IES United States officially launches its national chapter

The Interscholastic Ethics Society today announced the formal establishment of IES United States, the organization's American branch and its third national body after Korea and the United Kingdom. The launch marks the most significant expansion in the Society's history since its founding in April 2023, and opens membership to secondary students in all fifty states.

IES was founded on a simple conviction: that the habits of ethical reasoning are learned not in isolation but in company. Where debate rewards victory and coursework rewards recall, IES chapters are designed to reward something rarer — the willingness to state a principle, submit it to challenge, and revise it in public without embarrassment. The American branch inherits that method intact.

In practice, that means a national program built on four pillars: structured ethical dialogue at the chapter level, intergenerational exchange with practitioners who have carried consequential decisions, service work that grounds abstraction in obligation, and written scholarship that holds student thinking to a standard of evidence and clarity.

The national chapter will operate through regional chapters chartered at individual high schools, each led by students and supported by a national officer corps. Founding chapters are already active across the Southeast, the Northeast, the West Coast, and the Central states, with Mid-Atlantic and Pacific Northwest chapters in formation.

“Ethics is not a subject to be examined once and set aside. It is a practice — rehearsed in public, among peers, until it becomes character.”

Governance for the American branch sits with a student presidency, supported by a senior advisory council drawn from education, the military, and the founding leadership of the IES Global Foundation. The structure is deliberate: students set the agenda, and advisors hold it to account.

Chapter charters for the 2026–27 academic year are open to student leaders in grades nine through twelve. The national team reviews applications on a rolling basis and provides founding chapters with curriculum, facilitation training, and direct support from regional leadership.