Stanford Politics

“When I was a kid growing up on campus,” Stanford Provost Persis Drell recalls, “my memory of Hoover in 1971 or 1972 is that there were no windows in the buildings. They were all covered with plywood because the student demonstrators at that time would throw rocks through windows.”

Since then, she says, the relationship between Stanford and Hoover has changed “really pretty dramatically.” She largely attributes the changes to the relationship to John Raisian, who was the director of Hoover between 1989 and 2015, and ushered in the practice of joint appointments between the Hoover Institution and Stanford, bringing the Hoover Institution “much closer,” according to Drell. These changes—both in campus political climate among undergraduates, as well as in the relationship between the Hoover Institution and the University—are underscored by near-constant controversy about the role of Hoover on campus.

The Hoover Institution turns one hundred years old in 2019. Since its founding, it has grown from an archive housed within the Stanford libraries to a national policy think tank with 191 fellows and its own board of overseers. Hoover is part of Stanford University, but is governed by a different structure than individual schools within the University. Though Hoover Fellows are not faculty, a majority of senior fellows at Hoover are jointly appointed to academic departments.

Both in 1969 and in 2003, students have protested Hoover as part of antiwar movements. They have marched, thrown rocks, and even burned the likeness of a former director of the Institution. In 2018, campus controversy surrounded Hoover with regard to leaked emails by senior fellow Niall Ferguson, which encouraged undergraduate conservative activists to conduct “opposition research” against specific liberal undergraduates as strategic actions surrounding the Cardinal Conversations lecture series steering committee.

Most recently, campus media on the Hoover Institution has been focused on Thomas Gilligan, director of the Hoover Institution’s presentation on the “mission and purpose” of the Hoover Institution, the relationship between the University and the Hoover Institution, and future plans for Hoover at a Faculty Senate meeting on February 7, 2019. Director Gilligan described the founding of Hoover as an archive and library, before going on to describe the think tank as a research institution with an emphasis on policy related to economic growth, national security, and democratic governance.

Professors across diverse academic fields at Stanford responded immediately to the presentation. Civil and Environmental Engineering professor John Dabiri brought up the issue of low representation of women among Hoover senior fellows, while Professor Ken Taylor of the Philosophy Department asked for clarification on the ideological nature of the language summarizing the goals of the Hoover Institution—particularly, the inclusion of the phrase, “Limited government intrusion into the lives of individuals.” Professor David Palumbo-Liu of the Comparative Literature Department read a statement on behalf of more than a dozen senior faculty members at Stanford which emphasized that “threats and plots against our students cannot be tolerated,” referencing controversial email exchanges between Hoover senior fellow Niall Ferguson and undergraduates.

While the relationship between Hoover and Stanford is a source of discussion today, this is not, by any means, the first time. Ph.D. student Calvin Cheung-Miaw ‘03 wrote in a recent letter to the editor of the Stanford Daily that the discussion gave him a “sense of deja vu.” Cheung-Miaw, who was involved as a student organizer in the 2003 protests surrounding the Hoover Institution, cites a 2003 Daily opinion article which he co-wrote, stating a student demand that Hoover change its mission statement. In some senses, this is the same debate happening today, and which has been happening for the last sixty years. Yet, in other crucial ways, because of the national debate on free speech on college campuses, the discussion is profoundly different.

As Provost Drell described in an interview with Stanford Politics about her relationship to the Hoover Institution —then as a member of the faculty, and now as Provost—debates over Hoover and its relationship to the University have been an omnipresent aspect of life at Stanford for the last sixty years. As the Institution celebrates its centennial anniversary, we look back on how the relationship between Hoover and Stanford has been chronicled, changed, and protested.   

Hoover’s Beginnings

The Hoover Institution has not always been a focal point for campus controversy. Indeed, when Herbert Hoover first conceived of the Institution in 1919, he did not envision the public policy think tank we know today. In the beginning, the Institution was just meant to be a library. During World War I, Hoover worked throughout Europe on relief administration and eventually served as an advisor to President Woodrow Wilson during the Paris Peace Conference.  It was during these negotiations that Hoover decided he wanted to create a collection of primary sources that could preserve the history of the Great War. He promptly sent a telegram to then–Stanford President Ray Lyman Wilbur expressing interest in partnering with the University on the project and committed $50,000 of his own money to the school if they would assist him. Wilbur agreed to the proposal, and the Hoover War Collection was born. In 1921, the first shipment of primary source materials collected by Hoover and his team of Stanford History professors arrived on campus. One year later, the doors to the Hoover War Library opened to the Stanford community.

