The New Banner Institute emerged from a series of philosophical seminars, first started in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1968, which yielded extensive critical analyses of ‘Objectivism’, the philosophy expounded by novelist-philosopher, Ayn Rand.  The Institute was founded in 1972 to extend that original work through a regularly scheduled series of seminars, An Introduction to Philosophic Inquiry.

Today the Institute also conducts intermediate and advanced series of seminars in philosophic inquiry, where students, in Classical Greek and Renaissance tradition, engage in open-forum discussion, logical analysis, and basic research in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, psychology, aesthetics, cognitive science, and early-childhood education.  Principles are tested and practiced in an Environmewnt for Discovery by the College of Early Learning, where children of seminar participants prepare to enter the twenty-first century as rational, productive, and proud advocates of a new Age of Reason.