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About

About

The Human Security Program (HSP) is designed to generate actionable insights into how authoritarian regimes sustain power and how those systems can be challenged to advance liberty. Autocratic governments have adapted and learned from one another, developing increasingly sophisticated approaches to undermine representative government and export coercive models of control. In response, movements that advocate for representative government, liberty, freedom, and rule of law must evolve and adapt. Yet the study of how repressive regimes operate and the strategies most effective in challenging the mechanisms of authoritarian control remains fragmented. HSP consolidates historical lessons, supports practical research, and cultivates strategic thinking aimed at loosening authoritarian control and strengthening the forces of liberty and freedom.

At its core, HSP develops and refines strategies that enable pro-democracy movements to counter authoritarian control and expand political freedom. The program combines academic and practitioner analysis, coalition building among stakeholders, and experiential learning to test and sharpen the effectiveness of these strategies in real-world conditions.

Leadership
H.R. McMaster

H.R. McMaster

Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow

H.R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is also the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. 

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Guoguang Wu

Guoguang Wu

Senior Research Scholar, Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions

Guoguang Wu is a Senior Research Scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, Stanford University. His research specializes in Chinese politics and comparative political economy, including, in China studies, elite politics, national political institutions and policy making mechanisms, transition from communism, the politics of development, and China’s search for its position in the world, and, in comparative political economy, transition of capitalism with globalization, the birth of capitalism in comparative perspectives, the worldwide rise of the economic state, and the emergence of human security on global agenda.

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Matt Pottinger

Matt Pottinger

Distinguished Visiting Fellow

Matt Pottinger is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.  Pottinger served the White House for four years in senior roles on the National Security Council staff, including as deputy national security advisor from 2019 to 2021. In that role, he coordinated the full spectrum of national security policy. He previously served as senior director for Asia, where he led the administration’s work on the Indo-Pacific region, in particular its shift on China policy.

Program Management

Chelsea Berkey, Senior Research Program Manager

Kirk Randolph, Research Program Manager

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