Letter From Peter Schwartz - To Leonard Peikoff
Letter From Peter Schwartz - To Leonard Peikoff
9/16/94
Dear Leonard--
I've attached the relevant letters from Edith and George (as well as your responses to them). And the following are my annotations:
The essence of this issue lies in the fact that Edith has made unjust, baseless accusations against me and Harry and Mike. (Since I have been her primary target, I will refer mainly to myself.) She has impugned my integrity--not because she genuinely thought her charges were true, but irrespective of their truth, in a quest for something--anything--with which to malign me. To give you some examples:
***She insisted that it was a "conflict of interest" for me to sit on the Board while Sandra ran an Objectivist conference. She railed at Mike over the phone, demanding that we not allow it--and actually urged him to have ARI take over the conference instead of Sandra. And she then managed to get Jerry to convey to Mike his similar indignation over this "conflict." (As groundless as her objection is, how much more arbitrary is it when it comes from someone who ran her own conference while she was on the board?)
*** She has been telling people (or, at the very least, one person) that I am a crook.
***When the OGC was being formed, she mounted a smear campaign against me and Harry, claiming (in her attached letter) that: 1) we were cavalierly paying ourselves exorbitant sums of ARI money for our teaching services, while any "disinterested" person would realize that the same educational value could be obtained far more cheaply; and 2) in our desire to line our pockets, we jeopardized ARI's legal status by allowing a majority of the Board illegally to accept monetary compensation from the Institute--and that our irresponsibility extended even to our unwillingness to seek legal advice about this matter. (In fact, we had sought legal counsel and were told that this was not a problem--and Edith was informed of this when she called Mike, prior to her addressing this issue in her letter. And why did Edith suddenly become so concerned about the prospect of a reporter's discovering that Directors were to be compensated by the Institute, when we had been paying Harry for years for his phone teaching?)
***Continuing her gratuitous assault on the whole OGC project, Edith raised the bizarre point that, to whatever degree I am qualified to teach a writing course, I should be paid only to the extent, or on the condition, that I do not discuss psychology. Now, some of the other objections in her (and George's) letter--e.g., that my writing class is the equivalent of "remedial composition" or that the OGC could get more for its money by having its curriculum taught by Gary/Linda/Darryl--can be dismissed as sheer stupidity. But to disparage my writing qualifications by arguing that my ideas on psychology are not "approved of by other Objectivist psychologists," is so wantonly non-objective as to be contemptible. (And the similar "reservations" about my knowledge of economics--despite being an iota less irrelevant to the writing class--are no less offensive.)
These actions, particularly in the context of Edith's sporadic history of dubious behavior, are why I (and Harry and Mike) have decided to have no dealings with her. She simply cannot be trusted to be honest and objective once she chooses to regard someone as her enemy. However, some of her irrational accusations were also aimed at us as directors of ARI--i.e., at the manner in which ARI was functioning. In justice, this requires that the Institute itself not "turn the other cheek" toward her. It requires that ARI refrain from treating its smearers as reputable Objectivists--or even as decent human beings.
Now, it is true that she has not said anything that explicitly contradicts Objectivism. She is certainly not in the category of, say, David Kelley. But that fact cannot be used as "blackmail" against anyone seeking to take appropriate action against her. That is, in response to any attempt to make her pay for her actions, her strategy has been to cry indignantly that she is being unjustly thrown out of Objectivism. This serves to shift the focus away from her actual culpability and onto her alleged victimization by excessive punishment--which is what she did following your support of her removal from the Board of Advisors. (As Harry noted, it is like a criminal shouting "police brutality" upon his arrest.) But it is wrong to believe that, merely because she may not deserve to be ousted from Objectivism, no serious action against her is warranted. Can it be that nothing short of an open condemnation of Ayn Rand or an embrace of mysticism can justify some form of sanction? What if Nort had not apologized for what he said to you? What about Ed Snider's threat to crush you in court? Aren't these actions that call for some appropriate censure?
Edith, too, as cited, has acted immorally--and deserves to be treated accordingly. (Exactly what treatment she deserves, is a separate, and secondary, question; the primary question here is how to evaluate her correctly.)
This leads me to the final, and most crucial, element in this whole matter: you. I don't really care much about what Edith will say or do in the future. My mind is made up. (And, with respect to forgiveness, I do believe in that possibility--exactly under the conditions that Rearden, at the end, was prepared to forgive his family.) But it is important how you view all this.
When Edith raised her "police brutality" claim, you wrote a second letter that seriously diluted the stand you took in the first. You said that she was being taken off the Board because we could not "work together" and that the dispute entailed "a clash of personalities and strategies." If that were indeed the case, then my position (and Harry's and Mike's--and the whole Board of Directors') is not very intelligble. Why would we indulge our personal idiosyncracies to the extent of taking such drastic action as kicking her off the Board of Advisors (to say nothing of ostracizing TJS)? Given the "personality" premise, our response is indeed inexplicable--which is precisely the argument Edith is making everywhere she can.
True, this is not an explicitly philosophic dispute. But neither it "personalities." It is rather a matter of Edith's irrational behavior as reflected in her attacks against me (us), as I've already explained. The notion that our disagreement is attributable simply to the fact that Edith is "hard to get along with" is as mistaken as the view that our conflict with David Kelley, or George Walsh, or the Brandens is just a misunderstanding between people who really agree on the essentials of Objectivism.
I hope this meeting will make that clear.
--Peter