By Ayn Rand
In this 1978 lecture delivered at Boston’s Ford Hall Forum, Ayn Rand reviews the themes she had explored in seventeen years of lectures at the Forum since her first appearance in 1961. Introduced as the “most popular speaker the forum has ever had,” Rand offers updates on the issues raised in those lectures, asking the question: "Have things changed since then, and, if so, in what direction?"
Briefly reviewing each of her previous lectures (listed below), Rand offers further analysis on a wide range of topics, including abortion, capitalism, censorship, ethnicity, current events, war and economics, returning often to her theme that “the heart of the battle lies in philosophy.” She closes her penultimate Ford Hall Forum appearance by passing the torch, asking: “What do we do next? I don’t think it’s up to me any longer, it is up to you.”
The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age (1961)
America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business (1961)
Is Atlas Shrugging? (1964)
The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus (1965)
Our Cultural Value-Deprivation (1966)
The Wreckage of the Consensus (1967)
What is Capitalism? (1967)
Of Living Death (1968)
Apollo and Dionysus (1969)
The Moratorium on Brains (1971)
A Nation’s Unity (1972)
Censorship: Local and Express (1973)
Egalitarianism and Inflation (1974)
The Moral Factor (1976)
Global Balkanization (1977)
In a question-and-answer session following the lecture, Rand expands on the topics she covered and also discusses:
- Business and politics
- Racism
- United States foreign policy toward Soviet Russia
- The legal case surrounding the Nazi Party’s efforts to march on public streets in Skokie, Illinois
- Affirmative action
- The Panama Canal
- Feminism
- Fighting the establishment
- The 1970s energy crisis
- The United Nations
- South Africa and apartheid
This lecture was delivered at Boston’s Ford Hall Forum, America’s oldest (founded in 1908) continuously operating free public lecture series. Over the years, such luminaries as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, and Henry Kissinger have appeared on its podium.
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Cultural Update
(Free MP3 download; 86 min. with Q & A, 62.09 MB)
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