Highbrow Conservative Organization Had Students Dine With Alex Jones

LEFT: Johnny Burtka (Screenshot) RIGHT: Alex Jones (Screenshot)

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), a highbrow educational organization for conservative students with a long history of intellectual activism, invited students to a dinner with Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones this past spring that its president, Johnny Burtka, described as being “unforgettable.”

According to a new report about the organization’s transformation under Burtka’s leadership from The Dispatch’s John McCormack and Michael Warren, ISI invited eight college students to an “exclusive retreat and dinner with Tucker Carlson” at Carlson’s home in southern Florida.

From McCormack and Warren’s story:

Founded nearly 75 years ago, ISI is a prominent conservative collegiate intellectual institution in the United States. ISI also runs the Collegiate Network, a collection of alternative conservative newspapers on college campuses across the country, and the eight student journalists had been selected by ISI to attend the retreat and dinner because their campus newspapers were top-performing publications. After a Journalism 101 session at the Art Ovation Hotel in Sarasota, the students filed into a shuttle for a 90-minute trip to Carlson’s home on Gasparilla Island, where Carlson dispensed career advice.

“Thanks to @TuckerCarlson for joining three generations of @amconmag editors/executive directors for a dinner with campus journalists from @ISI’s @collegiatenet,” ISI President Johnny Burtka posted on Twitter alongside a photo of himself, Carlson, then-Collegiate Network Executive Director Dan McCarthy, and The American Conservative editor Curt Mills. “It was an unforgettable evening that our students will cherish for years to come.”

One person left out of Burtka’s photo was Carlson’s special guest at the dinner that night: Alex Jones, who appeared on Carlson’s podcast that aired the next day, April 9.

ISI’s ties to Carlson — and through him, Jones — are especially notable given the recent blow-up at The Heritage Foundation over its president’s attacks on critics of Carlson, who recently conducted a friendly, softball interview with white nationalist leader Nick Fuentes.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” remarked Chris Long, one of Burtka’s predecessors, after being told about the meal with Jones.

Per McCormack and Warren’s reporting, Burtka also blacklisted conservative writer Kevin Williamson from ISI events over ideological difference, and promoted Curtis Yarvin, an explicitly authoritarian political thinker who has admitted to not being “allergic” to white nationalism.

Long and former ISI board chairman Thomas Lynch resigned from the board after a failed attempt at ousting Burtka last month.