With this issue, Policy Review has become a publication of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Tod Lindberg, who in 1999 became editor of Policy Review, continues in that capacity, and has also been appointed research fellow at Hoover. The journal will continue to be based in Washington, D.C. — expanding the Hoover Institution’s presence in the nation’s capital.
When Herbert Hoover founded the institution in 1919, before going on to become the thirty-first president of the United States, he declared, “the Institution itself must constantly and dynamically point the road to peace, to personal freedom, and to the safeguards of the American system.” In accordance with his vision, the Hoover Institution has adopted four principal objectives. These 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
• Analyze the effects of government actions relating to public policy
• 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
• Convey to the public, the media, lawmakers, and others an understanding of important public policy issues and promote vigorous dialogue
For reasons that will be clear to readers of Policy Review over the past two years, the journal and the Hoover Institution are well matched. They share a commitment to free and rigorous inquiry into the American condition, into the workings of government and of our political and economic systems and those of others, and into the role of the United States in the world. They both bring together scholars with an interest in current affairs and journalists interested in exploring our world in greater depth. They both take up topics not as exercises in theory, but for the purpose of better understanding the world and the betterment of people’s lives. They both are committed to civil discourse, the airing of reasoned disagreement, and a vigorous and open debate. They both are diligently independent, not least in affirming and guarding the independence of those associated with them in the community of informed discussion.
As the Hoover Institution has been a premier home for serious scholars, so Policy Review has been a premier vehicle for serious writers and thinkers. As an editorially independent publication of the Hoover Institution, Policy Review will both draw on the intellectual resources of the institution and bring new people into contact with it, exponentially expanding serious dialogue about politics and policy.
