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The Hoover Institution (officially The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace; abbreviated as Hoover) is an American public policy think tank and research institution that promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, and limited government. While the institution is formally a unit of Stanford University, it maintains an independent board of overseers and relies on its own income and donations. It is widely described as a conservative institution, although its directors have contested its partisanship.
In 1919, the institution began as a library founded by Stanford alumnus Herbert Hoover prior to his presidency in order to house his archives gathered during the Great War. The Hoover Tower, an icon of Stanford University, was built to house the archives, then known as the Hoover War Collection (now the Hoover Institution Library and Archives), and contained material related to World War I, World War II, and other global events. The collection was renamed and transformed into a research institution and think tank in the mid-20th century. Its mission, as described by Herbert Hoover in 1959, is "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."
The Hoover Institution has been a place of scholarship for individuals who previously held significant positions in government. Notable Hoover fellows and alumni include Nobel Prize laureates Henry Kissinger, Milton Friedman, and Gary Becker; economist Thomas Sowell, scholars Niall Ferguson and Richard Epstein, and former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich. In 2020, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice became the institution's director. It divides its fellows into separate research teams to work on various subjects, including Economic Policy, History, Education, and Law. It publishes research through its own university press, the Hoover Institution Press.
In 2021, Hoover was ranked as the 10th most influential think tank in the world by Academic Influence. It was ranked 22nd on the "Top Think Tanks in United States" and 1st on the "Top Think Tanks to Look Out For" lists of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program that same year.