Instructor Bio

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 Ayn Rand University.

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.

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Specialties

  • Objectivism
  • Ayn Rand’s novels & ideas
  • Religion & morality
  • Philosophy
  • Epistemology
  • Culture & society

Courses Taught

Experience

Senior Fellow

  • Ayn Rand Institute
    2007 – present

Chief Content Officer

  • Ayn Rand Institute
    2013 – present

Instructor And Dean

  • Ayn Rand University
    2000 – present

Selected Work

Papers Delivered

  • “Rand on the Emergence and Justification of Government,” April 04, 2016, Association of Private Enterprise Education Conference 2016
  • “Understanding Egoism and Altruism,” March 14, 2015, Public Choice Society Conference 2015
  • “Nozick and Rand on the Foundations of Liberty,” April 15, 2014, Association of Private Enterprise Education Conference 2014
  • “Political Philosophy, Altruism and Government by Magic,” September 08, 2014, Public Choice Society Conference 2014

Events

  • “Education and Ideology: The Need to Be Free to Choose,” March 10, 2016, North Carolina Alliance for Public Charter Schools Conference 2016
  • “How the Republicans Are Making a Mockery of the Constitution,” November 14, 2015, AM560 Freedom Summit Chicago 2015
  • Charlie Hebdo, the West and the Need to Ridicule Religion,” July 04, 2015, Objectivist Summer Conference 2015
  • “Introduction to Objectivism,” March 28, 2015, Liberty League Freedom Forum 2015
  • “Freedom of Speech or Tyranny of Silence?” January 21, 2015, panel discussion with Flemming Rose and others, Boston

Talks & Lectures

  • “The Separation of Church and State”
  • “Religion and Morality”
  • “A Study of Galt’s Speech”
  • Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence”
  • “Ayn Rand’s Ideas — an Introduction”
  • “Rethinking Selfishness: Ayn Rand’s New Conception of Egoism”
  • “The Moral and The Practical”