Abbreviation | Hoover |
---|---|
Formation | June 1919 |
Founder | Herbert Hoover |
Type | Public policy think tank |
Legal status | 501(c)(3) public charity |
Purpose | Public policy research in economics, history, and national security. |
Professional title | The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace |
Location |
|
Coordinates | 37°26′N122°10′W / 37.43°N 122.17°W |
Director | Condoleezza Rice |
Parent organization | Stanford University |
Subsidiaries | Hoover Institution Press Hoover Institution Library and Archives Uncommon Knowledge Battlegrounds Defining Ideas Hoover Digest |
Revenue (2023) | $104.6 million [1] |
Expenses (2023) | $93.2 million [1] |
Endowment | $782 million |
Award(s) | National Humanities Medal |
Website | www |
Formerly called | Hoover War Collection |
This article is part of a series on |
Conservatism in the United States |
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The Hoover Institution (officially The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace) is an American public policy think tank which promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, and limited government. [2] [3] [4] While the institution is formally a unit of Stanford University, it maintains an independent board of overseers and relies on its own income and donations. [5] [6] [7] It is widely described as conservative, although its directors have contested the idea that it is partisan. [3] [2] [5] [8] [9]
The institution began in 1919 as a library founded by Stanford alumnus Herbert Hoover prior to his presidency in order to house his archives gathered during the Great War. [10] The well-known Hoover Tower was built to house the archives, then known as the Hoover War Collection (now the Hoover Institution Library and Archives), and contained material related to World War I, World War II, and other global events. The collection was renamed and transformed into a research institution ("think tank") during the mid-20th century. Its mission, as described by Herbert Hoover in 1959, is "to recall the voice of experience against the making of war, and by the study of these records and their publication, to recall man's endeavors to make and preserve peace, and to sustain for America the safeguards of the American way of life." [11]
It has staffed numerous jobs in Washington for Republican presidents from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump. [12] It has provided work for people who previously had important government jobs. Notable Hoover fellows and alumni include Nobel Prize laureates Henry Kissinger, Milton Friedman, and Gary Becker; economist Thomas Sowell; scholars Niall Ferguson and Richard Epstein; former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich; and former Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis. In 2020, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice became the institution's director. It divides its fellows into separate research teams to work on various subjects, including Economic Policy, History, Education, and Law. [13] It publishes research by its own university press, the Hoover Institution Press. [14]
In 2021, Hoover was ranked as the 10th most influential think tank in the world by Academic Influence . [15] It was ranked 22nd on the "Top Think Tanks in United States" and 1st on the "Top Think Tanks to Look Out For" lists of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program that same year. [16]
In June 1919, Herbert Hoover, then a wealthy engineer who was one of Stanford's first graduates, sent a telegram offering Stanford president Ray Lyman Wilbur $50,000 in order to assist the collection of primary materials related to World War I, a project that became known as the Hoover War Collection. Assisted primarily by gifts from private donors, the Hoover War Collection flourished during its early years. In 1922, the collection became known as the Hoover War Library (now the Hoover Institution Library and Archives) and had collected a variety of rare and unpublished material, including the files of the Okhrana, as well as a plurality of government documents. [17] [18] It was housed originally in the Stanford Library, separate from the general stacks. In his memoirs, Hoover wrote:
I did a vast amount of reading, mostly on previous wars, revolutions, and peace-makings of Europe and especially the political and economic aftermaths. At one time I set up some research at London, Paris, and Berlin into previous famines in Europe to see if there had developed any ideas on handling relief and pestilence. ... I was shortly convinced that gigantic famine would follow the present war. The steady degeneration of agriculture was obvious. ... I read in one of Andrew D. White's writings that most of the fugitive literature of comment during the French Revolution was lost to history because no one set any value on it at the time, and that without such material it became very difficult or impossible to reconstruct the real scene. Therein lay the origins of the Library on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. [19]
By 1926, the Hoover War Library was the largest library in the world devoted to the Great War. It contained 1.4 million items and was becoming too large to house in the Stanford Library so the university allocated $600,000 for the construction of the Hoover Tower, which was to be its permanent home independent of the Stanford Library system. The 285-foot tall tower was completed in 1941 on date of the university's golden jubilee. [20] [21] The tower has since been a well-recognized part of the Stanford campus. [22]