Over the next fifteen years, Stanford affiliates searched throughout Europe for governmental documents, newspapers, propaganda posters, and periodicals that could be added to the Collection. By 1938, the Collection had grown so large that Hoover and the University drew up plans for a new tower that could serve as its primary administrative hub and house its expanded collections. To reflect this expanding scope of the Collection, Hoover and the University renamed it to the Hoover Library on War, Revolution, and Peace. When World War II broke out, Hoover sent the Library’s director back to Europe with a team of historians to again collect materials from the various states involved. In the midst of this second collection effort, the construction on Hoover Tower finished. Just months later, the tower was dedicated to Hoover and his library as part of the University’s fiftieth-anniversary celebration. During the ceremonies, Hoover committed the Tower and Library to the pursuit of peace, stating that his Library’s records were meant to “stand as a challenge to those who promote war … [and]attract those who search for peace.”

Over the subsequent decade, the Library amassed one of the most impressive private collections in the world, expanding beyond just the two World Wars to encompass all events related to the study of war, revolution, and peace. It assembled the largest collection on the Russian Revolution of 1918 while also beginning a collection on the Chinese Civil War. Naturally, scholars from around the country flocked to Stanford’s now-iconic Hoover Tower to take advantage of its invaluable resources. The presence of so many scholars naturally made research a larger part of the Library’s work. Accordingly, in 1948 it was once again renamed to the name it currently holds: the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace (colloquially known as the Hoover Institution). Nevertheless, as a 1972 Daily story put it, the Hoover “Institution” of the 1950s was still considered by many on campus to be “little more than another University department.”

A Critical Juncture

By the end of the 1950s, the Hoover Institution was in “organizational and financial shambles,” as The New York Times described. Despite enjoying such early success in collecting archival materials, donations to the Institution were drying up. To make matters worse, Hoover’s director had just retired, leaving the Institution with budget of under $400,000 and no director to spearhead a revitalizing fundraising effort. The Daily recounted the situation well in 1967 when it wrote that the 1959 Hoover Institution was “going nowhere.”

Amidst these struggles, professors and University administrators suggested getting rid of the Hoover Institution entirely. They believed the University could simply merge Hoover’s collections with its own library system, where financial donations would presumably not be as much of an issue. At that point in time, the Institution did not appear to have a clear purpose aside from collecting materials related to the study of war, revolution, and peace—a function that could plausibly be easily absorbed by the University’s library system. To Herbert Hoover, however, such an outcome was unacceptable. Consequently, he quickly undertook a series of actions that would set his namesake Institution down an entirely new historical path, one that would put it at the center of campus controversy for the next sixty years.

First, in May of 1959, Hoover met with the Stanford Board of Trustees to properly detail the Institution’s legal and logistical relationship to the University. These meetings resulted in a resolution (agreed upon and signed by the Board) that specified, for the first time, the purposes, management, and policies of the Hoover Institution. Now more, than fifty years old, this “Hoover Constitution” still largely governs the affairs of the Institution. Critically, the principles and policies laid out in this document would become the primary basis for the two criticisms that students and faculty alike have continuously leveled against the Institution over the last sixty years: (1) that Hoover is institutionally biased and threatens the academic integrity of Stanford University, and, (2) that it is unaccountable to the University community.

Charges that Hoover contains an institutional bias originate from the preface of the 1959 Hoover resolution, portions of which are now included in the Institution’s formal mission statement. Prior to drafting the resolution, the Board of Trustees asked Hoover to prepare a statement for them (the preface) reviewing the background and purposes of his library; Hoover seized this opportunity to redefine his Institution and its place both at Stanford and in the world.

With this preface, Hoover threw his library into the global ideological struggle against communism. Indeed, at times it truly reads like a Cold War call to arms. Following a description of the Institution’s materials, Hoover proceeds to laud the social, economic, and political systems of the United States. He then argues that his library, with its massive collections on the World Wars and Communist revolutions of the early 20th century, is uniquely positioned to support the United States in the defense of its way of life. The preface’s conclusion begins by specifying the purpose and mission of the Institution:

“The purpose of this Institution must be, by its research and publications, to demonstrate the evils of the doctrines of Karl Marx whether Communism, Socialism, economic materialism, or atheism—thus, to protect the American way of life from such ideologies, their conspiracies, and to reaffirm the validity of the American system.

The overall mission of this Institution is, from its records, to recall the voice of experience against the making of war, and by the study of these records and their publication to recall man’s endeavors to make and preserve peace and to sustain for America the safeguards of the American way of life…”

Hoover goes on to emphatically state that, “The Institution is not, and must not be, a mere library,” and that it will “constantly and dynamically point the road to peace, to personal freedom, and to the safeguards of the American system.”

