[3] In 1985, Leonard Peikoff and Ed Snider founded the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), an organization devoted to the study and advocacy of Objectivism.
[4] Kelley was initially affiliated with ARI, but in 1989 he was criticized by Peter Schwartz, editor of the Objectivist newsletter The Intellectual Activist, for giving a speech under the auspices of Laissez Faire Books (LFB), a libertarian bookseller.
[10][11] In 1990, he founded the Institute for Objectivist Studies (IOS), a non-profit dedicated to cultural advocacy on behalf of "reason, individualism, achievement, and capitalism.
In order to pursue his scholarly interests, Kelley stepped down as executive director of TOC in 2004, and the organization was again renamed as The Atlas Society (TAS).
They include The Evidence of the Senses, which argues for a unique form of direct realism about perception; Unrugged Individualism, which explores benevolence as a virtue; A Life of One's Own, a moral critique of the welfare state; and The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand, focusing on the schisms within the Objectivist movement.
An ongoing research and writing project over the past decade has been his magnum opus, The Logical Structure of Objectivism, which he is co-authoring with economist William Thomas.