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This is some very good news for a thinker like me who is outside the academic area. Before I found this website, I was temporarily active on another general philosophy forum. I was so shocked at the posts of university students on this other website. It seemed like they got to the study of Hume, or Ayers, or Wittgenstein, etc. and could not get out of a hole created by an idea that was new to the student and seemed interesting on its face. All of them seemed to be unaware of Ms. Rand beyond her fiction and were emotionally bitter or angry about the ethics they learned in that fiction. The few who claimed to be familiar with Aristotelian metaphysics and Objectivist epistemology, couldn't see it thru their post-modern lens of logic and language having metaphysical standing instead of origin in human cognition. Chomsky's, Neo-Kantian view of innate cognitive content - purely grammatical in Chomsky's view, not extending to Kant's categories - was a very popular idea. It seemed like many people found comfort in ideas in philosophy that allowed, forgave, or created an excuse for a lack of focus or clarity in cognition.

During my time as an undergraduate philosophy major, Rand was mentioned several times. One of my ethics classes used James Rachels' The Elements of Moral Philosophy, which takes Rand seriously but presents a misrepresentation of her argument for egoism. (The professor in this class also presented mistaken interpretations of several other parts of Rand's philosophy.) Another ethics class mentioned Rand but only to assert that she was a nihilist in the sense that she did not believe in ultimate value. I also heard a student say that Ayn Rand was an example of a philosopher who was a logical positivist "if you want to call her a philosopher." So, my impression is that academic philosophers know that Rand is someone they have to address at some point when speaking to undergraduates, but they don't usually make a serious study of her work.

Objectivism is doing better in academia now than it ever has, IMHO. There are a number of tenured Objectivist philosophy professors, and several more working in academia who are not tenured. (Some of the untenured ones, like Andrew Bernstein, are untenured by choice. Some, like Allan Gotthelf at UPitt, are in extended visiting scholar posts. And some, like Greg Salmieri, are simply at the start of their careers.) Tara Smith at UT Austin holds the BB&T Chair for the Study of Objectivism. Her last book, Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics was published by Cambridge University Press, one of the most prestigious academic publishers in the world. There is a Center for the Study of Capitalism at Clemson, run by Objectivist professor C. Bradley Thompson. BB&T has funded programs for study of the moral foundations of capitalism in over 50 universities. There are Objectivists working in academia in fields cognate to philosophy, like Eric Daniels in history, or Adam Mossof and Amy Peikoff in law. The Anthem Foundation for the Study of Objectivism finances fellowships for the study of Objectivism at multiple universities. And yes, there is an Ayn Rand Society in the APA. And that's just off the top of my head! That isn't to say that Objectivism is popular in academia. But it's possible to be an Objectivist in academia these days, and there's been an impressive growth in both people and support infrastructure over the last five to ten years. I credit John McCaskey's Anthem Foundation, mentioned above, for really getting the ball rolling.