Collecting the top stories of 2014 from the Hoover website provides a unique snapshot of the year, for the stories reflect the year’s major themes as well as the breadth of Hoover fellows’ analysis, commentary, and thought leadership on key issues.
Hoover fellows continued to address salient global challenges with their cutting-edge research, using new outreach initiatives to educate the widest possible audience. Senior Fellow Caroline Hoxby and Research Fellow Abbas Milani discussed their work at the prestigious conference TEDxStanford; watch Milani’s talk online at the TEDxStanford website.
The Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order released a new essay series entitled The Great Unraveling: The Remaking of the Middle East. The essays, available as individual books from the Hoover Press, are a reflection on the postdictatorship chaos of the Arab Spring and the new history of the Middle East, an apt subject for a year that saw the rise of ISIS and the continued decay of most of the region.
Another collaborative project was Game Changers: Energy on the Move, a new book by the Hoover Institution’s Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative. In addition to the book, the teams established a Game Changers website that provides information about potential energy technologies in a format accessible to a broad audience.
Hoover senior fellow John Taylor also taught his first online course this year on introductory economics, making Stanford history with the first massive online class using Stanford course materials available to the public and to students for Stanford course credits.
In addition, Hoover launched two new research teams this year: the Working Group on Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Prosperity (IP2), which was inaugurated with a two-day conference on patents and the innovation economy, and the Conte Initiative on Immigration Reform, which releases the bimonthly online journal Peregrine.
Workshops and special guests spoke to the issues facing the world in the past, 2014, and beyond. In December 2013, Senior Fellow Michael Boskin organized a conference commemorating NAFTA’s twentieth anniversary, looking back on NAFTA’s establishment, accomplishments, and future. Videos from the sessions at the conference were made available to the public in April 2014, and the page was one of the most visited on the Hoover website this year.
Senior Fellow John Taylor organized a conference on the past, present, and future of central banking to commemorate the centennial of the US Federal Reserve that was well attended by academic economists, policy makers, and distinguished members of the media.
Gary Becker, a Hoover Senior Fellow, Nobel laureate, and renowned economist passed away this year. In his honor, the Hoover Institution organized a conference on inequality, a subject arguably the dominant economic theme of 2014.
This year also saw the economy slowly begin to recover from the 2008 financial crisis, but the debate as to why and how the financial crisis happened continues as strongly as ever. In the fall of 2013, the Hoover Institution and the Brookings Institution held a joint conference on the causes of the financial crisis, ultimately compiling the presentations into a book entitled Across the Great Divide. With the release of the book, John Taylor and his coauthor Martin Neil Baily gave a talk on the similarities and disagreements in those presentations.
As the economy inches up, and United States struggles to maintain its global economic dominance, the Hoover Institution in Washington hosted a forum on innovation and economic growth, featuring John Taylor, Stanford University president John Hennessy, Congressman Paul Ryan, and Bloomberg Television host Al Hunt.
The education debate continues: How to improve teaching quality? How to provide education to the burgeoning middle class around the world? How to ensure the economic and educational opportunities for future American students? Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, spoke to the Koret Task Force about the emergence of technology in education and how it could answer some of these questions at the Blended Learning Conference.
On the topic of technology, what issues cyberspace poses for the intelligence community was discussed at the intelligence challenges workshop, the first annual congressional cyber boot camp, and at a special talk with Hoover senior fellow Amy Zegart and General Michael Hayden entitled “Inside the NSA.”
While not all of our distinguished visitors came for a formal talk or conference, their visits garnered attention and touched on the emerging crises of 2014. Our Leadership Forum hosted Congressman Michael McCaul; the discussion ranged from ISIS to border security to innovation in Silicon Valley.
Congressman Paul Ryan also visited Hoover for a special book talk for his newly released The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea. With John Taylor, Ryan discussed the economic challenges facing the nation and possible policy solutions.
Hoover as an institution has continued to facilitate access to the research of its fellows and to the materials from its renowned Library & Archives, most notably with the launch of a new website for both the think tank and the Library & Archives.
The Library & Archives also continue to collect important papers and media to preserve and archive for future generations; stories detailing the new collections are released several times per month. The most popular stories from 2014 included the opening of former secretary of state Warren Christopher’s papers at the archives and the release of a Japanese-language documentary that featured footage of atom bombs exploding over Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the Harold Melvin Agnew motion picture film collection at Hoover, as well as footage of the Hoover Archives.
Finally, Hoover mourned the loss of three fellows this year: Gary Becker, Fouad Ajami, and Joseph McNamara. While their intellectual contributions to the Institution and society will live on, their presence and continued work will be greatly missed.
Indeed, this year has been full and varied. Thank you for being a dedicated visitor to the Hoover website in 2014; visit next year for more news and events from hoover.org.
