Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) is based in Delaware and was founded in 1953, according to its website, 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 and moral norms," the website states.

Overview
ISI claims that it has representatives "at over 900 colleges, and with more than 50,000 ISI student and faculty members on virtually every campus in the country."

ISI organizes educational lectures and meetings on campus and "offers graduate fellowships to aspiring college teachers and circulates more than half a million copies annually of major publications". It also published approximate 20 books a year.

ISI also has an extensive campus reach through its support of the Collegiate Network though which, according to its website, ISI "administers a network of nearly 80 independent student newspapers at colleges across the country. Member papers of the Collegiate Network are eligible to receive technical and financial assistance as well as training opportunities through dedicated conferences and internships at national publications." 

"Annually ISI selects 50 outstanding undergraduates to participate in the ISI Honors Program. These fellowships include a weeklong summer conference, an ongoing mentoring relationship in a chosen field, a library of ISI books, and a special career development conference," it website states.

"ISI administers a network of nearly 80 independent student newspapers at colleges across the country. Member papers of the Collegiate Network are eligible to receive technical and financial assistance as well as training opportunities through dedicated conferences and internships at national publications.

In a speech to the Heritage Foundation [date unknown], the ISI President, T. Kenneth Cribb Jr, stated "We must...provide resources and guidance to an elite which can take up anew the task of enculturation. Through its journals, lectures, seminars, books and fellowships, this is what ISI has done successfully for 36 years. The coming of age of such elites has provided the current leadership of the conservative revival. But we should add a major new component to our strategy: the conservative movement is now mature enough to sustain a counteroffensive on that last Leftist redoubt, the college campus...We are now strong enough to establish a contemporary presence for conservatism on campus, and contest the Left on its own turf. We plan to do this by greatly expanding the ISI field effort, its network of campus-based programming." 

In a Speech in 1996 Cribb optimistically reviewed the impact of groups such as ISI, the Young America's Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the Claremont Institute and the Acton Institute. "...An infrastructure now exists that was but a dream even three decades ago. Scholars, books, journals, seminars, reprints, tapes, fellowships, and similar resources are now available in abundance to provide intellectual substance for young minds. The plenitude is so great that the main problem is organizing what is available and bringing it to bear where needed," he said. 

Funding
ISI is a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization. The Capital Research Centre, a conservative group, states ISI's 1998 revenue - the most recent IRS return it reports on - as $4.7 million and a staff of 35. CRC reports that Eli Lilly & Co Foundation contributed $5,000 in each of 1995 and 1996.

Charity Navigator reports that for the year to March 2002, ISI's revenue was $6.1 million. .

At ISI's 50th anniversary celebration in late November 2003,Edwin J. Feulner, Jr., the Chairman of the ISI Board of Trustees and President of the Heritage Foundation enthusiastically reported on the dramatic growth in ISI's financial resources during Cribb's 14 year stint as President. "When he took the reigns as president in 1989, the Institute operated with an annual budget of about a million dollars. By 2001, the budget had grown to six million. During a downturn in the economy, a time when many other nonprofit organizations were slashing their budgets and their programs, ISI's budget has continued to grow, last year to eight million dollars, this year to a projected eleven million," Feulner said. 

"This budget growth has been accompanied by even faster program growth, including the launch of a new publishing imprint, ISI Books, the acquisition of the Collegiate Network of independent student newspapers, and a massive growth in the Institute's traditional membership, lecture, conference, and fellowship programs," Feulner said.

Media Transparency lists ISI as having received $13.3 million since 1985 with the dominant recent funders being the :
 * Sarah Scaife Foundation
 * Allegheny Foundation
 * Castle Rock Foundation
 * Earhart Foundation
 * Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
 * Between 2001 and 2010, the Foundation received more than $2 million from the conservative Bradley Foundation.
 * JM Foundation
 * John M. Olin Foundation
 * Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation
 * Philip M. McKenna Foundation

Personnel

 * T. Kenneth Cribb Jr is President of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. "Mr. Cribb was Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs in the Reagan Administration, serving as President Reagan's top advisor on domestic matters. Earlier in the Administration he held the position of Counselor to the Attorney General. He also served as Vice Chairman of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board from 1989 to 1992. He is President of the Collegiate Network, Inc., an association of independent college newspapers; Vice-President of the Council for National Policy; and Counselor to the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies," his biographical note on the ISI website states. According to the Capital Research Centre, Cribb was paid $292,311 as President in 1988.
 * H. Spencer Masloff, Jr. is Vice-President of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. "Mr. Masloff has managed ISI's Office of Development and Fundraising since 1989. Prior to working at ISI, he was Vice-President of marketing and development at Free Congress Foundation where he had also earlier served as director of development," his biographical note on the ISI website states.
 * Jeff J. Cain is Executive Vice President
 * Jeffrey O. Nelson is Vice-President, Publications and serves as publisher of ISI Books, the Institute's publishing imprint. "He was for ten years the editor of The Intercollegiate Review and is currently the editor of The University Bookman. He has edited two collections: Redeeming the Time, by Russell Kirk, and Perfect Sowing: Reflections of a Bookman, by Henry Regnery. He serves as the general editor of the Institute's "Student Guides to the Major Disciplines" series and the "Library of Modern Thinkers","his biographical note on the ISI website states.
 * Sarah Longwell, a public relations employee of lobbyist Rick Berman and the Center for Union Facts, is a press contact on some ISI news releases.
 * J. Bayard Boyle, Jr. is Chairman of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
 * Alfred S. Regnery is Vice Chairman
 * Merrill S. Moyer is Secretary-Treasurer
 * T. William Boxx Trustee is a Trustee

Alumni
ISI boasts that "outstanding" members of its alumni include:


 * Richard V. Allen, who according to the website, "was President Reagan's first National Security Adviser following his service as then-Governor Reagan's Chief Foreign Policy Adviser from 1977 to 1980. He had previously served in the Nixon Administration as a senior member of the National Security Council. Today, he is a Senior Fellow at the [Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace]] and serves as an international business consultant in Washington". He is also a member of ISI's Board of Trustees.


 * Edwin J. Feulner Jr is president of the Heritage Foundation. According to the ISI website "during the Reagan Administration he served in several key posts, including consultant for domestic policy and on the President's Commission on White House Fellows. In 1989, President Reagan conferred upon him the Presidential Citizen's Medal for his leadership in the conservative movement". Feulner is chairman of the ISI's board of trustees.


 * John F. Lehman Jr "served as Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan and oversaw the build-up of the American naval fleet in the 1980s. Today, he is chairman of J.F. Lehman & Company, a private equity investment corporation," according to the ISI website. "In 2001, Dr. Lehman was appointed to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States," his biographical note states.

Contact
Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc. 3901 Centerville Road P.O. Box 4431 Wilmington, DE 19807-0431 Phone: (800) 526-7022 or (302) 652-4600 Fax: (302) 652-1760 Email: info AT isi.org Web: http://www.isi.org

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Think tanks