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]
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 University'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as the Hoover War Library, now known as the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, and includes a variety of rare and unpublished material, including the files of the Okhrana and a plurality of government documents produced during the war.[17][18] It was housed originally in the Stanford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 World War I, including 1.4 million items and too large to house in the Stanford University Library, so the university allocated $600,000 for the construction of the Hoover Tower, which was designed 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, its current name.[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]
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.[25] 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.[26] 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 the end of an era.[27] Raisan served as director until 2015, and was succeeded by Thomas W. Gilligan.[28]
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.[30]
At any given time, as of 2017, 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.[31]
The Trump administration maintained relations with the institution during his presidency, and several Hoover employees became senior advisors or were hired for jobs in his administration, including Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis, who was the Davies Family Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Hoover from 2013 to 2016, where he studied leadership, national security, strategy, innovation, and the effective use of military force.[32]
In March 2019, Mattis returned to his post at Hoover.[33] 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.[34]
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.[35]
In November 2020, Scott Atlas, a Hoover fellow, was known for opposing public health measures as a major Trump advisor during the COVID-19 pandemic, and was condemned by a Stanford University faculty vote in November 2020.[36]
In January 2021, 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 World War I and World War II, including the collection of documents of President Herbert Hoover, which he began to collect at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.[37] 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.[38]
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.[39]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.[40]
In May 2018, the Hoover Institution's website listed 198 fellows. Fellowship appointments do not require the approval of Stanford tenure committees.[43]
Below is a list of directors and some of the more prominent fellows, former and current.
^Val Burris. "The interlock structure of the policy-planning network and the right turn in U.S. state policy" In Politics and Public Policy (March 2015) pp. 3-42.
^"Research". Hoover Institution. Retrieved June 20, 2022.
^Duignan, Peter (2001). "The Library of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. Part 1: Origin and Growth". Library History. 17: 3–20. doi:10.1179/lib.2001.17.1.3. S2CID144635878.
^Duignan, Peter (2001). "The Library of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. Part 2: The Campbell Years". Library History. 17 (2): 107–118. doi:10.1179/lib.2001.17.2.107. S2CID144451652.
^See "Former Secretary Of Defense, General Jim Mattis, US Marine Corps (Ret.), Returns To The Hoover Institution At Stanford University" online press release March 19, 2019.
^See "Hoover Institution Board of Overseers Holds Meetings in Washington, DC, Featuring Senior Trump Administration Officials" News from the Hoover Institution February 24, 2020 online
^Wooster, Martin Morse (2017). How Great Philanthropists Failed and You Can Succeed at Protecting Your Legacy. USA: Capital Research Center. p. 201. ISBN978-1892934048.
Duignan, Peter. "The Library of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace Part I. Origin and Growth." Library History 17.1 (2001): 3-20.
Dwyer, Joseph D., ed. Russia, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe: A Survey of Holdings at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace (Hoover Press, 1980) online.
Kiester, Sally Valente. "New Influence for Stanford's Hoover Institution." Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 13.7 (1981): 46-50. online, on role in Reagan administration
Palm, Charles G., and Dale Reed. Guide to the Hoover Institution Archives (Hoover Press, 1980) online.
Paul, Gary Norman. "The Development of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace Library, 1919–1944". PhD dissertation U. of California, Berkeley. Dissertation Abstracts International 1974 35(3): 1682–1683a, 274 pp.
Reed, Dale, and Michael Jakobson. "Trotsky Papers at the Hoover Institution: One Chapter of an Archival Mystery Story." American Historical Review 92.2 (1987): 363-375. online
Scott, Erik R. Defining Moments: The First One Hundred Years of the Hoover Institution (2019) online book review