As anyone can easily imagine, it is not difficult to accuse an institution whose explicit purpose is to “demonstrate the evils of the doctrines of Karl Marx” of being ideologically motivated, as many would do over the subsequent years. Perhaps in a move to avoid such criticisms, today’s Hoover webpage outlining the Institution’s mission notably cuts out the paragraph on Karl Marx’s “evils.”

Hoover’s preface turned mission statement is followed by a ten-paragraph resolution that attempts to clarify the Institution’s relationship to the University. In doing so, however, it very clearly makes the Hoover Institution much more than just “another University department.”

The resolution formally begins in its third paragraph, when it introduces the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace as “an independent Institution within the frame of Stanford University.” To this day, many people would have a hard time telling someone what being “an independent institution within the frame of Stanford University” entails for both Hoover and Stanford—it’s a characterization unique to the Hoover Institution and with no immediate, discernible meaning. Nevertheless, the privileges the Institution enjoys as “an independent institution within the frame of Stanford University” have been a source of constant debate over the years due to the degree of independence they grant the Institution.

Unlike Academic Departments, who report to their respective school deans and the Provost, the Director of the Hoover Institution reports directly to the President of the University and the Board of Trustees. The resolution gives the Director the power to recommend potential fellow appointments, promotions, and budgets to the President who passes them along to the Board, “with no reference to any faculty committees.” Similarly, the resolution states that any new Director must first be recommended by the President to the Board of Trustees who then approve or reject that choice. The resolution bluntly states that the President’s recommendation “shall not require approval of the Advisory Board of the Academic Council of Stanford University.” As a 1972 Daily Article succinctly remarked, “the new relationship between the institution and the university had defined the faculty out of the picture,” upsetting many professors in the process.

In subsequent sections the resolution does place some limits on the autonomy it grants the Institution in the earlier paragraphs. For example, it states that no appointments to the Hoover Institution can carry academic tenure solely by virtue of being affiliated with Hoover (though joint appointments with faculty departments are certainly possible). Once more, the resolution specifies that all donations to the Institution must be made to Stanford University in Hoover’s name. Some have suggested this clause gives the University a check on the Institution, noting how the University would not accept any donations that “have any strings attached.” That being said, the clause also benefits Hoover because it grants the Institution the same tax-exempt status enjoyed by the University, making fundraising much easier.

Still, the degree of autonomy afforded to the Hoover Institution in its hiring and firing practices at an academic institution like Stanford has continuously troubled faculty members, especially in the 1960s, when the new director began significantly expanding the reach of the revitalized Institution.

Though the 1959 resolution laid the seeds for controversy, the Hoover Institution largely remained outside the campus spotlight until the appointment of W. Glenn Campbell as its new director. Immediately following the signing of the 1959 resolution, Hoover got to work searching for an individual he could trust to lead the Institution in the new direction he outlined in the mission statement. Although the Board of Trustees created a committee of faculty and administrators to search for a new director, Hoover took matters into his own hands and found selected W. Glenn Campbell. Campbell was an unabashed conservative. Prior to joining Hoover, he worked as research director at the US Chamber of Commerce and then at the American Enterprise Institute. When Campbell passed away in 2001, The New York Times credited him with turning the Hoover Institution into “one of the world’s most influential conservative think tanks.” Hoover found the perfect man in Campbell to realize the vision he had outlined in the resolution’s preface.

As one Hoover fellow later remarked, when Campbell took over the Institution, “it was nothing.” Nevertheless, Campbell was able to expertly capitalize on the Institution’s newfound independence and purpose to quickly turn that nothing into something quite notable. Almost immediately after arriving on campus Campbell made clear that he intended to expand the Hoover Institution into “an institution for research and publication.” According to Campbell, the Institution’s research would explicitly “portray the growth and spread of communism,” while its publications would “be designed to give aid to government policy formation.”

In order to build up the Institution’s capacity to bring in more scholars and consistently publish public-facing works, Campbell embarked on what can be characterized only as a truly impressive fundraising campaign. In his first decade alone, Campbell increased the Institution’s budget five-fold. From 1960 to 1967, he raised seven million dollars, capping off the run with the opening of the Lou Henry Hoover Building, adding significant office space for more research fellows to join the Institution. In 1967 alone, he was able to raise $1,600,000 in gifts and grants. In all, this money was largely used to publish more and more public-facing policy research that could then be used to solicit more donations. All this activity, however, did not go unnoticed; as Hoover grew in size and reach, it attracted more and more attention from members of the Stanford community, who began to view it as an anti-communist propaganda machine that did not belong at any serious University.

