Hoover’s Telegram to Lou Henry April 23, 1919 Hoover Institution Records “Advise Wilbur [and] Adams that if they keep it entirely confidential we can find cost of their sending at once suitable mission to Europe to collect historical material on war provided it does not exceed fifty thousand without further consideration.”

Completed in 1941, Hoover Tower is an iconic symbol of the Hoover Institution’s work and mission and a centerpiece of the Stanford University campus. The new David and Joan Traitel Building can be seen adjacent to Hoover Tower at its bottom right.

Herbert Hoover was a member of Stanford University’s first graduating class, earning a degree in geology. He went on to achieve extraordinary success in the mining industry.

Founded in 1919 as a collection of materials documenting World War I, the Hoover Institution today holds more than six thousand archival collections—including 130,000 wartime and political posters from around the world.

Throughout World War I Herbert Hoover engaged in unprecedented humanitarian relief work, including overseeing the feeding of millions of civilians in German-occupied Belgium and Northern France.

In 1941, with a new world war raging in Europe, Herbert Hoover dedicated Hoover Tower to promoting peace. The dedication took place in concert with Stanford University’s semicentennial celebration.

In the decades after the Hoover Institution’s founding, its mission expanded to include domestic policy in addition to questions of war and global change. World-renowned policy experts joined as Hoover fellows, including Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell.

Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher is one of the countless world leaders who have formed close intellectual relationships with the Hoover Institution. She was named an honorary fellow at Hoover.

George P. Shultz, the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at Hoover, is one of only two individuals who have held four different federal cabinet posts, including serving as secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan.

Hoover fellows play a prominent role in policy discussions in Washington. Fellows such as John B. Taylor, the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at Hoover, are regularly called to Capitol Hill to deliver expert testimony.

In recent years Hoover has significantly expanded its public education programs, including the launch of the major online education platform PolicyEd.org. Here Senior Fellow Morris P. Fiorina explains political polarization as part of the Perspectives on Policy online video series.