Noah Torres

Noah Torres was a student at the University of Dallas when he became an intern at RFI in the fall of 2020. After a faculty member at his university suggested he intern with RFI, Torres began to research the Institute and its mission. “I found that it presented an opportunity for me to practically contribute to understanding and promoting the role of religion in public life, which is something I had primarily focused on in the confines of the academy.”

Noah actually interacted with RFI on three separate occasions. He was an intern in fall of 2020 where he gathered research for the medical conscience rights initiative including a lengthy report on the status of medical conscience rights in South Dakota. He was also a participant in the Statesmanship and Religious Freedom Conference held in the United Kingdom during the summer of 2022. Finally, he was a contracted collaborator on the Virtues curriculum jointly developed by the Islam and Religious Freedom Action team and the National Center for Religious Freedom Education. On this final element, Noah observed that “while I never sat in front of a classroom or communicated with actual students, I had the opportunity to help shape and influence students’ perspectives on the role of religion in public life by synthesizing my own knowledge with that of the sources curated by RFI.”

Noah recently completed writing his master’s thesis, entitled The Conscience as an Ecclesio-Legal Entity in the Making of Early Modern Christendom: Vitoria, Bellarmine, and Botero and the Transformation of Juristic, Ecclesial, and Political Thought and Practice. With this phase of his graduate study complete, he has resumed preparation for the LSAT, hoping to one day establish a career in administrative law.  He notes that no matter the topic, religious freedom principles almost always influence his perspective on a topic, a fact that he attributes to his time at RFI.