Category Archives: Resources

Sciabarra Fall 2004 Cyberseminar

Chris Matthew Sciabarra will be teaching a new course, “Putting Dialectics to Work,” which begins on Monday, September 6, 2004. Supplemental readings will be included from such Sciabarra books as Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism and Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical.

The course will center on helping students to prepare a paper with dialectical method as their guide to inquiry, self-clarification, and exposition. Students will learn to approach a real, concrete social problem in a dialectical fashion, by focusing on the full context of its implications, by examining it from various points of view and on different levels of generality, and by understanding it as part of a larger system across time.

The cost of the course will be $150 per student for approximately 3 months of instruction. Enrollment is limited to approximately a dozen students. For further information, visit the Seminar page on Chris Sciabarra’s web site.

Social Change Workshop for Graduate Students

We’ve reported before in this space about the free but valuable IHS Summer Seminars.

Will Wilkinson particularly recommends the Social Change Workshop for Graduate Students. From his comments:

Let me start here… I got an email a while back from one of last summer’s faculty–it was her first time teaching at the workshop. She told me that the workshop was like she’d always hoped grad school would be, but sadly wasn’t (having gone to Harvard for grad school and Berkeley for law). And that’s really it. That’s why I love it. At the Workshop you’re surrounded by brilliant people. It’s like the united nations of smart. Chinese students from Yale, Russians from Chicago, Poles from Oxford… Africans, Mexicans, you name it, and from some of the best grad programs in the world. (Interestingly, most of the european students come from central/eastern post-communist europe, and not France, Germany, etc, although we get those too.)

Will’s entire discussion of this subject is worth reading, if you think you (or a graduate student you know) might be interested.

Online Self-Esteem Course with Nathaniel Branden

Psychologist author (and long-time Rand associate) Nathaniel Branden has announced a new self-directed online course based on his book The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem. From the announcement:

The online course includes audio and/or video of Dr. Branden in every chapter,
so you can hear and see the man behind the words.

The course package also includes three life changing calls with Dr. Branden:

Call One: Basic Principles of Self-Esteem
Call Two: Internal Sources of Self-Esteem
Call Three: External Influences on Our Self-Esteem

More information is available on the ConsciousOne web site.

Objectivist Parents Discussion Group

Atlasphere members who have their own children may be interested in the Objectivist Parents Discussion Group at Yahoo:

A moderated discussion group for parents, particularly parents of teenagers, who share an interest in Objectivism. Open discussion of applying Objectivism to issues of teenagers and children of all ages.

Visit the Objectivist Parents Discussion Group page at Yahoo! Forums for further information. (Thanks to Michelle Fram-Cohen, who also moderates the group, for this news tip.)

Media Production Internships

Interested in becoming involved in TV or film production? Check out the production internships offered by the Institute for Humane Studies:

Documentary / TV Investigative Journalism

Spend the summer working on a documentary at a production company or an investigative journalism television program. Gain hands-on experience, tackle an important issue, make valuable connections within the industry, and contribute to the production of a film or television program that can make a difference.

Internships are available in Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, DC, and Toronto.

Participants receive:

$2000 stipend
Housing and travel allowance
Technical and career workshops
Unique networking opportunities
Application deadline: March 15, 2004

According to the IHS internship FAQ, last year’s interns worked at:

  • Inland Sea Productions in Washington, DC working on the IMAX film We the People

  • John Stossel’s unit at ABC News in New York helping produce segments for 20/20
  • Levels Audio in Hollywood, CA doing post-production work for a variety of prime time television programs
  • Stornoway Productions in Canada conducting research for a documentary series
  • Duncan Scott Productions in Santa Monica CA helping with the new theatrical release of the Ayn Rand film classic We the Living

For more information and access to an online application form, visit the IHS internships page.

Liberty English Camp in Lithuania

Atlasphere member Stephen Browne forwards the following newsletter about the Liberty English Camp in Eastern Europe:

Dear Friend of Liberty,

This is just an introductory note for those of you who have expressed an interest in teaching at our next Liberty English Camp. [...] Right now I?m in Wroclaw (formerly Breslau in the turbulent history of this region) in West Poland (once Eastern Germany) taking a teacher training course and have limited time and internet access.

