hoover institution newsletter -winter 2004

8/6/2019 Hoover Institution Newsletter -Winter 2004

1/16

Three members of the Hoover Insti-

tutions Koret Task Force on K12Education were nominated by Pres-ident George W. Bush to the NationaBoard for Education Sciences.

Nominated were Eric A.Hanushek,Car-oline Hoxby, and Herbert Walberg.

Hanushek, who was nominated to atwo-year term, is the Paul and Jean HannaSenior Fellow in Education at Hoover.

Hoxby, who was nominated to a four-year term, is a professor of economics aHarvard University and director of the

Economics of Education Program for theNational Bureau of Economic Research.

Walberg, who was nominated to a three-year term, is a professor emeritus in educa-tion at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Constitutional law, education, racialquotas, nuclear weapons, taxpolicy, and the future of California

were among the many timely topicsaddressed during the Hoover InstitutionsFall Directors Retreat, October 2628,2003.

Hoover senior fellow Victor DavisHanson discussed The War on Terrorismin a Classical Context,and, in the course of his talk, examined mythologies surround-ing war, their causes and how they areresolved.

Wars are hard to start, said Hanson, anoted classicist and author, Most states

know exactly what theyre doing and they take these precipitous steps because they think the risks are not as great as advan-tages accruedand if one side perceivesthat the other has lost deterrence.

Also addressing international issues wasHoover senior fellow Niall Ferguson, who

discussed the strengths and weakness of U.S. leadership. In his talk, Fergusonexplored how far the Anglo-Americanideals of free markets, rule of law, and rep-resentative government can be maintainedand how far they can be exported or glob-

I N S I D E

ERIC H ANUSHEK AWARDEDFORDHAM PRIZE FOR SCHOLARSHIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

C HANGING IRAN FOCUSOF C ONFERENCE . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Q & A: W ILLIAMSON EVERSON ASSISTING IRAQ SEDUCATION SYSTEM . . . . . . . . . 6

EXHIBIT ON IRELAND ST ROUBLES LATEST O FFERINGAT PAVILION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

PRESIDENT BUSHNOMINATES K ORET T ASK FORCE MEMBERSTO N ATIONAL BOARDFOR EDUCATION SCIENCES

F ALL R ETREAT T AKES ON T IMELY TOPICS WITH SPEAKERS , P RESENTATIONS

T he Big Show in Bololand:The American Relief Expeditionto Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921, written by Hooverresearch fellow Bertrand M. Patenaude, was named co-

winner of the 2003 Marshall Shulman Book Prize.

T HE B IG S HOW IN B OLOLAND ISCOWINNER OF PRESTIGIOUS 2003M ARSHALL SHULMAN BOOK PRIZE

HOOVER INSTITUTIONONLINE ONLINE News by and about Hoover fellows and the Institution updated daily.Visit us at www.hoover.org

HOOVER INSTITUTIONW I N T E R 2 0 0 4

NEWSLETTERNEWSLETTER

Victor Davis Hansoncontinued on page

continued on page 8

continued on page 2


2/162

The award was made by the AmericanAssociation for the Advancement of SlavicStudies (AAASS), in conjunction with theHarriman Institute at Columbia Univer-sity, on November 22 in Toronto, Ontario,Canada. At that time,AAASS presented itsannual awards for distinguished contribu-tions to Slavic studies and five book prizes.

The AAASS is the leading private, non-profit organization dedicated to theadvancement of knowledge about Russia,Central Eurasia, and Eastern and Central

Europe.The Big Show in Bololand is based onmaterials in the Hoover InstitutionArchives and was published by StanfordUniversity Press. It portrays an Americanrelief expedition to Soviet Russia in 1921 tomitigate the impact of the famine thatkilled millions. The award committeepraised Patenaudes work for being an out-standing example of lively and engagingprose, impressive historical research, andpersuasive analysis of the diplomatic

underpinnings and consequences of therescue mission.

Information about the book is availableon the Hoover Institution web site athttp://www-hoover.stanford.edu/pubaf-

fairs/newsletter/02091/bololand.html andat the Stanford University Press web site a

http://www.sup.org/cgi-bin/search/book_desc.cgi?book_id=4467%204493.

Also winning the Marshall ShulmanBook Prize was Ted Hopf, associate professor of political science at the Ohio StatUniversity for his monograph on the inter-national behavior of the countries of theformer Communist bloc, Social Construction of International Politics: Identities &Foreign Policies, Moscow, 1955 & 199published by Cornell University Press.

