Hoover Institution

The Hoover Institution at Stanford University is a public policy research center devoted to the advanced study of politics, economics, and political economy—domestic and foreign—as well as international affairs. Founded in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who later became the thirty-first president of the United States, the Institution originated as a specialized collection of documents on the causes and consequences of World War I. The collection grew rapidly and soon became one of the largest archives and most complete libraries in the world devoted to political, economic, and social change in the twentieth century. By the late 1940s, the richness of the collection had attracted scholars to use the documents in their work. Expanding its agenda to include specific research endeavors led to a vast accumulation of knowledge, and the Hoover Institution became one of the first and most distinguished academic centers in the United States dedicated to public policy research. Today, with its world-renowned group of scholars and ongoing programs of policy-oriented research, the Hoover Institution puts its accumulated knowledge to work as a prominent contributor to the world marketplace of ideas defining a free society.