Initial Controversies

Almost as soon as the 1959 Resolution was made public, the Hoover Institution found itself in the first of many debates with the Stanford University faculty over its purpose and autonomy. Many professors were quick to point to the resolution’s preface as evidence of institutional bias within Hoover and as a threat to the University’s academic integrity. In a 1960 Daily story, one History professor described the mission statement as “incompatible with the University which is dedicated to the freedom of the scholar and research for truth.” A Physics professor similarly criticized the preface: “It is alien to the discipline in which I work to start with a conclusion. The goal of research and study is to describe events and formulate and test hypotheses. If, in contrast, however, the Hoover Institution has the ‘purpose’ as described in The Daily, then I regret it.”

Ultimately, all these criticisms came together in a statement from the University’s Academic Council. In 1960 they formally asked the University to “take some action which would represent clearly and forcibly to students, faculty, and the public, the University’s commitment to freedom of inquiry.” Accordingly, the President and Board of Trustees released a joint-statement expressing their commitment to freedom of inquiry at Stanford, promising “intense” scrutiny of the Institution, and clarifying that the preface did not reflect the views of the University, but rather solely those of Herbert Hoover. Despite this response from the University, Glenn Campbell remained largely indifferent to the faculty’s opinions throughout these episodes. When asked for his thoughts on the preface he stated: “I see nothing wrong with it, do you?”

In 1967, after renewed requests from faculty to be involved in the Hoover fellow appointment process, Campbell told The Daily that he “wish[ed]they would keep their noses of my business.” Nevertheless, University officials continued to engage with faculty on the issue, not regarding Campbell’s stubbornness. For example, when Kenneth Pitzer began his tenure as University President, one of his first orders of business was to reform the appointment process at Hoover. Together, he and Campbell released joint statement detailing the new appointment process for non-senior fellows. Under the reform, appointments would still be made by the President, but under the recommendation of a search committee comprised of Hoover staffers and University faculty. Formally, this search committee would recommend at least two candidates to the Hoover Director. The director would then select an individual to fulfill the appointment and report both his choice and the committee’s recommendations to the President for approval. Only a few years later, the appointment process for the Director of the Hoover Institution also underwent a change that similarly involved faculty, by way of a committee, to recommend names to the President.

In spite of these changes and constant quips from faculty, Campbell was able to establish the Hoover Institution as one the nation’s preeminent, and largely anti-communist, foreign policy think tanks. Today, the Hoover Institution is perhaps better known for its domestic policy programs, but when Campbell first expanded the Institution’s reach in the 1960s, he did so under the backdrop of the Cold War. With anti-communist sentiments at all-time highs, it was only natural for a budding think tank like Hoover to try to specialize in containment policy, especially given the extent of its collection on the Russian Revolution (which was the largest in the world at the time). Consequently, most of the funds Campbell raised in the 1960s supported research that focused on fighting communism.

Although the Institution’s newfound influence did wonders for Campbell’s fundraising efforts, it did attract a lot of attention toward the Institution, especially with the Vietnam War’s raging abroad. In May of 1969, for example, Stanford’s famed April 3rd Movement (A3M)—which led radical anti-Vietnam War protests on campus—staged a three-day onslaught against Hoover in which it hurled rocks at and painted “graffiti” on Hoover buildings, and even burned an effigy of Campbell on the steps of Hoover Tower. A3M members were protesting in Institution’s research, which they believed members of the Nixon administration were using to form policy for the war. The protestors even suggested that Hoover fellows were regularly meeting with members of Nixon’s defense department to discuss Vietnam War strategy.

Though the extent of the Hoover Institution’s involvement in the Vietnam War was never confirmed, the protestors were right about one thing: the Hoover Institution was focusing more resources on influencing government policy, as Campbell made clear when he started as Hoover director. In particular, one episode in 1976 epitomized the transformation of Hoover from a library to a think tank trying to impact government policy.

In 1976, general budget cuts forced the Hoover Institution to lay off seven of its librarians, sparking campus-wide conversation about the changing nature of the Institution. At the time, the Hoover Library housed one-third of all the University’s holdings and made up the largest private archive collection in the United States. Some librarians who kept their jobs after the cuts told The Daily they were worried about adequately maintaining all the collections with fewer libraries. According to a separate Daily story from the time, those Hoover staffers “best qualified to predict the consequences of the layoffs” were “reluctant to discuss the matter [with the Daily]” out of fear of being “black-listed” by the Institution. The Institution’s administration, on the other hand, maintained that the layoffs would have “no serious repercussions” for the library.

