I’ve resisted writing this for months. Since “The Grace Affair” has developed into an unseemly circus, I feel I need to speak up after reading Kira Peikoff’s Facebook post and comments: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15L8GERexJ/. I have facts. I hired Grace for Leonard.
I’ve had hundreds of teachers, but none compare to the masterful Professor Leonard Peikoff. He is the most remarkable teacher I’ve ever experienced. He teaches with passion, clarity, and sprinklings of delightful humor. His brilliant courses from the 1960s–1980s are still listened to by thousands, and re-listened to by me and many others. After Ayn Rand, he is the educator of Objectivism. He makes sense of philosophy. He made sense for me. He made sense for the world. He changed my life, and he significantly helped me be successful in business and making millions of dollars. He is the main reason why I contributed $40 million dollars to ARI and sat on its board for 20 years. Because of this, I have loved Leonard Peikoff. I still do.
For the last several years, Leonard has been seriously ill with at least three life-threatening illnesses. He has been in and out of the hospital about ten times in the last few years. This brilliant man and dedicated teacher has aged (as we all do). The last few years have been made unduly stressful through abuses and manipulation by various people including Yaron, Tal, and Carla. Perhaps I’ll write about that in a later post.
This affair started in early 2020. I visited Leonard in his home, and I was horrified. He was despairing and desperate. It was the beginning of COVID, and no one was allowed to get into his senior living apartment. I got in (I’m still not quite sure how, but somehow, I did). I found Leonard in a terrible condition. He was alone, clearly despairing, using oxygen with a tank. I feared for his life.
I decided that I would conduct a “medical intervention.” I would call his daughter, Kira, and close friends to help him. I was told by his long-time assistant, Shelley, that Leonard would not approve of such an intervention. So, I decided to act independently.
I researched for a home healthcare center in his area. I wanted to find an upscale agency. Working with his assistant and a friend, I found a place. I spoke to the owner of the agency, and I told her I wanted someone special; I did not want a regular home health aide; I wanted an experienced medical professional such as an RN. I was told that was not possible. When I told her I was willing to pay double their fee for someone, she said, “I’ll research it.”
So, I found Grace Davis, RN. I paid the agency directly for her services, and Grace went to work.
I was deeply concerned about Leonard, so I stayed in touch almost daily with his assistant, who also checked in with him mostly daily. Grace helped him. He started to become stronger. Notwithstanding that, he was still so frail—in and out of the hospital—that Grace and her son, Jaymeson (an EMT), continued tending to him.
I started to hear from his assistant (also my Executive Assistant), Shelley, that there was something odd with Grace. She was taking over everything—not only his health, but also his office and his finances.
Due to illnesses and medical drugs, Leonard became increasingly susceptible to undue influence. After his move to Rancho Santa Fe (near San Diego), I then heard from Shelley (and others) that there were conflicts with Leonard’s friends. Some were cut off. Shelley was finding it difficult to contact Leonard. After years of regularly scheduled meetings, Leonard was now canceling (or forgetting about) them. Then, Shelley’s access to his computer was entirely cut off.
A few months ago, Leonard called me. He spoke to me for about an hour. He went into a long diatribe about his former assistant and Kira—how wicked they were. He complained bitterly about Kira. Finally, I said to him, “But, Leonard, you’ve always loved Kira. She is your beloved daughter… your grandchildren!” I said: “Something must have happened. What happened before this conflict arose?” There was a long pause, and then the line went silent—I think someone had pressed the mute button. After 30–60 seconds, Leonard came back on and, in a strange, non sequitur way, said, “Well, Kira was always possessive, even as a child,” and then he went on to talk about her childhood. Apparently, somebody in the room was monitoring and controlling the conversation.
There are questions: Have Leonard’s funds been managed correctly? How did Grace, a caregiver, become the beneficiary of a very large financial Estate? Before his marriage to Grace, was there a prenuptial agreement? Did people subject Leonard to pressure and undue influence when he was ill and frail? Why was Leonard’s beloved daughter, Kira, cut off, and publicly denounced?
Kira filed a legal action because she feared for her father’s health, safety, and financial condition. It was a desperately hard thing to do.
Now, due to the resulting stress on the entire family, she has withdrawn her lawsuit. She has done right—to withdraw the suit was virtuous and took considerable courage.
The smearing of Kira is disgraceful. And the efforts of Jim Valliant and others to get involved and to raise $20,000 on GoFundMe are shameful. (Leonard, 10 years ago, was very wealthy—a multi-millionaire. His wealth, or lack of it, is not and was not the problem.)