Founded in 1948, the American Associ-

ation for the Advancement of SlavicStudies, a nonprofit,nonpolitical, scholarlysociety, brings together over 3,000 scholarsinterested in the culture, history, and lan-guages of the regions peoples, and theieconomic and political systems, and givescoherence to a field that covers a multitudeof academic disciplines and diverseinterests.

The nominations were announced onNovember 19 by the White House.

The National Board for Education Sci-ences,which was established in 2002 underthe Education Sciences Reform Act, ischarged with overseeing the work of theInstitute of Education Sciences.

This act overhauled the Office of Educa-tional Research and Improvement andreplaced it with the new Institute of Educa-tion Sciences,which is designed to developand coordinate high-quality research,gather statistics, evaluate programs, anddisseminate information.

The Institute of Education Sciences is

within the Department of Education butfunctions as a separate office under thedirection of the newly established NationalBoard for Education Sciences. TheNational Board for Education Sciences iscomposed of fifteen members appointedby the president.

The Koret Task Force on K12 Educa-tion is the centerpiece of the Hoover Insti-tutions Initiative on American Public Edu-cation. Supported by the Koret Founda-tion, the task force consists of a group of national educational experts with estab-lished careers in systematic and scientific

analysis of education policy. Task force

activities have focused on and producedideas and materials concerning schoolreforms that are likely to succeed.

Task force members also serve aseditors, contributors, and members of theeditorial board of Education Next: A Journal of Opinion and Research, publishedby the Hoover Institution.

The full text of the press release on thenominations may be viewed ath t tp : / /www.whi tehouse .gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031119-3.html

K ORET T ASK FORCEON K12 E DUCATION

continued from page 1

B OLOLAND IS COWINNER OF 2003 M ARSHALL SHULMAN BOOK PRIZE


Bertrand M. Patenaude


3/16 3

Education reform has come to beviewed as a legal problem,a perspec-tive that encourages frivolous law-

suits that breed distrust of the law and theU.S. education system, according to PhilipHoward, attorney, author, and activist withthe organization Common Good.

We have lost the ability to make goodchoices, said Howard, who spoke to adinner audience gathered on January 15during meetings of the Koret Task Force onK12 Education.

The use of the law to improve schoolsis one of the reasons schools are failing, hesaid. This is not to say that the law isntimportant, as in desegregation and specialeducation. But when the law moves fromhelping set goals, as in desegregation, todaily negotiation, it suffocates positivechanges and improvements.

My premise is that the most importantaspect in an institution,such as the schools,is the people in it.The human aspect is crit-ical, but the law kills it, he said. Frankly,

the law is rigid, when we have too many rules the law is overarching, and so-calleddue processto protect individuals againstgovernment poweris being misused.

If you are running a school, you need tohave authority and discretion. We need torestore this authority to have good schoolsand not misuse the law, he added.

Howard, the chairman of the ground-breaking bipartisan legal reform organiza-tion Common Good, is also the author of The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is

Suffocating America (Random House,1995) and The Collapse of the CommonGood: How Americas Lawsuit CultureUndermines Our Freedom(Ballatine,2002).He is vice-chairman of the law firm Cov-ington & Burling.

The Koret Task Force on K12 Educa-tion met during January 1416 to takestock of its projects and programs and planfor the future.The task force is an elite teamof scholars specializing in education reformwho have been brought together by Hoover

director John Raisian and Hoover overseerTad Taube, president of the Koret Founda-tion, to address the national debate overpublic education.

The task force is a joint endeavor of theHoover Institution and the Koret Founda-tion of San Francisco, its primary sponsor.Task force members are Hoover fellowsWilliamson M. Evers, Chester Finn, EricHanushek, Terry Moe, and Paul E.Petersonand Hoover distinguished visiting fellowsJohn E. Chubb, Paul Hill, E. D. Hirsch Jr.Caroline Hoxby, Diane Ravitch, andHerbert J.Walberg.

The Koret Task Force forms the center-piece of the Hoover Institutions Initiativeon American Public Education, a five-year

commitment to the production of researchand writing on education reform.The task forces first joint work, A Prime

on Americas Schools, was published by theHoover Institution Press in 2001. Otherbooks include Choice with Equity (2002and School Accountability(2002). In 2003the task force released Our Schools and OuFuture Are We Still at Risk? An Assement by the Koret Task Force on K12 Edcation, also published by Hoover Institu-tion Press.

