Episodes

Wednesday Oct 18, 2023
Emerging Threats, Innovation, And Security | Hoover Institution
Wednesday Oct 18, 2023
Wednesday Oct 18, 2023
Secretary Condoleezza Rice & FBI Director Christopher Wray talk about Emerging Threats, Innovation, and Security with international partners Director-General Mike Burgess, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), Director General Ken McCallum, British Security Service (MI5), Director David Vigneault, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), and Director-General Andrew Hampton, New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) on Tuesday, October 17, 2023 at 10:30 AM PT.

Tuesday Oct 17, 2023
Tuesday Oct 17, 2023
Monday, October 16, 2023
Hoover Institution | Stanford University
The Year That Broke Politics describes the unknown story of the election that set the tone for today’s fractured politics. The 1968 presidential race was a contentious battle between Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Republican Richard Nixon, and former Alabama governor George Wallace. The United States was reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and was bitterly divided on the Vietnam War and domestic issues, including civil rights and rising crime. Drawing on previously unexamined archives and numerous interviews, The Year That Broke Politics upends conventional understanding of the crucial campaign, showing how it created a new template and tone for election battles, which still resonates into today’s fractured political climate.
The book is the first rigorously researched historical account of the most controversial election in modern U.S. history to have cooperation from all four major sides – Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, and George Wallace. Luke interviewed approximately 85 family members and former staffers, in addition to extensive archival research and access to new evidence that dramatically changes our understanding of the election.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Luke A. Nichter is professor of history and James H. Cavanaugh Endowed Chair in Presidential Studies at Chapman University. His area of specialty is the Cold War, the modern presidency, and U.S. political and diplomatic history, with a focus on the "long 1960s" from John F. Kennedy through Watergate. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society, a Visiting Scholar at the University of Michigan's Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford's Rothermere American Institute, and a Hansard Research Scholar at the London School of Economics.
He is the author of eight books, including most recently The Year That Broke Politics, which was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, as well as The Last Brahmin: Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and the Making of the Cold War. He has been interviewed by, or written for, outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Fortune, CBS’s “CBS This Morning,” ABC’s “20/20,” National Public Radio’s “Here and Now,” and many more. Luke is also a former founding Executive Producer of C-SPAN's American History TV, launched during January 2011 in 41 million homes. He divides his time between Orange, CA, and Bowling Green, OH.

Tuesday Oct 10, 2023
Tuesday Oct 10, 2023
A Post-9/11 Veteran Town Hall Discussion between Hoover Fellow Jacquelyn Schneider, Maj. Gen. Angie Salinas, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.) Veteran Fellowship Program Fellows Donnie Hasseltine, Trill Paullin, and Adrian Perkins
Tuesday, October 10, 2023 - Patriot’s CASA, Texas A&M San Antonio
Veterans are both a reflection of and a contributor to our society. How post-9/11 veterans think about this relationship plays a large role in how this generation will leave their mark on American communities and military. Who, then, is the post 9-11 veteran? What relationship do they have with the American society to which they returned? What shared identity defines this generation of veterans? And how will their experiences shape their communities, our societies, our governance, and the force of the future? And what will be their legacy?
For more information, visit https://www.hoover.org/events/who-post-911-veteran-defining-generation.

Tuesday Sep 19, 2023
Tuesday Sep 19, 2023
Join the Hoover Book Club for engaging discussions with leading authors on the hottest policy issues of the day. Hoover scholars explore the latest books that delve into some of the most vexing policy issues facing the United States and the world. Find out what makes these authors tick and how they think we should approach our most difficult challenges.
In our latest installment, watch a discussion between Josiah Ober and Brook Manville, authors of The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Is democracy in trouble, perhaps even dying? Pundits say so, and polls show that most Americans believe that their country’s system of governance is being “tested” or is “under attack.” But is the future of democracy necessarily so dire? In The Civic Bargain, Brook Manville and Josiah Ober push back against the prevailing pessimism about the fate of democracy around the world. Instead of an epitaph for democracy, they offer a guide for democratic renewal, calling on citizens to recommit to a “civic bargain” with one another to guarantee civic rights of freedom, equality, and dignity. That bargain also requires them to fulfill the duties of democratic citizenship: governing themselves with no “boss” except one another, embracing compromise, treating each other as civic friends, and investing in civic education for each rising generation.
Manville and Ober trace the long progression toward self-government through four key moments in democracy’s history: Classical Athens, Republican Rome, Great Britain’s constitutional monarchy, and America’s founding. Comparing what worked and what failed in each case, they draw out lessons for how modern democracies can survive and thrive. Manville and Ober show that democracy isn’t about getting everything we want; it’s about agreeing on a shared framework for pursuing our often conflicting aims. Crucially, citizens need to be able to compromise, and must not treat one another as political enemies. And we must accept imperfection; democracy is never finished but evolves and renews itself continually. As long as the civic bargain is maintained—through deliberation, bargaining, and compromise—democracy will live.
Tuesday, September 19, 2023 | 10:00 am PT / 1:00pm ET

