Rampart Institute

During the late 1970s, the driving personalities behind the establishment of Rampart Institute were Robert LeFevre, Kenneth Gregg, Jr., Lawrence Samuels, and Richard Deyo.

This push to create an educational think tank first came to fruition with the publication of two Santa Ana College speeches by Robert LeFevre in 1978 and 1979, and two booklets, Good Government: Hope or Illusion?

After obtaining 501(c) 3 non-profit status in 1981, Rampart Institute’s first elected president was libertarian historian Kenneth Gregg Jr. Its first executive director was writer Lawrence Samuels.

Some of the more noteworthy Executive Board members of Rampart Institute included author and objectivist George H. Smith; an owner of the Love Box Company, Robert D. Love; vice chairman of the board of Freedom Newspaper, Harry Hoiles; systems analyst Jane Heider; Los Angeles attorney Linda Abrams; writer and publisher Richard Radford; author and founder of Rampart College, Robert LeFevre; businessmen Dennison and Randall Smith; League of Women Non-Voters leader Caroline Roper-Deyo; bestselling author John Pugsley; and individual feminist Wendy McElroy.

One was a debate between Prof. David R. Henderson and Prof. Erika Weis McGrath in May 1993 at Monterey Peninsula College, entitled: “The 1980s: The Best of Times or the Worst of Times?”[7] A series of co-sponsored speeches focused on opposing the drug war, with speeches by former San Jose police chief Joseph McNamara, and Jack Herer, author of the underground bestseller The Emperor Wears No Clothes.

Robert LeFevre speech at the April 19, 1980 banquet to officially launch Rampart Institute.
Libertarian historian Kenneth Gregg Jr. was the first president of Rampart Institute.
LeFevre’s library, dubbed the “Wilder Lane Library” while at Rampart College in Colorado Springs, was sold in the late 1977s to a university in Texas.
Aerospace engineer Gary Hudson speaking at the first Freeland Conference (1983) sponsored mainly by Rampart Institute.
Libertarian feminist and author Wendy McElroy was an early board member of Rampart Institute.