A UTHOR , A CTIVIST PHILIP H OWARD C ALLS FOR R ETURNTO COMMON SENSE IN USE OF L AW DURING T ALK

AT K ORET T ASK FORCE D INNER

Eric A. Hanushek, Paul and Jean

Hanna Senior Fellow, has beenawarded the Fordham Foundations

2004 Prize for Distinguished Scholarship.The announcement was made on January 26.

Hanushek, a member of the HooverInstitution Koret Task Force on K12 Edu-cation,was cited for his passion to improvethe education of disadvantaged andminority children, beliefs about the K12education system, challenge of conven-tional wisdom about schooling, and deepcommitment to the cause of publicschools.

The Thomas B. Fordham Prize for Dis-tinguished Scholarship is awarded to a

scholar who

has mademajor contri-butions toe d u c a t i o nreform viar e s e a r c h ,analysis, andsuccessful engagement in the war of ideas.

In 2003, the first Thomas B. FordhamPrize for Distinguished Scholarship wasawarded to Paul Peterson, a member of theKoret Task Force for K12 Education and aprofessor of education at Harvard Univer-sity.

The recipient of the first Fordham Prizefor Valor in 2003 was E.D.Hirsch Jr., also a

member of the Koret Task Force on K12Education and a professor emeritus at theUniversity of Virginia. The Thomas B.Fordham Prize for Valor is awarded to aleader who has made major contributionsto education reform via noteworthy

accomplishments at the national, state,local, and/or school level.

The press release on the award may beviewed at the Fordham Foundation sitehttp://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/global/page.cfm?id=199.

At http://www.edexcellence.net/doc/FordhamEducationPrizes2004.pdf is a fullprofile of Hanushek,his work, and his life,along with that of the winner of the Foun-dations 2004 Prize for Valor, Howard LFuller, distinguished professor of educa-tion and founder/director of the Institutefor the Transformation of Learning atMarquette University.

ERIC H ANUSHEK A WARDEDFORDHAM FOUNDATION PRIZEFOR D ISTINGUISHED SCHOLARSHIP

Eric A. Hanushek


4/164

Continued immigration constantly reshapes the demography, economy, andsociety of the United States.

As a country of immigrants, write PhilipMartin and Peter Duignan in the newHoover Institution Essay Making and Remaking America: Immigration into theUnited States, America must respond tothree fundamental immigration questions:

How many migrants should be admit-ted?

From where and with what status shouldthey arrive?

How should the rules governing thesystem be enforced?During the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S.

Congress responded to growing gapsbetween immigration policy and immigra-

tion reality by making major changes inimmigration laws and how they wereadministered.

In 1986, the United States enacted theworlds largest legalization program forunauthorized foreigners and introducedsanctions on employers who knowinglyhired illegal foreign workers. Instead oslowing illegal immigration, however, thiprogram allowed more foreigners to arrivelegally and illegally, which promptedanother round of reforms in 1996 aimed atensuring that new arrivals would notreceive welfare payments.

H OOVER ESSAYS M AKING AND R EMAKING A MERICA : I MMIGRATION INTO THE

U NITED S TATES by Philip Martin and Peter Duignan

continued on page 5

Iran is of enormous promise and

importance, not only for theMiddle East and Southeast Asia

but for the entire world, according toHoover senior fellow Larry Diamond,who opened The Politics and Gover-nance in a Chang-ing Iran, confer-ence conductedNovember 21 atHoovers StaufferAuditorium. Thepurpose of the con-

ference, organizedby Diamond andHoover fellowAbbas Milani, wasto look at the prospects and conditionsfor peaceful political reform in Iran.

The conference on Iran is part of Hoovers International Rivalries andGlobal Cooperation program, which

studies foreign pol-icy in the fields of security, trade andcommerce, and therule of law.

In the first panelof the day, TheCurrent PoliticalLandscape in Iran,Ali M.Ansari, of the

University of Dur-

ham, discussed howIranian intellectualsview the revolutionsthat brought aboutchanges in Iransgovernment. Hoover research fellowAbbas Milani chaired the panel.

Discussants included Haleh Esfandiariof the Woodrow Wilson InternationalCenter, Guity Nashat of the Hoover Insti-tution, and Nayereh Tohidi of CaliforniaState University, Northridge.

