ISI has almost always oriented itself from a traditional(ist) conservative perspective. And it does so with the virtues of liberality and courage.
Two former board members of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute launched an open letter attack on the president of ISI, Johnny Burtka, and tried to lump him in with the Fuentes controversy. They make a series of charges against ISI, claiming that it has abandoned its heritage and mission, stopped meaningfully contributing to education in liberty on campus, and made itself into a sectarian platform. Each of these charges is false.
Since Johnny Burtka has helmed ISI, I’ve done several student events for the collegiate network. Contrary to assertions made in public, these events were not sectarian. In a conference meant to train collegiate journalists, I was billed on one Collegiate Network Journalism workshop alongside veterans of the Weekly Standard. At another, I gave a speech on G. K. Chesterton, Bill Buckley, and Arthur Griffith as conservative journalists acting as subversives. And contrary to the implications made in public, ISI still places fellows at National Review. Bobby Miller was the last one, and he has gone on to do great work for The Dispatch — not exactly a home for illiberalism. For a year, I was privileged to be ISI’s William F. Buckley Scholar, and though I am out of the Buchananite tradition (on trade and foreign policy), the conservative tradition is a capacious one that contains our disagreements. In one memorable homecoming program, I remember my vigorous discussion with Michael Knowles about God and Man at Yale, with Professor Robert George gamely championing the liberal tradition of academic freedom that Buckley had begun his career questioning.
Modern Age under Burtka and the editorship of Daniel McCarthy has been absolutely revived. And this Modern Age is not an uncritical cheerleader of the new trends on the right, but intelligently probes and challenges them. In 2023, Phillip Blond criticized the post-liberal embrace of nationalism and championed universalism. Just this month, in the series of recorded conversations that supposedly started this controversy, Blond opened the proceedings, “I do not believe America, the America that you all want, can survive as an isolationist project.” I think Daniel McCarthy’s reflection on the complicated role of populism in our movement is a great example of the critical work that the right desperately needs.
I think the attack also misunderstands ISI’s mission. Previous editors of Modern Age included traditionalists like Russell Kirk and adventurous thinkers like Peter Lawler. ISI Books for many years published conservative classics, but also books that asked big questions about the Enlightenment, classical liberalism, etc. While the merit of any one panelist at any event could be challenged, ISI under Burtka has played its traditional(ist) role within the movement well, and responsibly. In an age without gatekeepers, Burtka has shown courage and judiciousness in bringing in thinkers that young conservatives are already reading and encountering, even in the New York Times.
ISI has almost always oriented itself from a traditional(ist) conservative perspective. And it does so with the virtues of liberality and courage. Students are hungry for our movement to engage them where they are. I think it’s a key institution in making sure these years are ones in which our tradition is repaired — in which the brain of the movement is rightly connected to the guts and spleen.