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More oxford books @ www.OxfordeBook.comFore more urdu books visit www.4Urdu.com198WHO IS JOHN GALT? 1957–1968Rand as a defense and vindication of her social position. Rand’s campusspeeches were a gateway into Objectivism for many. Her provocativestance electrified audiences and stood in contrast to the more prosaic,measured presentation of ideas students normally heard. After Randspoke at the University of Virginia, one student said that her speech wasthe first thing “he’d gotten really excited about in three years in college.”Interest in Rand was contagious. A female student at Brown Universitywas crossing campus when she “ran into a yelling, enthusiastic mob ofgirls surrounding somebody.” The cause of the excitement was Rand,fresh off her speech “The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age.” Curious,the student began reading Rand and over summer vacation brought hertwo brothers into the fold. 21Rand’s student followers were drawn to her because she offered anattractive alternative to the mainstream intellectual and political cultureof the 1960s. Rand was a system builder in the old style, an unabashedmoralist, an ideologue, and an idealist. Objectivism contrasted sharplywith the dominant ideas in universities, where most intellectuals hadbecome skeptical of claims to objective truth, preferring to emphasizemultiple perspectives, subjectivity, and the conditioned nature of reality.They were, as Rand put it, “opposed to principles on principle.”Philosophy had become insular and esoteric, with mathematical discussionsof logic and linguistics dominating professional discourse. Bycontrast, Rand wrote in a casual style and addressed the ethics of everydaylife, the conundrums of money, sex, work, and politics. 22 Her ideasspoke powerfully to students who hoped that in college they wouldstudy the great questions of existence, and instead found their idealismstifled by a climate of skepticism and moral relativity. As one Objectivistremembered, “I thought that philosophy and psychology held the key tounderstanding the ‘meaning of life.’ When I took those courses, I foundmyself studying instead the meaning of words and the behavior of ratsin mazes.” 23 Objectivism filled in the gaps universities left unattended.Another student outlined myriad complaints in a letter to Rand. Hewas particularly bothered by a pervasive cynicism in the two universitieshe had attended: “Anyone who seeks, or makes a statement on, truthand/or beauty is (a) ignored, (b) the recipient of a vague, benevolentsmile, (c) scorned, (d) politely laughed at and called ‘unsophisticated,’or (e) treated as a refugee from some quaint spot, which, fortunately,