Religious intellectualism was the topicof the second morning panel, Religionand Politics. Forough Jahanbaksh of Queens University discussed The Role of Islamic Intellectuals. Discussants on thepanel that was chaired by Diamondincluded Donald Emmerson of StanfordUniversity; Alireza Hagigi, a journalistresiding in Canada; and Milani.

The afternoon session opened witha reception to view the exhibit Creat-ing an Islamic Republic: Iranian Col-lections from the Hoover Library andArchives.

Abdulkarim Lahiji, a human rightslawyer, discussed his views of religionand government in Iran in the panelJudicial System and the Rule of Law inIran. Hoover fellow Michael McFaul

chaired the panel.D i s c u s s a n t sincluded ErikJensen, of StanfordUniversity andMehrangiz Kar, of

the University of Virginia.

For the last panelof the day, TheNuclear Question, Mohsen Masserat of the University of Osnabruek presentedhis paper, Irans Energy Policy: CurrentDilemmas and Perspective for a Sustain-able Energy Policy. Najmeddin Meshkatiof the University of Southern California,a discussant on the panel, voiced con-cerns about Irans intentions of develop-ing a nuclear energy program.

The conference concluded with aroundtable discussion on relationsbetween the United States and Iran. Par-ticipants in the discussion includedHormoz Hekmat, editor of Irannamehand McFaul, Milani, and Diamond, all of the Hoover Institution.

POLITICS , GOVERNANCE IN CHANGING IRANFOCUS OF NOVEMBER CONFERENCE

Iran panelAbbas Milani

Larry Diamond

Michael McFaulGuity Nashat


5/16 5

Do achievement test scores really predictobjective indicators of individual andnational success? The OECD study showedthat, in a dozen economically advancedcountries, achievement test scores accurately predict per-capita gross domestic productand individual earnings, life expectancy andparticipation in civic and community activi-ties. Literacy still matters. The United Stateshas clearly lost its lead in educating workersfor an ever-changing knowledge economy,

with potentially devastating implications forour economy, but also for our political andcivic institutions. The need to improve thenations public schools has never beengreater.

Herbert Walberg , dist inguishedvisiting fellow and member of theKoret Task Force on K12 Education,and Joseph Bast, president of theHeartland Institute, coauthors of Education and Capitalism (HooverInstitution Press, 2003), San Francisco

Chronicle, January 13

The part of the war that combat forcesperform is brief. But the operations in whichreservists specializethe war after thewarcan take 10 times as long. Because weare likely to see this pattern repeated,we needto rethink our force structure. We may needto add more active-duty forces in noncom-batant specialties or use more reservists incombat. Or we may need to spend more on

defense. Those are the costs of leading a waron terrorists and rogue states.The alternativeis to rely on other countries or the UnitedNations, both of which have been unwillingto act decisively. Or we could hunker downand risk another attack like 9/11.

Todays debates over military reservepolicy are really debates over Americas rolein the world.

Bruce Berkowitz , senior fellow,Pasadena Star-News, November 24

We are not in a war with a crook in Haiti.Thisis no Grenada or Panamaor even a Kosovoor Bosnia.No,we are in a worldwide strugglethe likes of which we have not seen sinceWorld War II. The quicker we understand theawful truth, and take measures to defeatrather than ignore or appease our enemies,the quicker we will win. In a war such as this,the alternative to victory is not a brokeredpeace, but abject Western suicide and all thatit entailsa revelation of which we saw onSeptember 11.

Victor Davis Hanson , senior fellow,National Review Online, December 5

The White House had specifically told my colleagues [in Iraq working with the Iraq

Education Ministry] and me to concentrateon getting the children, teachers and text-books back in the classrooms.We were wisely admonished by White House officials to offerour best advice when asked by Iraqis, but toavoid directly imposing extensive reforms onthe Iraqi schools. We followed this suggestedcourse. Thus, we helped remove totalitarianteachings from the classrooms, helped theschools and ministry resume operations,andkept our advisory office small. Now Iraqis

themselves are restructuring the ministryorganization, considering decentralizationplans, and holding forums on curriculumreform and the future of Iraqs school system

Williamson Evers , research fellow,Wall Street Journal , January 15

Part of President Bushs appeal to manAmericans is that he combines a moral certainty about ends with a ruthlessness aboumeans. To achieve these ends, the presidenhas no compunction about exploiting thenations fiscal and monetary strengthstothe max. No question, the policy of havingboth guns and butter postpones difficultdecisions about the future of the welfarsystem, principally Medicare and SociaSecurity. But it also ensures the continuationof the nations full spectrum dominance inwarfare.