No one was ever able to assess the layoffs’ true impact on the materials of the Hoover Archive. Even still, the fact that the librarians felt the brunt of the budget cuts prompted many to ask why Glenn Campbell had unilateral decision-making power over a library used by the entire University community. Once more, faculty members and students wondered why the Institution could not reallocate some of its other funds to the library to cover the seven librarians’ wages. Many pointed to a paragraph from the 1959 resolution stating that “the resources of the Institution in so far as available shall be devoted to the preservation and enlargement of its collections.” In response, Campbell continuously stated that he could not simply arbitrarily reallocate funds within the Institution’s budget, further emphasizing that he and his team, “worked hard” to raise millions a year for the library.

Despite Campbell’s many assertions, The Daily poignantly noted, “While Hoover library [was]feeling the crunch of … University economic policy, other areas of Hoover seem[ed]to be expanding.” Specifically, the Hoover Institution was beginning to heavily invest, perhaps at the expense of the library, in a domestic policy research program, a pivot that would once again redefine the Institution’s place in the world.

A Pivot to Domestic Studies

Hoover’s growing emphasis on domestic policy, which was evident by the mid-1970s, had “long been in the planning stages,” The Daily reported. In 1975, with $3.5 million annual budget, the Institution’s expanding focus on domestic research was transforming Hoover into an increasingly relevant player in national policy debate. “Our work is more interesting now to the typical congressman,” Thomas Moore, then-director of the domestic studies program, told The Daily in 1979.

“I don’t think there was ever any question in the founder’s mind that domestic studies were included within the rubric of ‘war, revolution, and peace,’” Campbell said.

By 1979, Hoover’s annual budget was around $5.7 million, approximately forty percent of which went toward funding research (a proportion more than four times what it had been twenty years previous). Unsurprisingly, most of the Institution’s domestic policy work had a decidedly conservative bend: high-profile fellows like Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman set a laissez-faire tone that few other fellows strayed far from; Moore even characterized the staff as largely “liberal in the 19th century sense.” Although Moore also insisted that Hoover’s fellows were not “monolithic,” the evident ideological skew once again drew criticism of the Institution’s academic merit and hiring practices. Some faculty members alleged that Hoover preferentially appointed conservative fellows, an evergreen critique that the Institution would spend the next several decades denying. A former visiting fellow called the Institution’s political slant “outrageous” in an anonymous interview with The Daily.

“The Hoover Institution is an amalgam of free-market economists in the domestic situation and cold warriors on the international side,” the former fellow said, dismissing its members as largely “third-rate.” On the persistent allegations of bias that dog the institution, the anonymous source stated simply, “Hoover has not changed.”

Despite the hostility Hoover faced, the Institution’s reputation and relevance were surging on the national stage. Ronald Reagan was headed to the White House, and he was taking the Hoover Institution with him.

Hoover and Reagan

Reagan’s ties to the Hoover Institution can be traced back to 1975 when, at the end of his tenure as governor of California, he was appointed the first honorary fellow of the Institution, after which he donated his gubernatorial papers to the library. Even before that, Reagan enjoyed a friendly relationship with Glenn Campbell, whom he had appointed to serve as a Regent of the University of California system in the 1960s. For his presidential bid in 1980, Reagan drew heavily from Hoover’s arsenal of right-wing policy researchers, enlisting at least thirteen Hoover fellows to aid his campaign in various capacities—including one senior fellow who was brought on as the candidate’s chief domestic advisor.

In the wake of the 1980 election, the Los Angeles Times noted Reagan’s close connection with “the 61-year-old think tank that often has been described as conservative government-in-exile.” Now that Reagan was the president-elect, “the exile [was]over.” At a White House reception honoring the Hoover Board of Overseers shortly before his 1981 inauguration, Reagan said he “called on more people from the [Hoover] Institution than from any other institution.” The Hoover Institution “built the knowledge base that made the changes now taking place in Washington possible,” the president-elect said, and, quoting The New York Times, he praised the Institution as “the brightest star in a small constellation of conservative think tanks.” When later publishing Reagan’s remarks, the Institution would be careful to remove the word “conservative” from his glowing statement.

In 1981, over thirty current or former Hoover fellows had been appointed to the Reagan administration, including as the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs and Assistant for Policy Development. During this period, sign was posted on the Institution’s door that read, “Will the last one to leave for Washington please turn out the lights?”

After two decades of wildly successful fundraising and institutional growth, Campbell saw Hoover’s relationship with Reagan as “another route to fame and fortune,” one fellow told the Los Angeles Times. The Institution’s annual reports emphasized its role in the administration, featuring numerous photos of the president and claiming credit for much of his policy, including the inception of what later became known as “Reaganomics.”