To introduce myself; I am an American now resident in Eastern Europe. I have lived in Poland, Bulgaria, Serbia and Saudi Arabia since 1991 and work here as an English teacher, freelance writer and editor for various foundations and the Polish Academy of Science Annual Report. I also teach marital arts to a small clientele. My wife Monika is Polish and is one of the teachers at our camp. We have a son, not quite two years old now, named Jerzy Waszyngton Browne (that?s George Washington in Polish).

I conceived the idea of the English courses more than ten years ago when I had private lessons with a Polish lawyer who wanted to read Adam Smith in the original. (In the old times he defended dissidents and kids caught putting subversive stickers up in public places ? an offense that could get you seven years hard.) I warned him that the dialect was a bit archaic, he replied that it was, but that it was so much easier to understand because the argumentation was so logically laid out. I don?t even want to think about what this means about modern writing?

From this came the idea of an English course designed to teach students how to read, understand and discuss the documents important to the history of liberty in the English speaking world, in the original language. I have been working on the course material on and off for several years and include it as an attachment. It is not complete, nor am I totally happy with its present form, but this will give you an idea of what we are trying to do. And the introduction gives a quick overview of the methodology we use to get people who are not professional ESL teachers into teaching quickly.

It is our hope that as more people get involved, and perhaps more libertarians over here as full-time teachers, we will have more input into the development of liberty-oriented English teaching materials. For example, we badly need a Business English course. There is a tremendous demand here for Business English ? and everywhere I?ve been, nobody is really happy with the available courses.

The idea of a camp for teaching an intensive course was actually suggested by a young Bulgarian girl (now a professor at Cambridge University in England) who had been to a few libertarian-sponsored seminars in Eastern Europe. She remarked to me that a great many of the young participants arrived with inadequate English preparation and were simply sitting through lectures nodding politely, understanding perhaps one word in ten. She suggested that a week-long intensive course before such a seminar would help prepare them to participate more fully in the presentations and discussions.

Continue reading

International Ayn Rand Meetup Day

Meetup.com provides a new way for people of common interests to gather for mutual benefit. Admirers of Ayn Rand’s novels may be particularly interested in aynrand.meetup.com, which enables participants to:

Meetup with other local fans of author Ayn Rand and her philosophy, Objectivism ? a philosophy of Reason, Purpose and Self-Esteem that holds human life on this Earth as the standard of all values and your life as an end in itself.

From the ?About Meetup? page on the Meetup web site:

Meetup helps people get together with a group of neighbors that share a common interest. We power global, monthly “Meetup Days” for almost any interest group. Meetup is an advanced technology platform and global network of local venues that helps people self-organize local group gatherings on the same day everywhere. Meetups take place in up to 612 cities in 51 countries at local cafés, restaurants, bookstores, and other local establishments.

Meetup earns its money from:

  • Establishments that pay to be listed as possible Meetup venues (MVPs)
  • Users that sign up for Meetup+
  • Organizations that want special services to help strengthen their community
  • Sponsors that have relevant messages for Meetup chapters (text ads only)

We believe that it’s possible to be profitable while doing great things for people.

For more info, see messages from people that have gone
to a Meetup and press reports about Meetup.

Visit aynrand.meetup.com to register, or to host an Ayn Rand Meetup near you. [Thanks to Luke Setzer for this news tip.]

Two New Objectivist Seminars

The Objectivist Center has announced plans for two new seminars. The first is the Graduate Seminar in Objectivist Philosophy and Method to be held at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY, July 31- Aug 7, 2004. Free of charge to qualified participants and lead by TOC’s David Kelley, the Graduate Seminar is a special week of lectures, discussions, and workshops designed for graduate students, junior faculty, and post-doctoral scholars of philosophy and related fields.

The second is the Distance-Learning Seminar in Objectivism to be offered Fall 2004. Taught by William Thomas and meeting by teleconference, the distance-learning seminar will teach a systematic understanding of Objectivism and will be open to students, scholars, teachers, speakers, activists, and club leaders who want to deepen their grasp of the key elements of the philosophy.

For more information on these seminars and other scholarship programs at TOC, visit TOC’s Objectivist Studies web site. Applications will be posted soon.

2004 TOC Summer Internship

The Objectivist Center is offering a paid 10-12 week internship at its offices. The internship is intended to provide training in writing on Objectivist themes. In addition, unpaid internship applications and fellowship project ideas will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

More information along with the application is available on the internship and fellowship page of the TOC web site.The application deadline is April 9, 2004.