Niall Ferguson , senior fellow, NewYork Times, December 7

It surprises many that there is resistance toopenness in [school] funding, to providingclear information on student performanceand to rewarding results. The resistance ieasily seen by remembering that [Californiarecently had large bonuses for school per

formance, only to have them dropped evenbefore the current round of cuts related tobudget problems. The simple fact is thamany currently in the system do not want anyfocus on performance. The underlying phi-losophy here points toward the fundamentalelements of the currently broken system andaway from fixating just on budgetary allocations.

Eric A. Hanushek , senior fellow, San Jose Mercury News, November 23

H O O V E R I N P R I N T

On September 11, 2001,foreigners in theUnited States hijacked four commercialplanes. Two were flown into the WorldTrade Center towers in New York City,bringing them down and killing 3,000people. President George W. Bush declaredwar on terrorists and the countries that

harbor them,and Congress enacted legisla-tion to fight terrorism.

This includes new measures for tighten-ing procedures for issuing visas to foreignvisitors, tracking foreign students and visi-tors while they are in the United States, andgiving immigration authorities new powerto arrest and detain foreigners suspected of ties to terrorism. The Immigration andNaturalization Service was abolished, andits functions of preventing illegal immigra-

tion and providing services to foreign visi-tors and immigrants were awarded to thenew Department of Homeland Security.

However, antiterrorism measures havenot slowed immigration to the UnitedStates. America is poised to remain theworlds major destination for immigrants,and as patterns in U.S.history suggest,mostof the newcomers will soon become Amer-icans.

continued on page 11

H OOVER ESSAYS



6/16

GOING B ACK TO SCHOOL IN IRAQ

Q: July through December 2003, you werein Iraq as an adviser for education toAmbassador Paul Bremer, with the Coali-tion Provisional Authority (CPA). Duringthat time, you lived in Baghdad, workedwith CPA colleagues and Iraqi educationofficials, visited schools and met withteachers and children, and helped getschools open again at the beginning of October. Please share with us some of yourexperiences and reflections on this effort.A: The Office of the Secretary of Defensefirst asked me at the beginning of May 2003 to be a senior adviser for education.When you do this, you are appointed by the president and approved by Ambas-sador Paul Bremer, who heads the CPA inBaghdad.This takes some time. I went onleave from Hoover and spent from lateJune through late July working in an officein the Pentagon: getting a top secret secu-

rity clearance, recruiting other people togo to Baghdad to work on the schools,learning more about the situation in Iraq,and talking to people in the White Houseabout priorities.Q: How do you actually get there?A: First, you spend at least a day in a hotelnear Kuwait City. Then, you fly out of amilitary airfield in Kuwait on a military cargo plane. Your plane comes downsteeply from the sky (to avoid Saddamistrocketeers) to the military side of the inter-national airport in Baghdad.Q: Whats it like?A: Its gratifying. The Iraqi children andgrown-ups smile, always say Welcomeand wave.The teachers and administratorsare friendly and dedicated to academicsuccess.You could enter a classroom in theKurdish north, in rural parts of the Sunnitriangle, or in Shiite sections of urban

Baghdad, and sense that students are eagerto learn. Iraqi parents love the countrysnational testing program and were fer-vently concerned not to let either the warin March and April, or the subsequentguerrilla skirmishes, interfere with thetesting of their children.

Its busy.The education advisory officeis in Saddams main palace in the protectedGreen Zone,which is like a college campu(with bombed-out ruins) situated in themiddle of Baghdad. The senior advisers foall the ministries have a meeting everymorning (except Friday) at 7:30. It is usuafor senior advisers and their top staff tostill be working at 10:30 at night. People iMr. Bremers office start even earlier anwork later.

Its not as scary as it looks on TV.Buyou do have to exercise reasonable pru-dence. I traveled in Baghdad and around

Williamson M. Evers

Research Fellow; member of Hoovers Koret Task Force on K12Education

Education policy, especially as it pertains to curriculum, teaching,testing, and accountability from kindergarten through high school.Senior adviser for education to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer of theCoalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, JulyDecember 2003.

Chapter on curriculum in Our Schools and Our Future; Teacher Quality(coeditor, 2002); School Accountability (coeditor and cocontributor,2002); School Reform: The Critical Issues(coeditor, 2001); chapter onstandards and accountability in A Primer on Americas Schools; WhatsGone Wrong in Americas Classrooms(editor and contributor, 1998).Contributor, Education Week, New York Times, Wall Street Journal , Lo Angeles Times,and Christian Science Monitor . Member, editorial boards,Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Texas Education Review, andEducation Next .

