The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace within Stanford University is a public policy research center devoted to advanced study of politics, economics, and political economy—both domestic and foreign—as well as international affairs.

Founded in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who later became the thirty-first president of the United States, the Institution originated as a specialized collection of documents on the causes and consequences of World War I. The collection grew rapidly and soon became one of the largest archives and most complete libraries in the world devoted to political, economic, and social change in the twentieth century.

By the late 1940s, the richness of the collection had led to the recruitment of scholars to use the documents in their work. Expanding its agenda to include specific research endeavors led to a vast accumulation of knowledge, and the Hoover Institution became one of the first and most distinguished academic centers in the United States dedicated to public policy research.

Today, with its world-renowned group of scholars and ongoing programs of policy-oriented research, the Hoover Institution puts its accumulated knowledge to work as a prominent contributor to the world marketplace of ideas defining a free society.

The principles of individual, economic, and political freedom; private enterprise; and representative government were fundamental to the vision of the Institution’s founder. By collecting knowledge, generating ideas, and disseminating both, the Institution seeks to secure and safeguard peace, improve the human condition, and limit government intrusion into the lives of individuals.

The Institution’s overarching purposes are:

• To collect the requisite sources of knowledge pertaining to economic, political, and social changes in societies at home and abroad, as well as to understand their causes and consequences

• To analyze the effects of government actions relating to public policy

• To generate, publish, and disseminate ideas that encourage positive policy formation using reasoned arguments and intellectual rigor, converting conceptual insights into practical initiatives judged to be beneficial to society

• To convey to the public, the media, lawmakers, and others an understanding of important public policy issues and to promote vigorous dialogue

Download Hoover Institution: An Introduction

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Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace
Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305– 6010
Phone: 650.723.1754
Fax: 650.723.1687
E-mail: publicaffairs@hoover.stanford.edu
Web: www.hoover.org

“This Institution supports the Constitution of the United States, its Bill of Rights, and its method of representative government. Both our social and economic systems are based on private enterprise from which springs initiative and ingenuity....Ours is a system where the Federal Government should undertake no governmental, social or economic action, except where local government, or the people, cannot undertake it for themselves....

The overall mission of this Institution is, from its records, 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.

This Institution is not, and must not be, a mere library. But with these purposes as its goal, the Institution itself must constantly and dynamically point the road to peace, to personal freedom, and to the safeguards of the American system.”

— HERBERT HOOVER, FOUNDER

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