OAC Year 1 Objectivism Seminar – Foundations

Onkar Ghate is the chief philosophy officer and a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. He is the Institute’s resident expert on Objectivism and serves as its head trainer and editor. He has taught philosophy for over ten years at the Institute’s Objectivist Academic Center. Dr. Ghate is a contributing author to a number of books on Rand’s fiction and philosophy, including Essays on Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”; Essays on Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”; Why Businessmen Need Philosophy: The Capitalist’s Guide to the Ideas Behind Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”; Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Reflections on Objectivist Epistemology; and “A Companion to Ayn Rand (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy).” His op-eds have appeared in venues that range across the ideological spectrum, from Huffington Post to CNN.com to Foxnews.com and Businessweek.com. He’s been interviewed on national and international radio, including NPR and BBC Radio, and has appeared as a television guest on CNBC, KCET, Fox News Channel and the CBS Evening News. A Canadian citizen, Dr. Ghate studied economics and philosophy as an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto and worked in the financial industry prior to joining ARI in 2000. He received his doctorate in philosophy in 1998 from the University of Calgary.

Aaron Smith is an instructor and fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. He is an instructor for ARI’s Objectivist Academic Center, ARI Campus and ARI’s internship program. He teaches and designs educational content for the Institute’s intellectual training and e-learning programs. He writes, speaks and gives interviews for the Institute and provides intellectual and editorial support to a variety of ARI’s programs. Dr. Smith received his PhD in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University where his research focused on Aristotle’s theory of knowledge. Prior to joining ARI in 2013, he was a visiting assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he taught courses in ancient Greek philosophy, moral theory and epistemology. He is also a graduate of the Objectivist Academic Center and an alumnus of ARI’s Advanced Education Program.

Ben Bayer is an instructor and fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. He brings to ARI more than a decade of experience in teaching a wide range of philosophy courses at colleges and universities around the United States. He was a visiting assistant professor at Loyola University New Orleans for seven years, and previously taught at Metropolitan State University of Denver, Colorado College, Loyola University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In his time as a professor, Dr. Bayer’s research focused on epistemology and metaphysics (especially, free will and determinism). He has published scholarly articles in American Philosophical Quarterly, Synthese, Philosophia, and Acta Analytica, among others. He has also contributed essays to Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Reflections on Objectivist Epistemology and Essays on Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.” Dr. Bayer was one of the two co-founders of the student publication The Undercurrent, for which he served as an editor and contributor between 2005 and 2016. He edited checkyourpremises.org, the blog of the Ayn Rand Society (a professional association affiliated with the American Philosophical Association), from 2016 to 2017. Dr. Bayer received his Ph.D in philosophy from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 2007. He also completed the program of coursework in ARI’s Objectivist Graduate Center, a forerunner of the Objectivist Academic Center.

Mike Mazza is an associate fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, where he teaches in the Objectivist Academic Center. Dr. Mazza received his PhD in philosophy from Saint Louis University. His research is focused on the philosophy science, especially the metaphysics of causation. Prior to joining ARI in 2020, he taught introductory courses in philosophy, ethics, and critical thinking. He graduated from the OAC in 2009.