Leonard and Kira (and others) have been hurt by this horrible situation (they have been the victims).
This ordeal is private between Leonard, Kira, and now Grace. Let’s leave it alone.
The best we can do now is to love and support Leonard, and love and support Kira. She is, she always has been, and still is his beloved daughter.
Carl Barney
November 14, 2024
Carl,
Thank you for the rich and detailed article!
I am impressed at how good and solid a friend you have been to Leonard and I’m very sorry to hear about the negative and stressful things surrounding him at this late stage in his life. I won’t comment further on that because I have zero inside knowledge.
On a more positive note, your tribute to Leonard as a brilliant, world class teacher is exactly right. Just after I graduated college from an expensive ivy League school and yet had learned astonishingly little from those professors, I encountered him and his courses: He has been the most brilliant teacher I ever had by an order of magnitude for many of the reasons that you gave. I remember sitting in those summer conferences at The Jefferson School for example and furiously taking notes. So fast that my wrist hurt. Insight after insight after insight. I’m actually surprised that when I looked around other people were not doing the same. Maybe they think they were going to remember all the things that he said, which would not happen. Or gain insight on how he organized/structured his material.
To this day I am a furious note-taker (and questioner). That’s how you integrate and retain stuff. And even when you take courses, which as well as teaching regularly I still do every year (I’m a believer in and member of the “lifelong learning movement”), you can actually learn a lot about how ~not~ to teach or explain or think or organize if you go back and look at your notes on even the lesser or more content-poor teachers.
One clue to why Leonard has been such a great teacher I had a glimpse of when I took his private seminars in NYC and Laguna. He would prototype his courses as much as a year in advance which meant he had a year to mull them over/refine them before he would give his big 300 person Mcalpin Hotel courses in NYC.
Genius can be viewed as unstinting and unsparing effort.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what was, and is, going on. All you have to do is pay attention to the thousands of stories about young penniless female nurses ending up with the millions from the elderly, and cognitively frail (medication and age will do that), men they “take care of.” Oldest scam in the book.
I am only commenting based on the publication part to which we all have access to. After watching Mr. Peikoff most recent video on YouTube, he seems in a pretty good state of mind despite some major health issues. Based on the 30-minute discussion I watch, I don’t think irrationality is guiding Mr. Peikkoff decisional process. That’s a mere conjecture, though. But based on the video, something tells me that he must have had a good reason for his recent actions. Indeed, sometimes, there will be a good reason that no one will think about. I do know all those possible scenarios. But I will not elaborate on them here. Although it may seem unfair to his daughter, Mr. Peikoff seems to have his reasons. But in the end, he is surely aware that Ayn Rand legacy side of things must be protected at all cost. I personally rely on his judgment to make sure it is. He is Ayn Rand heir after all. All we can do is respect his will. Now, If Mr. Peikoff is under any kind of pressure in any kind of ways; if his cognitive capacity is indeed impaired; if some player close surroundings are acting for outsiders, a legal action is still a relevant option for her daughter. No scenario should be discredited in such a case. Parasites are everywhere. It’s an epidemic those days. But for now, Mr. Peikkoff seems to believe his Iegacy, his property are in good hands. All we can do is let the greatest objectivist living handle the matter privately and hope for the best for everyone involved.
re: “This ordeal is private between Leonard, Kira, and now Grace. Let’s leave it alone.”
And yet a whole page was spilled out before that line. Gossip is disgusting and the O’ists seem to gobble it up. Disgusting.
Tragically these grifters all have the same playbook: intrusion, desensitization, isolation, execute attack. Thank you posting this sad update.
Thanks for sharing. A really heartbreaking situation for a hero of mine as well.
Thank you for providing additional context and for calling out the public campaign against Kira, etc., for what it was.
I’d like to hear more about Yaron, Tal, and whoever Carla is. This is something new to me.
Thank you so much for doing this. We need to all take a lesson from this tragedy which happens frequently with the aging process. It can be handled so easily before we become aged and weakened by setting up trusts, just so this doesn’t happen. I have practiced Objectivism for over 60 years and I am constantly surprised how so called Objectivists regularly drop all context when spouting their principles. I’ve heard wonderful things about you through the years from my friend, Alex Bleier, at the Thomas Paine Institute and hope to shake your hand one day. Warmest regards, Joan August