The Intellectual Activist

Objectivist periodicals are a variety of academic journals, magazines and newsletters with an editorial perspective explicitly based on Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Several early Objectivist periodicals were edited by Rand. She later endorsed two periodicals edited by associates, and a number of others have been founded since her death.

From 1961 to 1976, Rand was publisher and editor (sometimes co-editor) for three different periodicals: The Objectivist Newsletter, The Objectivist, and The Ayn Rand Letter. In addition to editing, Rand wrote many articles for these publications.

The first Objectivist periodical was The Objectivist Newsletter, a four-page newsletter that began publishing in January 1962. The newsletter was co-published by Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden and grew out of the previous success of the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), which Branden had founded in 1958 (originally as Nathaniel Branden Lectures) to promote Objectivism. By late 1961, NBI had accumulated a mailing list of over 10,000 people, which was used to announce the newsletter.

A number of different writers contributed articles to The Objectivist Newsletter, including Martin Anderson, Barbara Branden, Edith Efron, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen, and Leonard Peikoff. However, the majority of the articles were written by either Ayn Rand or Nathaniel Branden.

In 1965, Rand and Branden decided to change the format of the publication. In October 1965, they announced that The Objectivist Newsletter would become The Objectivist. This was purely a change of name and format, with business operations, including subscriptions, continuing unchanged.

In January 1966, the The Objectivist replaced The Objectivist Newsletter, with Rand and Branden continuing as co-editors. The renamed publication used a sixteen-page magazine format in place of the previous newsletter format. The number of subscribers continued to climb, reaching 21,000 by the end of 1966. Contributors during this period included economists Alan Greenspan and George Reisman, historian Robert Hessen, neurophysiologist Robert Efron, novelists Erika Holzer and Kay Nolte Smith, and philosopher Leonard Peikoff.

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