Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace Generates Ideas, Many Distinctly Conservative by John Shaw In the United States, presidential election returns are reported to the country from east to west. Polls close first in the East Coast and then the results from more westerly time zones come in. But the political ideas that drive these results often move across the country in the opposite directionówest to east. California is the place where important political trends often originate. Despite its reputation for being the incubator of liberal views, California has been at the vanguard of ideas from all ideological variations. The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peaceóa public policy research centeróhas generated important ideas over recent decades that defy easy ideological characterization. Many, but not all, are of a distinctly conservative nature. Nestled in a corner of Stanford Universityís stunningly beautiful campus in California, the Hoover Institution has been the home of large ideas and important people for more than 75 years. Hooverís current roster of scholars includes such luminaries as former Secretary of State George Shul tz, Milton Friedman and Gary Becker, two Nobel laureates in economics, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. It is also the home of two important members of the Bush administration who are currently on leave from Hoover: Undersecretary for International Affairs at the Treasury Department John Taylor and Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser in President Bushís first term and secretary of state in his second term. Rice had several fellowships at Hoover and used it as her intellectual home to write books and essays, sit on corporate boards and foundations, and advise the 2000 presidential campaign of then Texas Gov. George W. Bush. David Brady, an associate director at Hoover, said the research center focuses on important ideas with long-term impact rather than the issue of the day. ìThe think tanks in Washington have to be on the Hill all the time. We donít do that because we are a long way from Washington, and weíre at a major research institution. Weíre able to take a long-term perspective on issues. Our impact is more in the medium of ideas,î Brady said. ìHoover has a tradition of big ideas and people who can move from the world of academia to the world of governance,î he added. Brady said some of the big ideas that have germinated at Hoover include the flat tax, which has intrigued recently independent countries from the former Soviet Union and several nations in Eastern Europe. It will also be part of the coming debate on tax reform in the United States. Brady noted that in the 1980s several Hoover scholars challenged the conventional wisdom that the Russian economy was strong and poised for robust growth in the coming years. He said Hoover continues to generate provocative ideas on such crucial issues as globalization, outsourcing, the spread of democracy, education reform, terrorism, and international political and security challenges. The Hoover Institution was conceived and built by Herbert Hooverówell before he served as the U.S. secretary of commerce and later as the 31st U.S. president. During a trip to Europe in 1914 on a humanitarian mission, Hoover was intrigued when he read one historianís lament about the difficulty of studying the French Revolution after war, revolution and the passage of time had destroyed important documentary materials. Stimulated by this idea, Hoover decided to collect and preserve the records of the Great War. An alumnus of Stanford University, he gave $50,000 to the university in 1919 for a project to collect documents related to World War I. The first batch of collections covered the war, the revolutionary upheavals of 1918 to 1919, and the emergence of new states after the Versailles peace conference. The Hoover War Library, as it was first called, gathered information on post-war reconstruction, the League of Nations and the Leagueís mandates in the Middle East and Africa. By 1921, Hooverís collection contained more than 80,000 items of primary source material. Later in the decade, Hoover began working with the Rockefeller Foundation to launch a systematic effort to assemble documents on the Soviet Union. By the late 1940s, the richness of the collection at the Hoover Library led to the recruitment of scholars who would use the documents in their work. The Hoover collection became one of the largest archives and most complete libraries in the world devoted to political, economic and social change. It also became one of the first academic centers in the United States dedicated to public policy research. For a quarter of a century, the Hoover Institution was led by W. Glenn Campbell, a strong conservative, powerful fundraiser and shrewd institution builder, who envisioned Hoover as a major conservative voice in public policy circles. Campbell is credited with turning a library and archive at Stanford into a major research center. Among other things, he forged a close tie between the Hoover Institution and Ronald Reagan, who served as governor of California from 1967 to 1975 before he was elected president in 1980. Reagan was named an honorary fellow at Hoover and gave several testimonials about the research center. Reagan also called on Hoover scholars to work with his administration in Washington. A number of former Reagan administration officials are affiliated with Hoover, such as Richard Allen, Edwin Meese, Martin Anderson, Peter Robinson and James Miller. John Raisian took over as acting director of Hoover in 1989 and has been running it ever since. Hoover, in its current form, is a public policy research center devoted to the advanced study of politics, economics and political economy as well as international relations. It is formally independent but operates within Stanfordís governance structure. Hoover has an annual budget of $31 million and an endowment of $275 million. It has about 100 resident fellows, including 70 senior fellows. A number of these also teach at Stanford. It also has about 12 visiting fellows and hosts about 80 media fellows every year. The institution is committed to the principles of individual, economic and political freedom, private enterprise, and representative government. It sees its mission as contributing to the world marketplace of ìideas defining a free society.î It pursues this goal by collecting important documents about economic, political and social changes in the United States and abroad; analyzing the effects of government actions relating to public policy; generating, publishing and disseminating ideas that encourage prudent policy formulation; and offering education on public policy issues. The Hoover Library has more than 1.6 million volumes, and the archives contain more than 50 million documents. It has unrivaled collections on the Russian and Chinese revolutions, and since 1989 has collected important documents from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It has also been microfilming the archives of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. Hooverís library and archives attract 7,000 researchers from 40 different countries each year. Hooverís research is focused on programmatic themes such as American institutions and economic performance, democracy and free markets, and international rivalries and global cooperation. It has ambitious projects under way on American public education, property rights and the rule of law, national security challenges, the transition to democratic capitalism, the accountability of government to society, capital formation, tax policy and economic growth. Hoover disseminates its research with a broad communications strategy. It has a publishing unit that publishes books and essays, its scholars write nearly 600 opinion essays, and the institution publishes several important journals such as Education Next and Policy Review. Hoover also produces a television show that runs on 60 Public Broadcasting System stations called ìUncommon Knowledge.î John Shaw is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.