Yaron Brook

Yaron Brook (born May 23, 1961) is an Israeli-American entrepreneur, writer, and activist. He is an Objectivist and the current chairman of the board at the Ayn Rand Institute, where he was executive director from 2000 to 2017. He is also the co-founder of BHZ Capital Management LP.
Brooks is the author of the book Equal is Unfair: America’s Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality. Furthermore, he has also argued against the academic consensus that climate change is a real and man-made phenomenon.
Brook's activism has been described as "anti-progressive" and he has been criticized by activists for targeting Black Lives Matter and feminist activists. In 2018, a public event featuring Brooks and Carl Benjamin as speakers was protested by Antifa activists. Brooks has argued that Islamic ideology is contrary to the moral values of contemporary Western societies.
Biography
Yaron Brook was born and raised in Israel. His parents were Jewish socialists from South Africa. When he was sixteen, a friend lent him a copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, leading him to abandon the socialism taught to him by his parents and to embrace Objectivism. After graduating from high school, he served as a first sergeant in Israeli military intelligence (1979–1982) and then earned a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering in 1986 from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.
Career
In 1998, he co-founded BH Equity Research with Robert Hendershott. BH Equity Management was a financial advisory firm. In 2019, BH Equity dissolved and BHZ Capital Management LP became the new entity.
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.
Brook speaks and debates at numerous American universities, delivering seminars for businesses and corporations in the United States and abroad, and writing opinion editorials for leading newspapers and websites. Speaking venues include conferences, professional organizations, and community groups. His subjects span a wide range of current events and philosophical issues, including the causes of the financial crisis, the morality of capitalism, and ending the growth of the state, each discussed with Objectivism at its foundation. In recent years, he has spoken to audiences throughout the world, including those in China, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Greece, Iceland, Bulgaria, Israel, Guatemala, and England.
Brook's articles have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Investor's Business Daily, and many other publications. A frequent guest on a variety of radio and national television programs, he is the co-author of Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea and Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand's Ideas Can End Big Government, and contributing author of Winning the Unwinnable War: America's Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism. His newest book is In Pursuit of Wealth: The Moral Case for Finance, co-authored with Don Watkins.
On January 19, 2021, Brook, along with Robert Hendershott and Don Watkins, launched Ingenuism on Substack. To introduce themselves, the title of their first post was, "Progress at the speed of thought".
The Yaron Brook Show
On January 7, 2015, the day of the Charlie Hebdo shooting, Brook made his first-ever podcast and premiered The Yaron Brook Show. As of June 2022, sixteen podcasts have been produced for this series.
Events
On September 27, 2017, at the Yale Student Chapter of The Federalist Society, Brook participated in an event named, "Income Inequality: Is It Fair or Unfair?".
Views and opinions
Rational selfishness
Brook promotes the Objectivist ethical position that rational selfishness is a moral virtue and that altruism is evil. Yaron Lectures: The Morality of Selfishness a talk for Cheongshim International Academy and Yaron Debates: Selfishness is a Virtue, Brook vs Epstein; Moderated by Judge Napolitano are two recent presentations of this ethical position.
Politics and economics
Brook is an outspoken proponent of laissez-faire capitalism. In appearances on CNBC and several articles 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. 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. He has also argued that antitrust laws are "unjust and make no sense ethically or economically."
On gun rights, Brook has stated, "The government certainly has a role in regulating ownership of weapons", but he states that it is a "complex" issue to do with the philosophy of law. He is inclined to draw the line of prohibition between "offensive" weapons, such as tanks and weapons of mass destruction, and "defensive" weapons.
In interviews and through his writings and podcasts, he criticized the Republican Party and the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations for not abiding by free market principles and for enabling excessive government involvement in the economy.
Brook has taught financial courses dealing with topics such as the Financial Crisis and corporations.
Foreign policy
Brook applies Objectivist moral philosophy to the question of American foreign policy, particularly on the Middle East. He advocates an American foreign policy of rational self-interest that would serve only to protect the rights of Americans, as opposed to any form of government monetary aid, state-building, or spreading democracy. He has criticized the foreign policy of Ron Paul and other libertarians.
