Biography
Dr. Yaron Brook is a prominent advocate for Objectivism, the philosophy of novelist Ayn Rand. As president of the Ayn Rand Institute, an educational organization based in California, he appears frequently on national TV and radio to discuss current events and issues from the Objectivist viewpoint. He is a regular guest on CNBC for his expertise on matters related to business, finance and economics. And as an expert on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, he is often interviewed about issues related to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the war in Iraq.
A popular lecturer at corporations, universities, public forums, community and professional groups, Dr. Brook is known for his radical ideas and passionate speaking style. His talk "Why Conservatives Are Anti-Business" challenges the common notion that conservatives are allies of business and capitalism. In October 2006 he spoke at the prestigious Ford Hall Forum in Boston, where he harshly criticized the Bush Administration's "Forward Strategy of Freedom" in Iraq and presented his case for a proper war policy based on the principle of self-interest. In 2006 he also took part in several panel discussions at American universities where the controversial Danish cartoons of Muhammad were unveiled in defense of the right to free speech.
As a writer, Dr. Brook has published articles in many newspapers and professional journals. His most recent editorial on CEO pay appeared in USA Today, and his articles "'Just War Theory' vs. American Self-Defense" (co-authored with Alex Epstein) and "The 'Forward Strategy' for Failure" (with Elan Journo) were published in The Objective Standard, a new journal devoted to cultural and political issues. You can read both of these articles for free online at the journal's Web site.
Dr. Brook was born and raised in Israel. He served as a First Sergeant in Israeli military intelligence and earned a BSc in civil engineering from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa, Israel. In 1987 he moved to the United States, where he received his MBA and PhD in finance from the University of Texas at Austin; he became an American citizen on May 28, 2003. For seven years he was an award-winning finance professor at Santa Clara University, and in 1998 he co-founded a financial advisory firm, BH Equity Research, at which he is presently managing director and chairman.
