The Hoover Institution remains at the forefront of generating ideas guided by the principles that our founder Herbert Hoover articulated when citing the Institution’s mission.
Letter from the Director & Chair
Eighty years ago, America stood at the apex of its power. From the dust of Nazi Germany’s and Imperial Japan’s defeat, we were tasked with the enormous responsibility of preventing our emerging rival, the Soviet Union, from rebuilding Europe and Asia in its image. Our country spearheaded a suite of institutions and ideals that ushered in worldwide prosperity and kept the world’s major militaries from direct conflict with one another.
In 2025, the postwar global order finds itself awash in rapid change. America still remains at the center of this new, but less predictable, global economic and security commons, which has diverged significantly from what existed at the end of World War II. In the arenas of global trade, national security, technology, scientific research, and foreign aid, many of the rules and norms we established together with nations that shared our values are being rewritten.
This moment requires expertise, research, and clear insights to understand what is happening, and to guide us on our path to shaping what will replace it.
This is where Hoover comes in. Through a large range of initiatives, the Hoover Institution remains at the forefront of generating ideas guided by the principles that our founder Herbert Hoover articulated when citing the Institution’s mission: advancing personal freedom, pursuing peace, and upholding America’s system of free enterprise and representative government.
Across the Institution, our scholars are working to answer what this reshaping of the global order means for us, and how to navigate this turbulence and deepen our commitment to a stronger union ahead of our nation’s 250th birthday next year.
To accomplish this monumental task, our fellows are more active than ever in conducting research and advancing policy ideas to bolster K–12 education, the study of history, and America’s institutions. They are working across disciplines to understand the issues and consider prescriptions, unrestrained by the assumptions that guided the previous order. We also continue to recruit brilliant minds from across America and the wider world to join the ranks of our prestigious fellowship. This past year, China historian Frank Dikötter and historian of antiquity Barry Strauss joined Hoover as senior fellows.
Perhaps the area of greatest risk and opportunity is the rapid change underway with frontier technologies and the advancement of AI. Both the scope and pace of this change are profound, and it is crucial that we move fast to realize the promises of new technologies for medicine, education, economic productivity, and national security.
At the same time, we are in a technological arms race with China, with high stakes: America is the only free society on earth that can both win the race in technologies like AI and achieve this aim responsibly.
Facing such an important competition, Hoover has established several new efforts to guide policymakers and business leaders to success. We are uniquely positioned within Stanford University and Silicon Valley to speak to the strengths of our distinctive American innovation ecosystem. This includes underscoring the crucial importance of universities in performing fundamental scientific research—and the need to safeguard that asset. Further, with the speed of technological change, policymaking often emanates as much from the private sector and labs as it does from Washington, DC.
At Hoover, we are fortunate to have the eminent scholars, bolstered by our renowned Library & Archives, to deeply consider the questions posed by this moment, and to shape where America goes from here. We are committed, as scholars and as citizens, to advancing policies that would make America and the world more prosperous, secure, and free.
Your involvement is fundamental to this cause. Through your generous support, you reaffirm the promise of the Hoover Institution as a bastion of serious thought and principled action in support of a freer society and a more perfect union. Your commitment allows our scholars to rigorously pursue research of the highest caliber, convene distinguished leaders, and mentor not only policymakers but also the next generation of thinkers and doers.
