Yaron Brook (Hebrew: ירון ברוק; born May 23, 1961[1]) is an Israeli-AmericanObjectivist writer who is the current chairman of the board at the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), where he was executive director from 2000 to 2017. Prior to joining ARI, he was a finance professor at Santa Clara University, where he taught for seven years.[2]
Brook became an associate of leading Objectivist intellectuals, such as philosopher Leonard Peikoff, and in 1994, he co-founded Lyceum International, a company that organized Objectivist conferences and offered distance-learning courses. In 2000, he left Santa Clara University to succeed Michael Berliner as President and Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute, which was then located in Marina del Rey, California. In 2002, ARI relocated to Irvine, California.[6]
Views and opinions
Politics and economics
Brook is an outspoken proponent of laissez-fairecapitalism. In appearances on CNBC[7] and several articles[8] and speeches, he has defended the rights of corporations and businessmen and upheld the virtues of capitalism. In a January 7, 2007, editorial in USA Today, he defended multimillion-dollar CEO pay packages against the attempt by the government to regulate them.[9] In a 2010 interview, Brook called the efforts of Democrats to raise taxes on multi-millionaires "totally immoral." He criticized George W. Bush for signing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which regulates corporate accounting practices.[10] He has also argued that antitrust laws are "unjust and make no sense ethically or economically."[11]
Brook is co-author, with Don Watkins, of the book Equal is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality.[12] “What we care about is whether individuals are able to rise by merit—and the fact is that many of the policies the inequality critics say will improve mobility actually make rising by merit much harder,” they argue in the book.[13]
Israel
On Zionism, Brook argued that "Zionism fused a valid concern—self-preservation amid a storm of hostility—with a toxic premise: ethnically based collectivism and religion."[14]
Islam
In 2018, a public event featuring Brook and Carl Benjamin, a controversial YouTuber known as "Sargon of Akkad", as speakers was protested by masked activists.[15] Brook has claimed that "Islamic ideology" is not compatible with the moral values of the contemporary Western world.[16]
Watkins, Don; Brook, Yaron (March 29, 2016). Equal Is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality (Hardcover ed.). St. Martin's Press. p. 272. ISBN978-1250084446.
Brook, Yaron; Watkins, Don (September 18, 2012). Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand's Ideas Can End Big Government (Hardcover ed.). St. Martin's Press. p. 272. ISBN978-0230341692.
Ghate, Debi (April 5, 2011). Why Businessmen Need Philosophy: The Capitalist's Guide to the Ideas Behind Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (Paperback ed.). Berkley. p. 336. ISBN9780451232694.
Thompson, C. Bradley; Brook, Yaron (May 30, 2010). NEOCONSERVATISM: An Obituary for an Idea (Hardcover ed.). Routledge. p. 256. ISBN978-1594518317.
Journo, Elan (September 29, 2009). Winning the Unwinnable War: America's Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism (Hardcover ed.). Lexington Books. p. 268. ISBN978-0739135402.
Other
Corporate governance: a study of director liability, firm performance and shareholder wealth, University of Texas, Austin, 1994 [thesis]
^Arfa, Orit (July 12, 2007). "'You don't fight a tactic'". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on February 13, 2016. Retrieved January 11, 2016.
^Epstein, Alex; Brook, Yaron (October 22, 2002). "Paralyzing America's Producers". Ayn Rand Institute. Archived from the original on May 25, 2011. Retrieved October 2, 2009.
^Brook, Yaron (January 7, 2007). "Pay is company's prerogative". USA Today. p. 19A. Archived from the original on June 29, 2011. Retrieved September 18, 2017.
^Arfa, Orit (July 12, 2007). "'You don't fight a tactic'". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on February 13, 2016. Retrieved January 11, 2016.
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