He advocates the withdrawal of US troops from Europe, and US withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations, calling the latter "one of the most immoral institutions ever created by man". He is ambivalent about the World Trade Organization.
Brook called for an embargo on North Korea. Brook has taught foreign policy courses dealing with topics such as the history of the Middle East.
Islamic terrorism
Brook argues that Islamic terrorists initiated a war against the West because they hate its culture, wealth, love of life, and global influence, and that they attack Israel because of the influence Western culture has had on it. He rejects the idea that Islamic terrorists attack Western nations because they support Israel or because of poverty or retaliation. Brook claims that the West is not at war with terrorism but the ideology of Islamic totalitarianism. He repeatedly says that just like in World War II, the US was at war against not Japanese kamikaze pilots or German tanks but the ideas of Nazism and Japanese imperialism. Brook claims that Islamic totalitarians are Muslims who wish to dictate every part of life from the teachings of Islam, taken to its logical extreme. He believes that Islamic totalitarians want to organize their governments according to Islam and that they wish to spread a global Islamic government across the world, sometimes by using legitimate means but mainly by using physical force, terrorism.
Morality of war
Brook has laid out a unique theory of the morality of war, based on the ideas of Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff.
Israel
Brook considers Israel to be a morally good nation because its Western-style government protects the rights of its citizens, Arab and Jewish alike, vastly more than neighboring countries. 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."
Brook advocates supporting Israel, which he sees as a Western ally against Islamic terrorism. Brook disagrees with many of Israel's policies, including its collectivist and religious influences, and its “self-sacrificial” foreign policy of giving its enemies land, money, and other goods.
Published works
Books
Other
Corporate governance: a study of director liability, firm performance and shareholder wealth, University of Texas, Austin, 1994 [thesis]
Shareholder wealth effects of directors' liability limitation provisions, Brook, Yaron; Rao, Ramesh K. S., Journal of Financial & Quantitative Analysis, vol. 3, 1994, 481–497
Terrorism in Israel, Yaron Brook, The Intellectual Activist, Vol. 10, No. 4, July 1996
The gains from takeover deregulation: Evidence from the end of interstate banking restrictions , Brook, Yaron; Hendershott, Robert; Darrell Lee, Journal of Finance the journal of the American Finance Association, {Malden, Mass. et al.: Blackwell}, vol. 6, 1998, 2185–2204
Do Firms Use Dividends to Signal Large Future Cash Flow Increases?, Brook, Yaron; Charlton, William T., Jr.; Hendershott, Robert J., Financial Management, (Tampa, Fla. : Financial Management Association International) vol. 3, 1998, 46–57
Corporate Governance and Recent Consolidation in the Banking Industry , Brook, Yaron; Hendershott, Robert J.; Lee, Darrell, Journal of Corporate Finance: contracting, governance and organization, (Santa Clara U; Kennesaw State U), vol. 2, 2000, pp. 141–164
Hype and Internet Stocks, Brook, Yaron; Hendershott, Robert J., The Journal of Investing, vol. 2, 53–64
"Just War Theory" vs. American Self-Defense, Yaron Brook, Alex Epstein, The Objective Standard, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 2006
"The 'Forward Strategy' For Failure, Yaron Brook, Elan Journo, The Objective Standard, Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring 2007
Brook's article on CEO compensation in USA Today
References
External links
Yaron Brook on YouTube channel
Yaron Brook's profile page from the Ayn Rand Institute
Yaron Brook on C-SPAN
Ingenuism on Substack
Ingenuism on YouTube
Ingenuism on Apple Podcasts
Ingenuism | Podcast on Spotify
1961 births
Living people
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American businesspeople
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American libertarians
American male non-fiction writers
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
American people of South African-Jewish descent
American political writers
Ayn Rand Institute
Israeli academics
Israeli emigrants to the United States
Israeli Jews
Israeli people of South African-Jewish descent
Israeli political writers
Jewish American writers
Jewish anti-communists
McCombs School of Business alumni
Objectivism scholars
Objectivists
Santa Clara University School of Business faculty
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology alumni