Thursday Aug 31, 2023
Thursday Aug 31, 2023
The Hoover Institution held a Book Talk with Timothy Garton Ash: Homelands: A Personal History of Europe on Tuesday, August 29, 2023 from 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM PT.
This in-person-only event featured Condoleezza Rice, Michael McFaul, and Tobias Wolff in conversation with Timothy Garton Ash about his new book Homelands: A Personal History of Europe.
In Homelands, Timothy Garton Ash gives a unique account of the history of Europe since 1945, in which the United States has been a vital actor. This is history illustrated by memoir and reportage. Drawing on his extensive personal notes from 50 years of events witnessed, places visited and history makers encountered (from Margaret Thatcher to Vladimir Putin), Garton Ash charts the rise and then faltering of the quest for a 'Europe whole and free’. In this panel discussion, he was in conversation with two US scholar-practitioners who have played a significant part in that history, one of America's finest writers and a leading Stanford political scientist.
Featuring
Timothy Garton Ash, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of European studies at Oxford University, is an internationally acclaimed contemporary historian. He is the author of ten previous books which have chronicled and analyzed the history of Europe over the last half-century. They include The Magic Lantern, his eyewitness account of the velvet revolutions of 1989, The File, his investigation of his own Stasi file, and In Europe's Name: Germany and the Divided Continent.
Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.
Michael McFaul is the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution as well as a professor of political science, director and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He also currently works as a news analyst for NBC. His areas of expertise include international relations, Russian politics, comparative democratization, and American foreign policy.
Tobias Wolff is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor, Emeritus for Stanford University's Department of English in the School of Humanities and Sciences. A short story writer, memoirist, and novelist, Wolff is most known for his works This Boy's Life and In Pharaoh's Army released in 1989 and 1994, respectively.
Moderated By
Anna Grzymala-Busse is the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor in the Department of Political Science, the director of the Europe Center, and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford. Her research focuses on religion and politics, authoritarian political parties and their successors, and the historical development of the state.

Friday Aug 25, 2023
Friday Aug 25, 2023
A Hoover History Lab Discussion between Kleinheinz Senior Fellow Stephen Kotkin and Sergei Guriev, provost and professor of economics at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po)
Many analysts are skeptical about the effects of the sweeping sanctions imposed by the West on Russia – pointing to the Kremlin’s apparent ability to weather and circumvent the harsh measures. They say that Russia’s resilience to this onslaught is due to its geostrategic advantages including the sprawling Eurasian landmass and its relationships with China, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and a number of Central Asian countries that declined to join the sanctions regime. These skeptics also highlight perverse and unintended consequences of the sanctions, including driving economic activity underground, spurring criminal forms of commerce, and helping the Putin regime strengthen control over the private sector and oligarchs. What is the actual story? What are the facts, consequences, responses, paradoxes, and long-term effects of the sanctions on Russia? Has Russia become vulnerable economically? This conversation explores these questions and more.
For more information on the Hoover History lab, click here - https://www.hoover.org/history-lab.

