ARI, OCON, and ARU

I just returned from the annual Objectivist conference (OCON) organized by the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI).  I have meant to write about ARI and ARU (Ayn Rand University) for a long time, but have not yet done so (although I think I once put in a "placeholder entry" about ARU, which I never went back to flesh out).  While I am fired up in the afterglow of OCON and before I get overtaken by events of daily life, it seems like a good time to write about all three, at least in an introductory way.

The Ayn Rand Institute (hereinafter "ARI") was founded in 1985, as the Center for Advancing Objectivism.  In a nutshell, Objectivism is the philosophy of Ayn Rand, which upholds the existence of objective reality and advocates Reason, Egoism, and Capitalism.  Since first reading Atlas Shrugged in 1983, I have held Objectivism as my personal philosophy and have done my best to learn everything I can about it and to do everything I can to help to advance it in the culture.

When I got out of the Army in 1985, I went to the University of Michigan to get my MBA.  There I met two other Objectivists - Darryl Wright and Janet Wich (now Westphal).  Together we founded a student campus club called the University of Michigan Students of Objectivism.  We took taped lecture courses, held discussions, and invited Objectivist speakers to the campus.  It was an exciting time!  ARI was in its infancy, but I remember that they helped us with some funding and also with getting speakers to come to campus.  So in this way, I have been "involved with" ARI almost from the very beginning.   

Over the next few years after I graduated and entered the business world, I stayed in contact with the club and also went to several Objectivist conferences (although they were not called "OCON" at the time.  Eventually, I got wrapped up in raising a family and earning a living, and the last conference I attended was in San Francisco in 1996.  But starting in the late 1980s when I got my first job after the Army, I began contributing to ARI, and have been a contributor more or less continuously since that time, even though I was not actively involved.

Fast forward to the late 2010s, when I was wrapping up my second stint in the Army as a mobilized reservist.  I had re-engaged with Objectivism while deployed overseas, and had once again started paying closer attention to what ARI was doing.  I was amazed at the progress they had made in delivering intellectual content via their website and other activities, and began to step up my contributions as well as to consume more content (online courses, etc.)  But for many years I did not go to conferences or really talk to anyone, I just sort of lurked in the background as a silent admirer, albeit with some contact from donor services.

Finally, in 2023, I went to OCON and I was blown away by the quality and scale of what they had accomplished and what they had planned for the future.  I went to OCON 2024, again this year, and am already registered for next year!  Part of why I have not written about it before now is the level of engagement that I've had with Ayn Rand University (ARU).

Update 6 October 2025

Once again, I see I got busy and never finished this entry.   Jeez.   I suppose when I was deployed this was one of the only things I had to do in my free time.  I can't believe the elapsed time since I started this.

I'm going to write the entry I came to do, and think about what to do here later.