In 1956, former President Hoover, in conjunction with the Institution and Library, began a major fundraising campaign that transitioned the organization to its current form as a research institution as well as archive. In 1957, the Hoover Institution and Library was renamed the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace—the name it has presently. [23] In 1959 Stanford's Board of Trustees officially established the Hoover Institution as "an independent institution within the frame of Stanford University". [18] In 1960, W. Glenn Campbell was appointed director and substantial budget increases soon resulted in corresponding increases in acquisitions and related research projects. In particular, the Chinese and Russian collections grew considerably. Despite student unrest during the 1960s, the institution continued to develop closer relations with Stanford University. [24]
From the presidency of Richard Nixon (1969-1974) to that of Donald Trump (2017-2021), the Institute has provided a working environment for conservative experts. [25] [26] [27]
In 1975, Ronald Reagan, who was Governor of California at that time, was designated as Hoover's first honorary fellow. He donated his gubernatorial papers to the Hoover library. [28] During that time the Hoover Institution had a general budget of $3.5 million a year. In 1976, one third of Stanford University's book holdings were housed at the Hoover library. At that time, it was the largest private archive collection in the United States. [22] For his presidential campaign in 1980, Reagan engaged at least thirteen Hoover scholars to assist the campaign in multiple capacities. [29] After Reagan won the election, more than thirty current or former Hoover Institution fellows worked for the Reagan administration in 1981. [22]
In 1989, Campbell retired as director of Hoover and replaced by John Raisian, a change that was considered as the end of an era. [30] Raisan served as director until 2015, and was succeeded by Thomas W. Gilligan. [31]
George W. Bush administration (2001–2009)
Senior fellow Condoleezza Rice served as Bush's National Security Advisor (2001–2005) and as Secretary of State (2005–2009). President George W. Bush awarded the National Humanities Medal to the Hoover Institution in 2006. [32]
The Trump administration maintained friendly relations with the institution and multiple Hoover affiliates became senior advisors or were hired for major jobs in government. Trump selected as Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis, who was the Davies Family Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Hoover 2013-2016, where he studied leadership, national security, strategy, innovation, and the effective use of military force. [33] In 2019 Mattis returned to his post at Hoover. [34] Distinguished Visiting Fellow Kevin Hassett became the first chairman of Trump's Council of Economic Advisors (CEA). The CEA chief principal economist, Josh Rauh, took leave from his Hoover Institution fellowship. After the third CEA chairman Tyler Goodspeed resigned in 2021, he went to Hoover. [35] Scott Atlas, a Hoover fellow, was known for opposing public health measures as a major Trump advisor during the COVID-19 pandemic; he was condemned by a Stanford University faculty vote. [36] In February, 2020, the Hoover board of trustees brought in senior Trump economic officials for off-the-record forecasts. According to the New York Times: "The president’s aides appeared to be giving wealthy party donors an early warning of a potentially impactful contagion at a time when Mr. Trump was publicly insisting that the threat was nonexistent." The board members spread the bad news and the stock market had a selloff. [37]
In August 2017 the David and Joan Traitel Building was inaugurated. The ground floor is a conference facility with a 400-seat auditorium and the top floor houses the Hoover Institution's headquarters. [38]
In 2020, Condoleezza Rice succeeded Thomas W. Gilligan as director. [31]
At any given time the Hoover Institution has as many as 200 resident scholars known as Fellows. They are an interdisciplinary group studying political science, education, economics, foreign policy, energy, history, law, national security, health and politics. Some have joint appointments as lecturers on the Stanford faculty. [39]
During Stanford University faculty senate discussions on closer collaboration between the university and the Institution in 2021, Rice "addressed campus criticism that the Hoover Institution is a partisan think tank that primarily supports conservative administrations and policy positions" by sharing "statistics that show Hoover fellows contribute financially to both political parties on an equal basis", according to the university's newsletter. [5]
The Institution has libraries which include materials from both the First World War and Second World War, including the collection of documents of President Hoover, which he began to collect at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. [40] Thousands of Persian books, official documents, letters, multimedia pieces and other materials on Iran's history, politics and culture can also be found at the Stanford University library and the Hoover Institution library. [41]
The Hoover Institution's in-house publisher, Hoover Institution Press, produces publications on public policy topics, including the quarterly periodicals Hoover Digest, Education Next, China Leadership Monitor, and Defining Ideas. The Hoover Institution Press previously published the bimonthly periodical Policy Review , which it acquired from The Heritage Foundation in 2001. [42] Policy Review ceased publication with its February–March 2013 issue.