Thursday Aug 17, 2023
Thursday Aug 17, 2023
August 15, 2023
Hoover Institution | Stanford University
Join the Hoover Book Club for engaging discussions with leading authors on the hottest policy issues of the day. Hoover scholars explore the latest books that delve into some of the most vexing policy issues facing the United States and the world. Find out what makes these authors tick and how they think we should approach our most difficult challenges.
In our latest installment, watch a discussion between Michael Hartney, a Hoover Fellow and Rick Hess, a senior fellow and the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute on Rick's book The Great School Rethink.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rick Hess is a senior fellow and the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he works on K–12 and higher education issues. The author of Education Week’s popular blog “Rick Hess Straight Up,” Dr. Hess is also an executive editor of Education Next, and a Forbes senior contributor. He is the founder and chairman of AEI’s Conservative Education Reform Network.
ABOUT THE BOOK
An invigorating examination of the potential for meaningful change in education, from one of the nation's most astute observers of schooling and school improvement.
In The Great School Rethink, education policy sentinel Rick Hess offers a pithy and perceptive appraisal of American schooling and finds, in the uncertain period following pandemic disruption, an ideal moment to reimagine US education. Now is the time, he asserts, to ask hard questions about how schools use time and talent, how they work with parents, what they do with digital tools, and how they meet the needs of their communities.
As Hess explains, to rethink is to acknowledge the realities of the education system while opening one’s mind to possibility. With characteristic verve and wit, Hess guides readers through his rethink process, a versatile and easily implemented approach to identifying issues and brainstorming possible responses. He encourages readers to explore what improvements might alleviate current pressures and frustrations, such as teacher shortages and burnout, declining student performance, and compromised learning time. Whether their goal is to achieve better student engagement, increase parent involvement, or implement personalized learning, readers will develop the mindset to ask the right questions, to fully understand the problem that’s being solved, and to evaluate the probable effectiveness of proposed solutions.
Brimming with challenging questions, robust exercises, and eye-opening data, this book is a must-read for education professionals, parent advocates, and anyone passionate about the future of American education.

Thursday Jul 27, 2023
Thursday Jul 27, 2023
Join the Hoover Book Club for engaging discussions with leading authors on the hottest policy issues of the day. Hoover scholars explore the latest books that delve into some of the most vexing policy issues facing the United States and the world. Find out what makes these authors tick and how they think we should approach our most difficult challenges.
In our latest installment, watch a discussion between Matt Pottinger is a distinguished visiting fellow and Sean Mirski a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution on Sean's book We May Dominate The World: Ambition, Anxiety, And The Rise Of The American Colossus.
Thursday, July 27, 2023 | 10:00 am PT / 1:00pm ET
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sean A. Mirski is a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution. Mirski is a lawyer and U.S. foreign policy scholar who has worked on national security issues across multiple U.S. presidential administrations. A term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he currently practices national security, foreign relations, and appellate law at Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP. He previously served in the U.S. Department of Defense under both Republican and Democratic administrations as Special Counsel to the General Counsel, where he earned the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Award for Outstanding Achievement.
Mirski has written extensively on American history, international relations, law, and politics, including as editor of the book Crux of Asia: China, India, and the Emerging Global Order (CEIP 2013). Earlier in his career, he clerked for two U.S. Supreme Court justices and served as a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Named one of Forbes magazine’s “30 Under 30,” he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and holds a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Chicago.
ABOUT THE BOOK
What did it take for the United States to become a global superpower? The answer lies in a missing chapter of American foreign policy with stark lessons for today.
The cutthroat world of international politics has always been dominated by great powers. Yet no great power in the modern era has ever managed to achieve the kind of invulnerability that comes from being completely supreme in its own neighborhood. No great power, that is, except one—the United States.
In We May Dominate the World, Sean A. Mirski tells the riveting story of how the United States became a regional hegemon in the century following the Civil War. By turns reluctant and ruthless, Americans squeezed their European rivals out of the hemisphere while landing forces on their neighbors’ soil with dizzying frequency. Mirski reveals the surprising reasons behind this muscular foreign policy in a narrative full of twists, colorful characters, and original accounts of the palace coups and bloody interventions that turned the fledgling republic into a global superpower.
Today, as China makes its own run at regional hegemony and nations like Russia and Iran grow more menacing, Mirski’s fresh look at the rise of the American colossus offers indispensable lessons for how to meet the challenges of our own century.

