The Hoover Institution hosted its annual Board of Overseers’ summer meeting during July 9–11, 2013.

The program began on Tuesday evening with before-dinner remarks by Paul D. Clement, a partner at Bancroft PLLC. Clement served as the forty-third solicitor general of the United States from June 2005 until June 2008. He has argued more than sixty-five cases before the US Supreme Court. During Clement’s speech, titled “Federalism in the Roberts Court,” he talked about the revitalization of federalism in the Rehnquist court “imposing some limits on the federal government’s power vis-a-vis the states.”

This week on Uncommon Knowledge columnist James Delingpole discusses, with Hoover research fellow Peter Robinson, the European Union, the Green movement, and socialized medicine. (47:41)

Rupert Murdoch weighs in on capitalism, China, Google, and more. . . .

Stephen Haber, the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Victor Menaldo, a national fellow at the Hoover Institution in 2009–10, worked together to write Rainfall, Human Capital, and Democracy, which has received excellent reviews from the Wall Street Journal. They say, the parts of the world suited to grain-growing have developed the institutions that build equitably distributed human capital and hence democracy.” Click here to read the full article.

The Hoover Institution’s annual postdoctoral W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellows have been named for the 2009–10 academic year.

The new Stanford initiative Cardinal Conversations examined the intersections of politics and technology with entrepreneurs and Stanford alumni Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel. Historian Niall Ferguson of the Hoover Institution moderated a discussion that included questions from the largely student audience.

Hoover fellow Michael Spence ponders India, China, and the one essential element in economic growth: innovation. An interview with Peter Robinson.

The Hoover Institution held its annual Spring retreat on Wednesday, April 20, 2015. The conference offered presentations by Hoover fellows on a wide range of public policy issues, from U.S. history to foreign policy to the environmental and economic challenges of the future. 

Presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin will hold a summit at the end of September that will focus on economic and other ties between the United States and Russia. The two presidents have long recognized the central position of energy in our bilateral relations, and in that sphere, nothing is as critical as oil. Today Russia may again be the largest oil exporter in the world, but very little yet comes to the United States. Russia’s oil industry is dominated by rich and aggressive young private companies. Generally, they are eager to deal with foreigners, but despite significant state reforms they often are still inhibited by a dilapidated, state-controlled delivery system and a residue of traditional thinking and institutions. Many of Russia’s as-yet-unresolved post-Soviet prob-lems exploded in mid-2003 when the prosecutor general’s office attacked Yukos, the country’s most modernized, productive and pro-American private oil company. Thus even as Washington and American oil industry leaders actively sought alternatives to unstable sources in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, basic questions re-emerged in Russia about the privatizations of the 1990s, the security of private property, the mixing of law and politics, and the exercise of power in the Kremlin. Today Russians, with the support of American and European allies, must create conditions that will welcome the foreign funds, technology, and expertise needed to develop the critical oil industry but also to lay foundations of law and infrastructure that will help make Russia a stable member of the world community. Americans must decide how much involvement Russia can constructively absorb to promote not only short-term oil supplies but also long-term Russian development and broader U.S. foreign policy goals. Finally, the critical long-term lesson of 9/11 and other recent experiences for Americans is that even as we cultivate Russia as an ally and major source of oil, we must actively develop alternative sources of energy. In an unstable world, the United States must not forever be held hostage by other nations with their often very different cultures, institutions and interests.