The Hoover Institution Press also publishes books and essays by Hoover Institution fellows and other Hoover-affiliated scholars.
The Hoover Institution receives nearly half of its funding from private gifts, primarily from individual contributions, and the other half from its endowment. [43]
Funders of the organization include the Taube Family Foundation, the Koret Foundation, the Howard Charitable Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Walton Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the William E. Simon Foundation. [44]
Funding sources and expenditures, FY 2022 [45]
In May 2018, the Hoover Institution's website listed 198 fellows. Fellowship appointments do not require the approval of Stanford tenure committees. [46]
Below is a list of directors and some of the more prominent fellows, former and current.
Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social philosopher, and political commentator. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. With widely published commentary and books—and as a guest on TV and radio—he became a well-known voice in the American conservative movement as a prominent black conservative. He was a recipient of the National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush in 2002.
The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is a graduate school of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington, D.C. with campuses in Bologna, Italy and Nanjing, China.
Peter Berkowitz is an American political scientist and legal scholar. He served as the Director of Policy Planning at the United States Department of State. He currently serves as the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
The School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) is the international affairs and public policy school of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university located in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York City. It is consistently ranked as one of the leading graduate schools for international relations in the world. SIPA offers Master of International Affairs (MIA) and Master of Public Administration (MPA) degrees in a range of fields, as well as the Executive MPA and PhD program in Sustainable Development.
Henry Stanislaus Rowen was an American national security expert, economist, and academician.
Bruce M. Owen is an economist and author. Owen is the Morris M. Doyle Professor in Public Policy, Emeritus, in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, and the Gordon Cain Senior Fellow, Emeritus, in Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research.
Michael Anthony McFaul is an American academic and diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. McFaul is currently the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor in International Studies in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University, where he is the Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also a Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also a contributing columnist at The Washington Post. Prior to his nomination to the ambassadorial position, McFaul worked for the U.S. National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and senior director of Russian and Eurasian affairs, where he was the architect of U.S. President Barack Obama's Russian reset policy.
George Pratt Shultz was an American economist, businessman, diplomat and statesman. He served in various positions under two different Republican presidents and is one of the only two persons to have held four different Cabinet-level posts, the other being Elliot Richardson. Shultz played a major role in shaping the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration.
Michael Robert Auslin is an American writer, policy analyst, historian, and scholar of Asia. He is currently the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a Senior Fellow in the Asia and National Security Programs at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and a senior fellow at London's Policy Exchange. He was formerly an associate professor at Yale University and a resident scholar and director of Japanese studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
The Hayek Lecture is hosted annually by the Institute of Economic Affairs in memory of Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek.
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy is the graduate school of international affairs of Tufts University, in Medford, Massachusetts. Fletcher is one of America's oldest graduate schools of international relations and is well-ranked in its masters and doctoral programs. As of 2017, the student body numbered around 230, of whom 36 percent were international students from 70 countries, and around a quarter were U.S. minorities. The school's alumni network numbers over 9,500 in 160 countries, and includes foreign heads of state, ambassadors, diplomats, foreign ministers, high-ranking military officers, heads of nonprofit organizations, and corporate executives.
Middle Eastern Americans are Americans of Middle Eastern background. This includes people whose background is from the various Middle Eastern and West Asian ethnic groups, such as the Kurds and Assyrians, as well as immigrants from modern-day countries of the Arab world, Iran, Israel, Turkey, and Armenia.
James M. Goldgeier is a professor of international relations at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C., where he served as dean from 2011 to 2017.
Kiron Kanina Skinner is a former Director of Policy Planning at the United States Department of State in the Trump administration. Skinner is presently the Taube Professor of International Relations and Politics at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy, where she teaches graduate courses in national security and public leadership. Prior to that, she was the Taube Professor of International Relations and Politics at Carnegie Mellon University, and the founding director of the Institute for Politics and Strategy and associated centers at the university. She is also the W. Glenn Campbell Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. After leaving the Department of State, she returned to her position at Carnegie Mellon University until stepping down in 2021.