“It is a source of immense pride to know that the ideas developed by scholars at the Hoover Institution have greatly influenced the new policy agenda,” Campbell wrote in the 1986 annual report.

But Campbell’s sentiment was not uniformly shared on the surrounding campus, and the Institution’s rise to national prominence triggered what is arguably the most turbulent decade in the lengthy history of strained relations between Stanford and its resident think tank.

“The problem arises from the fact that Hoover has a mission,” John Manley, now an emeritus professor of political science, wrote in a 1983 memo to his department. “It is a political organization within the University.”

The Hoover Institution enjoys a “hazy, quasi-independent status” within the University, The Daily noted, which, among other things, allows the Institution’s director to report directly to the Stanford President (instead of to the Provost, as is the norm for academic department heads) and gives the Institution freedom to control its own funding. Hoover’s hiring and firing practices are also not subject to nearly the same administrative oversight and rigorous appointment process as academic departments. As was typical in the 1960s, faculty complaints about Hoover generally revolved around this unique position the Institution holds at Stanford, which critics argued was inappropriately exploited by the think tank for partisan interests. In a 1983 letter to his department, then–English professor Ronald Rebholz asserted that the Hoover Institution “uses its relationship with the University and many of its faculty to enhance its prestige and respectability and thereby make its political advocacy more effective.”

The concern gained traction, and a faculty petition calling for the Board of Trustees to investigate Hoover’s alleged partisanship landed on the floor of the Academic Senate in 1983. Spearheaded by Manley and Rebholz, the petition claimed that “the existence of a partisan organization, whether liberal or conservative, within the University raises grave questions concerning academic independence,” and that “the legitimacy and influence of Hoover Institution and the causes for which it stands are immeasurably enhanced by sharing in the prestige of a great University”—almost echoing the Academic Council’s 1960 petition word for word.

This 1983 petition, which garnered eighty-four signatures, called Hoover a “two-tiered” institution with an “inner core” of conservative research fellows and an “outer ring” of senior fellows, largely populated by Stanford professors and courtesy appointments, who “add to Hoover’s prestige.”

Critics specifically pointed to the rise in joint appointments of faculty members to fellowship positions at the Institution as a conscious effort to diversify Hoover and improve its reputation. An anonymous Stanford professor who held a joint appointment in the 1970s told The Daily that Hoover had been a “paranoid institution” while he worked there, as he was afraid of increased constraints from the University. “Hoover is trying to buy respectability,” the professor said, “but the price they have to pay is greater diversity.”

Alexander Dallin, then a professor of history at Stanford and a former senior Hoover fellow, told The Daily that some faculty believed they could influence Hoover by getting tenured professors appointed as fellows. “I have come to believe that will not work; you’ll never change the inner sanctum of conservative fellows at Hoover,” Dallin said.

The faculty petition was followed by a student petition, signed by over 1,500 members of the Stanford community, which also called for a Board of Trustees inquiry into the Hoover Institution.

The Hoover Institution continued to deny allegations of partisan bias. John Moore, then the associate director of the Institution, told The Daily that Hoover’s “range of views is better-balanced than the rest of the University.” Several Hoover fellows circulated letter that claimed “greed, envy, and political partisanship” motivated the criticism.

Tensions worsened as the administration and Hoover discussed bringing the Reagan presidential library and an associated center for public affairs to Stanford, a project that appears to have originated in a 1981 memo Campbell wrote inviting Reagan to “have [his]Presidential Library on the Stanford campus,” a request which the administration later publicly endorsed. While the Stanford community grappled with the academic value of possessing Reagan’s presidential papers versus the partisan implications of becoming further tied to a politically divisive conservative figure who had never been a student or professor on campus, some began to jokingly refer to Stanford as Ronald Reagan University. In the 1986 Hoover annual report, Campbell wrote that the University could “boast” of its “Reagan connection,” which the Faculty Senate unanimously criticized. After several years of false starts and controversy, during which the University determined it would accept a Reagan library but not a public affairs center, the Reagan Presidential Foundation ultimately withdrew its interest in Stanford’s campus. But it remained evident that the Hoover Institution, whose tower is the defining landmark on campus, had the power to dramatically and even physically shape Stanford in its interest and its image.

