloomberg) -- Ayn Rand's novels of headstrong entrepreneurs' battles against convention enjoy a devoted following in business circles. While academia has failed to embrace Rand, calling her philosophy simplistic, schools have agreed to teach her works in exchange for a donation.

The charitable arm of BB&T Corp., a banking company, pledged $1 million to the University of North Carolina Charlotte in 2005 and obtained an agreement that Rand's novel ``Atlas Shrugged'' would become required reading for students. Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, say they also took grants and agreed to teach Rand.

The author, who died in 1982, used her self-righteous heroes to promote objectivism, a philosophy that embraces reason and individualism, while rejecting religion. While Rand, an advocate of free markets, would support a university's getting paid to teach her works, the idea riles academic ethicists.

``A corporation crosses a line and a university is complicit in crossing the line if it accepts money'' and accedes to a request to assign specific books, said Jonathan Knight, director of the program on academic freedom, tenure and governance for the American Association of University Professors, in Washington. ``It's unique in my experience.'' Knight has worked in the field for 31 years.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=as6BR0QV4KE8&refer=home

What are they going to teach? A course on the "Virtues of Selfishness"?

[Nitrogenica]

1. "Cheating and winning is saavy."

[guyanakoolaid]

2. If you failed to show up for a "collectivist" Rand lecture, would you automatically get an "A"

The excuse "I was home masturbating with a crucifix up my ass while laying on a bed of cash" should suffice, no?

[Snarkoleptic]

3. Didn't we already get a taste of this in the '80's?

Oh yeah, it was Reaganomics and the 'Greed is good' crowd.

[Fovea]

4. And as an antidote, the pardoner's tale.

From Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

[varkam]

5. It's just so they don't have to feel bad...

about being so greedy while there are still people starving on the streets. A CEO reading Ayn Rand is essentially an exercise in self-congratulations.

We've got a name for people like that: Randroids.

[JDPriestly]

6. While in college, I voluntarily read every book Rand wrote.

It is fascinating stuff -- a closed universe. But, I found that it had nothing to do with life.

The characters never experience real love, not the kind of wonderful feeling that I, as a mother, have for my children. They never learn the bliss of being quite willing to stay up all night with a sick child, to get up every night for several years to care for a child who is in pain and cries in the night and who ultimately gets well and grows up to be a wonderful, beautiful person. Rand's characters never get beyond their own egos. But, I found life is not worth living unless you can, at least occasionally, experience the oneness with the universe that can only be felt when you get beyond your ego and self-interest.

Ayn Rand's characters never really feel any love for their friends. Forget about joy that comes from things other than just power and material success. Ayn Rand's characters were one-dimensional -- like a child's drawing.

[Machiavelli]

7. Do Randroids Dream of Electronic Tellers?

There is a reason modern academic philosophy has ignored Rand and "objectivism": they don't typically coddle pseudo-philosophy that has little more merit than bad adolescent poetry.

[Demeter]

8. I Wonder What Ayn Rand Would Think About This Situation

It's been too many years since I read some of her stuff, but I came away with the impression she did not approve of corporations in general or the people within them, either top or bottom level.

Her theme seemed to be that only the incompetent can survive and thrive in the corrupt corporate culture, that the entrepreneur would win, singlehanded. A true work of fiction. Although she got the corporations right....