Earlier this year, Front Range Objectivism raised enough money to “buy” Colorado (except for a few already-claimed portions) for ARI’s “High School Book Project.” It was a very exciting accomplishment for all of us, as it means that Colorado high school students will be reading Ayn Rand’s Anthem and The Fountainhead in class.

Happily, we’re not the only ones who think that the Book Project is a fabulous idea. At the conference, Yaron Brook announced that one million dollars (yes, $1,000,000!) was anonymously donated for the Book Project. (Although that’s a huge chunk of change, it is not enough to blanket America’s high school in Ayn Rand’s fiction. And more money will be needed next year and the year after and so on. So I hope that at least some will be used as matching grants or the like to help raise more of the needed money.)

These are very exciting times for Ayn Rand’s philosophy. ARI’s Book Project will expose hundred of thousands of teenagers to Ayn Rand’s fiction, year after year. The Anthem Foundation has created a flurry of serious academic interest in Ayn Rand, so much so that the demand for scholars outstrips the supply. As expected, ARI works on supplying them: the Objectivist Academic Center just graduated its first undergraduate class with four years of rigorous education in Objectivism, logic, writing, history of philosophy, and more. Thanks in part to book grants from Anthem, so many serious books on or related to Objectivism have been published in the last year by ARI scholars that I have trouble keeping up with my reading. (I bought Essays on Ayn Rand’s Anthem and Abolition of Antitrust at OCON, in fact.)

I see a tipping point approaching, I think.