Intercollegiate Studies Institute on Marquette Campus

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is a conservative organization, both free market and traditionalist, that defines itself as follows.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) is a non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt educational organization whose purpose is to further in successive generations of college students a better understanding of the values and institutions that sustain a free and humane society.

Founded in 1953, ISI works “to educate for liberty” — to identify the best and the brightest college students and to nurture in these future leaders the American ideal of ordered liberty. To accomplish this goal, ISI seeks to enhance the rising generation’s knowledge of our nation’s founding principles — limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, the rule of law, market economy, and moral norms.

A conference on Alexis de Tocqueville, which will be coming up in just a few days, is typical of their activities.

We had lunch last week with the president of the Marquette chapter, Paco Nava, and he’s a sincere fellow committed to the values of the ISI. The organization is small on the Marquette campus, indeed Nava may be its only real activist. But it is a recognized student organization, and even a small cadre of students with some boldness and a sense of purpose can accomplish a lot. Any student who subscribes to the principles of the ISI ought to contact Nava. ISI might be the right organization at the right time and the right place.