There was, across the board, some degree of consensus that the relationship between Stanford and Hoover had to change. But visions of that change were conflicted. Manley and Rebholz campaigned for the University to either sever all ties with Hoover or bring the Institution entirely under Stanford’s control. Meanwhile, a committee assembled by then-President Donald Kennedy called instead for the University to strengthen its relationship with Hoover, primarily through joint appointments. The committee released a report identifying institutional, rather than political, factors as the primary source of friction: “The anomalous relationship of the Hoover Institution to the University—at the same time a part of Stanford but legally and operationally enjoying almost complete and permanent autonomy—makes some conflict practically inevitable,” the report argued. In 1985, the Faculty Senate formally recommended that Hoover be brought under greater academic control, an idea Hoover flatly rejected; Campbell criticized the recommendations for trying to “destroy the unique and independent status of the Hoover Institution.” The prospect of divorce between the two entities seemed increasingly unlikely as well: in 1987, Kennedy said that he could not “envision a situation under which the Board of Trustees… should consider a divorce that would spin those extraordinary academic assets off of this University.”

Rebholz alleged that Stanford’s unwillingness to separate from Hoover was financially motivated and founded in a fear of “alienating” major donors that fund both the University and the think tank, such as Hewlett-Packard. “There are no principles involved, only cash,” he said.

Ultimately, despite continual objections from professors like Rebholz and Manley, the move to better integrate Stanford and Hoover won out. Campbell made a rare public appearance in 1988 to dismiss his critics and express optimism in “great future” built by cooperation between the University and his institution. Ironically, the Stanford Board of Trustees would unanimously decide a month later that Campbell must step down from his position as director when he turned sixty-five the next year. The request was in line with the expected retirement age for directors of the Institution and senior Stanford administrators, but some Hoover fellows criticized the decision as a sign of “hostility.” Campbell briefly toyed with the idea of turning the controversy into a legal battle, but ultimately agreed to step down in 1989.

After a decade of especially tense relations, Campbell’s exit was interpreted by many as an end of an era, and perhaps an indication that the years of institutional strife and controversy were finally coming to an end. Plans to establish an investigation into the Hoover Institution, which Manley resurrected once more in the late 1980s, were nixed by the Faculty Senate. Immediately upon the arrival of acting director John Raisian at the beginning of the 1989 academic year, The Daily published a starry-eyed front-page assertion of a “sudden shift in attitudes” regarding Hoover that suggested that “the two institutions might be on a course for more cooperation.”

“Since Raisian took over just six weeks ago, University officials are beginning to see Hoover more as a resource to complement Stanford rather than to compete with it,” the article claimed.

Raisian, whom The Daily noted was “widely regarded as an administrative moderate,” took over as the permanent director the following year, and set the tone for decade of relative stability. Manley continued to voice the same concerns he always had, arguing that Raisian’s being less outspoken than his predecessor did not impact Hoover’s mission, but his protests fell on increasingly deaf ears: the early 1990s were marked by efforts to integrate Hoover and Stanford, including the appointment of Raisian to the University Cabinet; Hoover demonstrated interest in becoming more involved with the student body, and began interacting with the Stanford in Washington program. Additionally, Kennedy stated, “There will be more, rather than fewer, joint appointments, and there will be more, rather than less, interactions with Hoover.”

Manley interpreted the improving relationship as a lull in an inevitably cyclical conflict. “At the moment, we’re waiting for the next outbreak,” he said.

That outbreak came at the turn of the century, as the Hoover Institution once again became entangled in a presidential campaign—this time, that of George W. Bush, whose exploratory committee read “like a laundry list of current and past Hoover Institution fellows,” The Daily observed. Following the blueprint of the 1960s and 1980s, campus opinion turned against the institution once more, criticizing its hiring practices and its involvement in the formulation of Bush administration policy. Just as A3M did in 1969, Student protestors marched on Hoover Tower in 2003 in an anti-war demonstration that also expressed broader concerns about conservative policy. The protestors taped petitions to the door of the Hoover Institution that called for the University to cut ties with the Institution if it did not change its hiring policy. John Hennessy, then the University president, dismissed their demands.

In 2003, the Faculty Senate questioned Raisian (for the first time in thirteen years) regarding Hoover’s hiring practices. Raisian, just as Campbell did before him, denied allegations that there was any ideological bias in the appointment of fellows. “We are not trying to lobby Congress,” he said. “We are a manufacturer of ideas.”

In the years that followed, Hoover would occasionally find itself subject to scrutiny, but never with the same intensity as it faced in the 1960s or 1980s. When the Institution announced in 2007 that Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford and George W. Bush, was being named a distinguished visiting fellow, some students and faculty once again called for Stanford to cut ties with Hoover. But Rebholz told The Daily that the “students were much more involved” in the Reagan Library debate twenty years previous. And in 2010, The Daily editorial board called for the Hoover Institution to denounce comments made by senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson Ph.D. ‘80. Hanson posted a critique of political discourse at American universities on a blog, writing, “Latin Americans add an accent and a trill and they become victimized Chicanos; one-half African Americans claim they are more people of color than much darker Punjabis; the children of Asian optometrists seek minority and victim status.” The editorial board posed the remarks as providing “the Hoover Institution the perfect opportunity to clarify its role in American politics. Purposeful academic research or derisive, unfounded cheap shots: which will it be?” Hanson never retracted or edited his writing, and this past February, he was present at a “Pizza and Policy” dinner hosted by the Stanford Hoover Society, a new student group that seeks to better connect undergraduates to the Hoover Institution.