Education policy adviser to President George W. Bush, 2000 campaign,and member, education advisory committee during transition.Member, White House Commission on Presidential Scholars. Member,California state standardized testing and reporting systems contentreview panels for history and mathematics. Member, policy board of theCalifornia HistorySocial Science Project.President,the board of direc-tors of the East Palo Alto Charter School, and member of the boardsince 1997. Former member, National Educational Research Policy andPriorities Board. Member, California State Commission for the Estab-lishment of Academic Content and Performance Standards, 199698.

B.A. (1972), M.A. (1978), and Ph.D. (1987) degrees in political scienceStanford University.

F E L L O W

T I T L E

R E S E A R C H

P U B L I C AT I O N S

A F F I L I AT I O N S

D E G R E E S

6

Q & A


7/16

the country more than most civilians whoworked in the Baghdad palace. Usually Itraveled with guards armed with assaultrifles. I personally found it a bit nerve-racking whenever I was stuck in a traffic

jam. But in five months I never saw a fire-fight, a bleeding wound, or a dead body. Ifelt and heard explosions, but none werecloser than several football fields away.Watching TV coverage of Iraq is muchscarier than being there.Q: What was the overall mission of thegroup with which you worked?A: In a sense, much of my and my col-leagues efforts were to help a multitude of coalition civilian agencies, military units,and international agencies talk to each

other and coordinate work in the field of education.

We didnt, for example, want Japan andthe U.S.Agency for International Develop-ment both trying to repair the sameschool. We also tried to create conditionsfor normal schoolwork by children andteachers. When American or internationalagencies wanted to impose ProgressiveEducation (learn-through-play) in Iraqischools, we reminded representatives of these agencies that Iraqis had to decidewhat they wanted to be taught in theschools and how it would be taught.Q: What did you experience regarding theactual schools,say, those outside Baghdad?A: While there,my colleagues in educationand I met with school officials from theprovinces, who since the war had beenlargely cut off from Baghdad (in a country that has lately had no postal system, notelephone system, and little Internetaccess).

We helped reestablish communicationwith Kurdish officials who had functionedindependently of Baghdad for 12 years.The coalition military working with civil-ian advisers made sure that hundreds of thousands of teachers scattered around thecountry were paid regularly, in the absenceof a working banking system.

We monitored efforts by the BechtelCorporation, the coalition military, andcharities to rehabilitate run-down schools.A few schools were hit with shells or sus-

tained some other war damage in Marchand April; substantial numbers (2,753schools, according to UNICEF) werelooted. About 80 percent of schools hadseriously deteriorated after more than a

decade of neglect by Saddam Hussein.Q: How was religion handled in theschools? What do children learn?A: Religion is taught in Iraqi schools as asubject now and was taught underSaddam. If you are a Muslim, you takeclasses in Islam. If you are a Christian,youare excused from taking Islamic classes. If there are enough Christians in a school, aChristian teacher teaches them classes inChristianity.

The Saddam-era textbooks on Islam arenot carbon copies of al Qaeda proclama-tions.But they do present a Sunni interpre-tation on such matters as ritual ablutionsand the early caliphate. Shiite studentswere forced under Saddam to learn theSunni interpretation, which was the only interpretation of Islam allowed in theschools.With the exception of a school forthe diplomatic community, there were noprivate primary and secondary schools.Saddam nationalized independent schoolsin the 1970s. Currently, the Ministry of Education has a task force drafting ameasure that would once again legalizeprivate schools.Q: What about education for girls and thequality of education?A: I saw girls in school all over Iraq. Its notlike Afghanistan under the Taliban. Inprimary school, 45 percent of students aregirls; in secondary school, 40 percent. Allstatistics about Iraq (including these fromU.N. agencies) are shaky. But these per-

centages are consistent with what I myselobserved.

Iraq has a tradition of valuing educationand a reputation for having produced, inthe pre-Saddam era, some of the best

architects, doctors, and engineers in theArab Middle East.Q: In the United States, the news mediacarried some reports about the textbooks,their content, and the fact that mentions ofSaddam Hussein were being removed.A: Under Saddam, propaganda was in allthe textbooks, even those for physics andforeign-language instruction in English.The most egregious propaganda was inhistory and civics books. A history bookpublished under Saddam would say, for

example, that the Iran-Iraq war of the1980s was merely an instance of thwarlike nature of the Persians (who werecalled yellow snakes) and their eternahostility toward the Arabs.