Thursday Jun 22, 2023
Thursday Jun 22, 2023
Join the Hoover Book Club for engaging discussions with leading authors on the hottest policy issues of the day. Hoover scholars explore the latest books that delve into some of the most vexing policy issues facing the United States and the world. Find out what makes these authors tick and how they think we should approach our most difficult challenges.
In our latest installment, watch a discussion between Bill Whalen, the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism and David Davenport, research fellow emeritus, and co-author of the recently released Hoover Institution Press book Equality of Opportunity: A Century of Debate on Thursday, June 22, 2023 at 10:00 am PT / 1:00 pm ET.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Davenport is a research fellow emeritus at the Hoover Institution specializing in constitutional federalism, civic education, modern American conservatism, and international law. Davenport is the former president of Pepperdine University (1985–2000). Under his leadership, the university experienced significant growth in quality and reputation. He is the cofounder of Common Sense California and the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership. He also served on the board of California Forward, a major bipartisan reform group, and was a member of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s California Performance Review Commission. He is a former senior fellow of the Ashbrook Center, where he worked on civic education projects. With his colleague Gordon Lloyd, Davenport has authored How Public Policy Became War (2019), Rugged Individualism: Dead or Alive? (2017), The New Deal and Modern American Conservatism: A Defining Rivalry (2013); a fourth book, Equality of Opportunity: A Century of Debate, is forthcoming in 2023. These books offer distinctive ways of understanding both historic and current debates between progressives and conservatives in the United States. Davenport is also completing a coauthored book on the civic education crisis.
ABOUT THE BOOK
For over one hundred years, Americans have debated what equality of opportunity means and the role of government in ensuring it. Are we born with equality of opportunity, and must we thus preserve our innate legal and political freedoms? Or must it be created through laws and policies that smooth out social or economic inequalities? David Davenport and Gordon Lloyd trace the debate as it has evolved from America’s founding into the twentieth century, when the question took on greater prominence. The authors use original sources and historical reinterpretations to revisit three great debates and their implications for the discussions today. First, they imagine the Founders, especially James Madison, arguing the case against the Progressives, particularly Woodrow Wilson. Next are two conspicuous public dialogues: Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s debate around the latter’s New Deal; and Ronald Reagan’s response to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and War on Poverty. The conservative-progressive divide in this discussion has persisted, setting the stage for understanding the differing views about equality of opportunity today. The historical debates offer illuminating background for the question: Where do we go from here?

Friday Jun 09, 2023
Friday Jun 09, 2023
The Hoover Institution hosts The Siberia Job | A Book Event on Wednesday, June 7, 2022 at 5:00 pm PT in Hauck Auditorium.
Stephen Kotkin in conversation with John Kleinheinz to discuss the new book, The Siberia Job. Introduction by Condoleezza Rice.
PARTICIPANT BIOS
Stephen Kotkin is a Hoover senior fellow and a Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University. In addition to conducting research in the Hoover Library and Archives for three decades, he is also founder of Princeton’s Global History Initiative. Kotkin’s research and publications encompasses geopolitics and authoritarian regimes in history and in the present, and he has also participated in numerous National Intelligence Council events over the years.
John Kleinheinz is the CEO of Kleinheinz Capital Partners, Inc., the investment advisor for the Global Undervalued Securities Fund, a global-macro themed hedge fund which at its peak managed $4 billion. He returned outside capital to investors in 2013 after a successful 20-year career. John continues to manage the Fund, which is active in a variety of areas including Japan, US energy/technology markets and private equity. He is also a lead investor in efforts to develop high-speed rail between Dallas and Houston.
Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and a Senior Fellow on Public Policy. She is the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A Texas businessman travels to the furthest reaches of post-Soviet Russia in search of the country’s new wealth ― and finds new dangers as well. Based on true events.
After the demise of the Soviet Union, the newly-established Russian government privatized its industry by issuing vouchers to all of its citizens, allowing them the chance to be shareholders in the country’s burgeoning businesses. The slips are distributed among the population and auctions are arranged where they can be exchanged for actual shares. For the country’s rural populations living in abject poverty, the vouchers appear to be little more than pieces of paper, totally separated from the far-off concept of potential future fortunes.
But for Texas businessman John Mills and his Czech companion, Petr Kovac, the seemingly-valueless chits suggest a lucrative potential, worth much more than what the current owners are willing to sell them for. They travel to the furthest, coldest reaches of the country to acquire vouchers for the country’s national oil company, Gazneft, roving from town to town with suitcases full of cash. But they quickly learn that the plan has complications ― for example, the fact that the auctions at which these vouchers are traded for actual shares have been planned at the most remote, inaccessible locations possible to deter outsiders from buying in. And when the Russian mafia and the oligarchs in charge of Gazneft catch wind of their successes, the stakes become suddenly more deadly.
A thrilling adventure inspired by true events, The Siberia Job charts a course through one of the most impactful periods in recent Russian history, whose reverberations continue to be felt in the present day.