Assault from the Ivory Tower
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 1 hour, 13 minutes
In this examination of higher education in America, Dr. Leonard Peikoff contrasts the reputation of universities as bastions of knowledge and scientific research with their actual approach—undermining rational philosophy and reason. Through detailed examples drawn from contemporary universities, Peikoff illustrates their attack on the ideas at the very heart of American institutions. He diagnoses the problem in the philosophy of irrationalism that has infected the institutions and provides a view of the solution in re-introducing rational philosophy.
Study Guide
This material is designed to help you digest the lecture content. You can also download a printable PDF version below.
| What is unusual about the American approach to its own history and culture? |
| Why is America uniquely able to have an anti-patriotic tradition? |
| What is the default approach to ideas and knowledge of today’s professors? |
| What are some of the ways that Kant’s ideas created the modern assumptions, say, in history? |
| How have these trends impacted the field of philosophy? |
| What can be done to fight these trends? |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 54:55 | Is it a part of the philosophy of Objectivism to not give any kind of support to the Soviet Union? How is it possible, with so many companies doing business, to discern when we are or are not giving such support? |
| 56:30 | Could you give us this year’s update on the production of a film version of the novel Atlas Shrugged? |
| 58:36 | You once reported the possibility of a new course on rational thinking. Do you have progress you can tell us about? |
| 59:50 | Without putting on you the responsibility for the Forum’s presentation of a number of speakers who have contradicted each other, would you respond to the idea of truth as a tentative collection of hypotheses? |
| 1:02:55 | Miss Rand once suggested the idea of a “fairness doctrine” for colleges and universities to see how they measured up. Do you agree with the idea of perpetrating a fairness doctrine? |
| 1:04:48 | Do you have a recommendation for an Objectivist viewpoint on Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty? What about Gödel’s incompleteness theorem? |
| 1:10:01 | Are you undertaking another academic post somewhere or have some more projects in mind? |
| 1:11:36 | Would you explain the difference between “proof” and “validation”? |