OCON 2025 Program Highlights

OCON

July 1-5, 2025    |    Boston

The Westin Copley Place

Highlights

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Join the Ayn Rand Institute for our annual summer Objectivist conference (OCON) in the historic city of Boston to celebrate ARI’s 40th anniversary and the nation of the Enlightenment.
OCON 2025 will take place July 1–5, 2025, in the historic setting of Boston—which is the perfect location to mark Independence Day and ARI’s 40-year fight to preserve the Enlightenment ideals that culminated in America’s founding.
Since our establishment in 1985, the long-range goal of the Ayn Rand Institute has been to work to save Enlightenment values by advancing Objectivism in the culture.
As Onkar Ghate, ARI’s chief philosophy officer, explains:

To the extent the world has moved forward since the 18th century, it has done so by implementing, however imperfectly, the ideals of the Enlightenment: reason, science, individualism and a government limited by the principle of individual rights.

Philosophy and much of the wider intellectual world turned against the Enlightenment in the 19th century, which is why the 20th century was not just a century of progress, but also one of wide scale conflict, destruction and murder.

Ayn Rand viewed her new philosophy, Objectivism, as putting the Enlightenment’s ideals for the first time on a fully rational, fully defensible foundation.

Featured Talks

OCON’s lineup of outstanding Objectivist speakers will delve into a wide range of topics, challenging you to learn new things and come away inspired to use Objectivism to improve your life.

What Is Western Civilization?

Yaron Brook

Chairman of the Board,
Ayn Rand Institute

Conceiving Values

Greg Salmieri

Senior Scholar of Philosophy,
Salem Center

Allen Drury’s Inspiring Political Fiction: From Advise and Consent (1959) to The Promise of Joy (1975)

Shoshana Milgram

Associate Professor of English, Virginia Tech

Panel on the Fourth Amendment

Tara Smith

Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin

Special Events
Junior Intellectual Talk Series
New this year, OCON will feature a series of brief, incisive short-form talks (think “TED”) from ARI’s intellectuals-in-training. Come hear from the new generation of developing Objectivist intellectuals as they showcase their burgeoning subject-matter expertise on a wide range of fascinating topics.
Archives Tours
Between 1961 and 1981, Ayn Rand spoke at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston a total of nineteen times, covering a range of topics that applied her unique philosophic worldview to the most complex and controversial issues of the day. The talks are a fascinating example of Ayn Rand’s pathbreaking career as a public intellectual. Join an ARI archivist-led exhibit tour at OCON for a chance to see original artifacts that illuminate Rand’s intellectual legacy.
Objectivist Conferences / Ayn Rand® Institute reserves the right to make necessary adjustments to the schedule. Speakers, talks, and events will be added periodically as they are confirmed.

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