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BIG SISTER IS WATCHING YOU 185
seemed “begeistered” or hypnotized by her ideas. Then Peikoff, teaching
an introductory philosophy course as part of his Ph.D., caused a furor
by replacing a unit on Immanuel Kant with a unit on Objectivism.
Rand was embarrassed by the uproar but used the occasion to strike
up a correspondence with Hook. She professed to admire his views
and was clearly interested in establishing a rapport, but he declined
her request to meet. When the two were fi nally introduced in person
at the University of Wisconsin as co-panelists at an ethics symposium,
Hook was unimpressed. He later told Barbara, “It seemed to me that
when I spoke she did not so much as listen as wait for me to cease talking,
in order to resume the thread of what she was saying. At the time
she did not appear very analytical in her responses.” 32 Rand’s desire for
complete agreement with her ideas and her single-minded focus on
consistency were distasteful to Hook.
During this time Rand continued reaching out to professional philosophers,
trading books and brief complimentary letters with Brand
Blanshard, a Yale professor and leading interpreter of Aristotle. Later
she would also connect with the head of the Philosophy Department at
Hobart College, George Walsh, who became a dedicated NBI student in
the late 1960s. 33 But neither had the promise of John Hospers, a young
rising professor with a doctorate from Columbia. Rand and Hospers
met when she spoke at Brooklyn College, where Hospers was teaching.
A specialist in ethics, Hospers was struck by her unusual perspective
and the two spent the night deep in philosophical conversation. When
Hospers relocated to California they corresponded in long letters. He
was smitten by Rand’s work and cried upon reading The Fountainhead.
This appreciation kept him tethered to Rand even as she denigrated
his profession. Hospers found Rand’s blanket condemnation of all modern
philosophers diffi cult to take. He told her, “I see on the students’
faces that it is all beginning to jell in their minds, that the ‘integration—
experience’ is now theirs, thanks to my careful presentation and probing
questions. And then I go home and get a letter from you, for which I AM
very grateful, but in it you condemn all modern philosophy—which
presumably includes everything that I have been laboriously doing
throughout so many of my waking hours.” 34 Still, Hospers found Rand a
stimulating sparring partner. Although they often disagreed, he remembered
that “I wasn’t so concerned with what conclusion we ended up
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