Abbreviation ISI Headquarters Wilmington, Delaware Board Chairman Alfred S. Regnery Motto Educating for Liberty | Formation 22 June 1953 President Christopher G. Long Founded 22 June 1953 | |
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Type Nonprofit Educational Organization Founders Frank Chodorov, William F. Buckley Jr. Similar Collegiate Network, Young Americans for Freed, Claremont Institute, Acton Institute, Hillsdale College | ||
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc. (or ISI), is a nonprofit educational organization that promotes conservative thought on college campuses. It describes itself as fostering awareness of limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, the rule of law, free-market economics, and traditional values.
Contents
ISI was founded in 1953 by Frank Chodorov with William F. Buckley, Jr. as its first president. The organization sponsors lectures and debates on college campuses, publishes books and journals, provides funding and editorial assistance to a network of conservative and libertarian college newspapers, and finances graduate fellowships.
History
In 1953, Frank Chodorov founded ISI as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists, with a young Yale University graduate William F. Buckley, Jr. as president. E. Victor Milione, ISI's next and longest-serving president, established publications, a membership network, a lecture and conference program, and a graduate fellowship program.
ISI helped to fuel a campus conservative movement in the 1980s. President Reagan said about ISI at the time:
By the time the Reagan Revolution marched into Washington, I had the troops I needed—thanks in no small measure to the work with American youth ISI had been doing since 1953. I am proud to count many ISI products among the workhorses of my two terms as President.
Past ISI president and former Reagan administration official T. Kenneth Cribb led the institute from 1989 until 2011, when current president Christopher G. Long took over. Cribb is credited with expanding ISI's revenue from one million dollars that year to $13,636,005 in 2005.
Programs and activities
ISI runs a number of programs on collegiate campuses. First, it organizes campus conservative groups under ISI and maintains contact with the groups. Second, it holds the yearly "Polly Awards" which sheds media scrutiny on questionable campus events across the nation.
In providing what ISI calls a classically liberal education to its member students, ISI runs other programs as well. It publishes a number of "Student's Guide to..." books, for example A Student's Guide to Liberal Learning, providing a classical introduction into several disciplines. It also holds other events, such as conferences, that feature prominent conservative speakers and academics, and provides funding for students to attend these conferences. In this funding capacity ISI is affiliated with the Liberty Fund.
In the summer of 2005, ISI Books, the imprint of ISI, published It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, by Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum, which premiered at #13 on the New York Times Best Seller list. Passages from the book generated controversy during Santorum's 2006 reelection campaign, as well as during his 2012 presidential campaign.
ISI administers the Collegiate Network, which provides editorial and financial outreach to conservative and libertarian student journalists.
In the fall of 2006, ISI published the findings of its survey of the teaching of America's history and institutions in higher education. The Institute reported, as the title suggests, that there is a "coming crisis in citizenship."
ISI Books
Intercollegiate Studies Institute operates ISI Books, which publishes books on conservative issues and distributes a number of books from other publishers. The rate of publication is about 20 books per year. Focus is largely on the humanities and the foundations of Western culture and its challenge by political correctness.