Program areas at ARI
Outreach programs: we posted 153 new videos to our youtube channel, which grew to over 82k subscribers. Among The many new videos were lectures, interviews and podcasts on topics ranging from history and philosophy to art and cultural issues. Our channel received over 1.4 million views total this fiscal year, with The mike wallace interview of Ayn Rand receiving over 155k views in fy2022, for an all-time total surpassing 781k views. Two major conferences were held: arc-europe, which was held in april 2022 in london with a total of 167 attendees and The objectivist conference in july 2022 in Washington dc, with a total of 408 attendees. In fy2022, ari continued its global outreach expansion in europe, latin america, asia and The middle east, to encourage and assist various Ayn Rand programs abroad. Ari also sent speakers to address student and general audiences outside The united states.
Other: The Ayn Rand archives made significant upgrades to our facilities via seismic anchoring of collection storage shelves and installation of a larger hvac unit to better maintain temperature and relative humidity at appropriate levels. We presented two exhibits: a physical exhibit at ocon 2022 titled Ayn Rand goes to Washington, & an online exhibit, letters of Ayn Rand, which presents The expanded second edition of that work with images of all original letters from Ayn Rand's papers in addition to complete transcripts. We made significant updates to 5 inventories of important collections, and started an updated general shelf inventory with visuals, an important step in disaster preparedness. We received 3 notable acquisitions: furniture owned by Ayn Rand during her lifetime; The peter schwartz papers; and The early business records of The intellectual activist newsletter. The ari estore (estore.aynrand.org) continued to sell hundreds of downloadable recordings on Objectivism and related topics. In fy2022, The number of digital courses and lectures sold totaled over 300 items, in addition to over 500 books sold.
Educational programs: in fy2022, we distributed approximately 280,000 free books to classrooms and 9,500 directly to students all over The country, and our speakers engaged with dozens of students in their classrooms. Our annual essay contest submission totaled approximately 5,000 entries and we gave out prizes to a total of 255 winners (ranging from first place to various levels of runnersup). We also hosted 8 reading groups, in which groups of students from around The world connect over video for informal discussions of Rand's philosophy, which were participated by over 200 individuals. Over 300 students attended ari hosted conferences, many of them on scholarship, introducing them to Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. The Ayn Rand university, The only systematic program of instruction in The essentials of Objectivism, had 93 applicants and admitted 55 students. Faculty taught 9 college-level courses totaling 276 course hours to 170 unique participants. A total of 92 tuition scholarships were granted to deserving students. A total of 8 fellows participated in The junior fellow program, which is an advanced training program that offers instruction to committed students, as well as career guidance, mentoring, and financial assistance. New ideal, which is ari's official journal, published 94 articles and 55 podcasts in fy2022, applying Objectivism to explain major issues in The culture and promoting The other work of The Institute. The podcasts are weekly livestreams on social media featuring our intellectual team and junior fellows, commenting on topics of relevance to modern times and The works of Ayn Rand. Five new ari campus courses were added to The catalog of on-demand content in fy2022. The ari campus course videos received over 121k hours of views across all platforms: website, app and youtube.