During the summer of 2003, Iraqischoolteachers decided that Saddamscivics textbooks were so full of propagandthat they were not salvageable. So civiccourses were removed from the curricu-lum for 20034.

After Iraqi schoolteachers removed pic-tures of Saddam, quotations from him,andother Saddam propaganda from the text-books, we CPA advisers monitored effortsby UNESCO and UNICEF to print the de-Saddamized books. We worked with Iraqisto remove senior Baathists from teachingand administrative positions, while ensur-ing that those removed had a process forappeals.

We also helped Iraqis launch a newprogram for training teachers in effectiveclassroom practices.Q: What steps were taken in regard to theschool system and its governance?A: From the end of the fighting until earlySeptember 2003, the CPA advisers ran thecountrys school system. Then, my col-leagues and I handed authority over theschool system to Aladin Alwan, the minister of education appointed by the IraqiGoverning Council. Since September, hesbeen in charge. We continued to offer

7

Q & A



8/16

alized. America stands at a crossroads to an empire, Fergusonsaid.

Ferguson is the Herzog Pro-fessor of Financial History atthe Stern Business School, NewYork University, a noted author,and a senior research fellow atJesus College, Oxford Univer-sity, where he is a visiting pro-fessor of history.

The judicial scope of theSupreme Court and the processby which the power of theCourt was established wasaddressed at dinner on October27 by Robert George, a profes-sor of jurisprudence and direc-tor of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institu-tions at Princeton University

In his talk Judicial Supremacy? Lessons from Lincoln, Georgeexamined President Abraham Lincolns response to SupremeCourt rulings on the Dred Scott case and how it acted as part of the

growth and change in judiciary power.He began by reviewing the 1954 case of Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, which abolished segregation. This ruling was chal-lenged in a subsequent case but upheld by the Supreme Court.Ina unanimous decision, the justices asserted that the federal judici-ary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution,George said.Now the idea of judicial supremacyhas come to bevery widely held, so widely held not only by the legal profession,but the public at large that it has come to be seen as unremarkable.But it was notalways so.

In Marbury vs.

Madison (1803)the SupremeCourt, underChief Justice JohnMarshall, estab-lished a broaderscope of judicialreview. With Marbury theCourt assumedgreater powersand determined

that it had the duty to invalidate laws that were in conflict with theConstitution. President Thomas Jefferson objected to this changein judicial review, fearing that the powers of the judiciary would beunchecked.

Then in 1857, in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case, the SupremeCourt inserted itself into the political fray, not only finding in favor

of slaveowners and refusing to recognize slaves as citizens bustating that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. Pres-

ident Lincoln objected to this ruling because the SupremeCourt claimed authority to interpret the Constitution,placing other branches of government in a subservientposition to the Court,the same despotism that concernedPresident Jefferson.

George noted that the Supreme Court is seen as ahigher authority, not subject to politics,but reminded theaudience not to forget other landmark rulings where theSupreme Court acted on political issues. Uncheckedpower to do good, George said, is unchecked power todo evil. He cited Lochner v. New York(1905), a case thaushered in decades of judicial hostility toward state andlocal social welfare laws,andRoe v. Wade(1973) as otherexamples.

In addition to his position at Princeton, George is amember of President George W. Bushs Council on

Bioethics. His most recent books include The Clash of Orthodoxieand Great Cases in Constitutional Law.

Domestic and International Issues

Richard Epstein, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow a

Hoover, beganthe plenary session onOctober 27 witha talk on TheRole of Skepti-cism in Consti-tutional Law.

One of thereasons we puttogether a con-stitution, the

reason we donthave a generalsystem of popu-lar democracy and majority rules at the drop of a hat,is because thething we are skeptical about are the motives, purposes, and activi-ties of our various government agencies, he said.

Epstein,who also is the James Parker Hall Distinguished ServiceProfessor at the University of Chicago, is known for his researchand writing in a broad range of constitutional, economic, histori-cal, and philosophical subjects.

In the next session, After Michigan: Ending the War over RacePreferences, Hoover research fellow Robert Zelnick asked the

F A L L R E T R E A T

F ALL R ETREAT MEETING


8

John Raisian

Kurt Hauser

Niall Ferguson


9/16

question, where do we go from here? Most interesting develop-ment that Ive seen, Zelnick said, is a rising up of scholars whohave supported affirmative action in the past but who say diversity is basically a lie.