Echoes to the Present

This history – of a fraught relationship between Stanford and Hoover – may seem to be replicated in the present. The recent statement, signed by over a dozen senior faculty members at Stanford, which was presented at the February 7th faculty meeting and printed in the Daily on February 8th, echoes previous concerns about the Hoover Institution being a part of an academic institution, while also having a mission statement which suggests it is an institution with a distinct ideological leaning.

On the other hand, Professor David Palumbo-Liu, a member of the Campus Anti-fascist Network who has received attention from the conservative media in the past, and is a signatory of the faculty statement on Hoover, thinks that there are two things that make the debates about Hoover at Stanford different in 2019 than in the past.

First, he says, is the shifting nature of conservatism both nationwide, and at Hoover – towards not only fiscal conservatism, but cultural and social conservatism. For Palumbo-Liu, the new concern, given shifts in American conservatism, is that Hoover now hosts fellows and speakers who are “avidly anti-feminist, anti-racial equality, and with a clear homophobic legacy.”  This, he argues, means that certain students are hurt by this socially conservative rhetoric, and a different kind of potential harm towards students exists now than it did in the past. It is “cruel,” he says, to permit former Hoover fellows like Dinesh D’Souza to speak on campus, and to “intimidate” students.

Provost Drell, on the other hand, who launched the Cardinal Conversations program, with Niall Ferguson of the Hoover Institution as one of two leaders of the program, sees having Hoover on campus as an “asset” to Stanford. “I’m a big believer in having a diversity of viewpoints on campus,” she says. In the new iteration of Cardinal Conversations, she has appointed Gilligan to be one of three advisors, alongside faculty members Deborah Rhode and Claude Steele. Drell emphasizes that she chose a representative from Hoover each time in order for Cardinal Conversations to have greater connections to a diversity of speakers, including political speakers “from both sides of the aisle.”

Second, he says, is the desire of this particular administration at Stanford to move closer to Hoover. “This administration– Drell and MTL – don’t have the same sense of separateness” with the Hoover Institution as past University administrations, he says. “They believe the Hoover can be integrated– and should be.” However, for Palumbo-Liu, the idea that Hoover fellows could “come and blend in” on campus “is a fantasy.” He sees the combination of a changing conservative rhetoric, combined with the desire of Stanford administration to work more closely than ever with Hoover, as creating a marked difference in how the current debates about the relationship between Hoover and Stanford should be received.

Provost Persis Drell told Stanford Politics she thinks that “there is an opportunity to increase the relationship” between Hoover and Stanford to “continue on the trajectory set by John Raisian and Tom Gilligan.” She emphasizes that this would be a “good thing.” She particularly looks forward to initiatives by Hoover to have mid-career and younger fellows at Hoover, as well as an increase in joint appointments between Stanford academic departments and the Hoover Institution, in order to bring the two bodies closer together. Thus, while Palumbo-Liu’s assertion that the current administration at Stanford hope to work more closely with the Hoover Institution is true, his account that this is a break with the past does not square with the historical account captured by The Daily – which is that Stanford and Hoover have been on this path towards more collaboration at least since John Raisian’s appointment nearly 3 decades ago, in 1989.

If the relationship between Stanford and Hoover is indeed continuing on a trajectory towards more cooperation, while the Hoover Institution maintains its commitment to a resolution that explicitly includes a purpose of being against certain political ideologies and for others –  it is likely that the same debate about the place of Hoover on Stanford’s campus will only continue. Director Gilligan confirmed in a written statement to Stanford Politics that “Herbert Hoover’s 1959 statement to the Board of Trustees of Stanford University on the purpose and scope of the Hoover Institution continues to guide and define our mission.” This resolution includes such phrases defining the purpose of the Hoover Institution as “demonstrate the evils of the doctrines of Karl Marx whether Communism, Socialism, economic materialism, or atheism” through research and publication. While this language is not currently within the mission statement published by Hoover on its’ website, so long as the Hoover Institution continues to define itself by such statements, it seems that the conflict between many Stanford students and faculty and the Hoover Institution will not evolve, and will only continue.