Zelnick is also an Emmy Award-winning journalist and chair-man of the Department of Journalism at Boston University.

Ken Jowitt, the Pres and Maurine Hotchkis Senior Fellow, in histalk titled The American Empire: Papal, Evangelical, or Ecumeni-cal? spoke on U. S. efforts to globalize America and rebuild Iraq.To the extent towhich theUnited Statespursues this

utopian goal of regime change,what we aregoing to see onthe basis of thetwo goals thatthe Bush admin-istration nowhasnamely,military invul-nerability for theUnited States

and global democracy, Jowitt said, will create a world in whichAmerica is more militarized and the world is less democratized.

Following the morning plenary speakers, Hoover fellows pre-sented retreat guests attending afternoon sessions with an array of conversations on Economics Japan Never a Matter of Indifference: Sustaining Virtue in a FreeRepublic Nuclear weapons Rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan Ronald Reagan

A tour of the exhibit Creating an Islamic Republic: Iranian Poster from the Hoover Collection, was presented by Hoover exhibits coor-dinator Cecile Hill.

Global and Local Economies, Past and Present Presidents, and U.S.Leadership

On October 28,Robert Glenn Hubbard,a professor of econom-ics and finance at Columbia Universitys Graduate School of Business,gave an analysis of the economy in his talk Are We in a GlobaRecovery, saying that the economy has shown amazing resilienceThe economy has weathered setbacks, Hubbard said, and many sectors are thriving.

F o l l o w i n gHubbard, JohnPodhoretz, acolumnist forthe New YorkPost , reviewedthe successes of George W. Bushsas president inhis talk DrivingLiberals Insane:The George W.Bush Presi-dency.

H o o v e rresearch fellowPeter Robinsons talk How Ronald Reagan Changed My Lifewa

drawn from his recently released book by the same title. Hereviewed two lessons he learned as a speechwriter for PresidenRonald Reagan, one, that words matter, and two, that individualsmatter.

Afternoon sessions covered issues that included Education Tax policy U.S.-Iranian relations

Dennis Prager, the well-known syndicated radio talk-show hostand writer, spoke on October 26 and by sharing with dinner guestswhat he believes are the seven ways in which America is different

These are the features that set America apart, that enable it to

go it alone in the world, he said.However, we are not very aggressive in articulating this and sharing it in a way that convinces otherof their value.

The features are Secular governmentthe United States has created a uniquesecular government with a religious body politic. Religiositythe religiosity of America is unique. It is a distinctlJudeo-Christian country but has never been confused with Euro-pean Christianity in that there were no pogroms directed towardthe Jews or any inquisition conducted in America.

It is the only religious country in the world that is also tolerant.


9

Retreat panel on California politics

Dennis Prager

Robert George



10/1610

American Christianity created something that has never beenduplicated: massive tolerance, he said. Sense of missionalone among other countries in Westernsociety, the United States has a sense of mission toward humanity.The expression of this mission can be documented in the writingsof major figures including Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Consciousness of good and evilThe United States talks aboutgood and evil. Why did we fight in Korea? It was for liberty,Prager said. And when it came to Vietnam, we did not fight toacquire raw materials. Pragmatismpragmatism is a unique American value.I neverconfuse art with moral excellence; I know that art is art and good-ness is goodness. Liberty over equalitywe prefer liberty to equality, havingdecided that freedom is better than everyone being equal. Meritlineage is of no importance.Bloodline means nothing.The question is Can you do the job? and we are a people who trustpeople we are not related to.

My fear,Prager said,is that we have a gem in the United Statesand we dont know it and we dont know how to sell it to the nextgeneration.We could realize that we have lost the greatest force forgoodness. We could lose it and we need to know how different it is[from all the other political systems in the world]. We need to cel-

ebrate it.Prager thanked Hoover director John Raisian for the opportu-nity to speak before the Hoover audience and recalled that he haddiscussed the future of the Soviet Union with Hoover fellows whilein graduate school.I have a deeply felt love for Hoover and being

speaker here tonight is like a dream come true, he said.The retreat ended with a panel discussion on California issues

The panelists were Hoover fellows Morris Fiorina, ThomasMaCurdy, and Pete Wilson. Hoover senior fellow David Bradymoderated.

During California Politics 2003: The Recall, the Budget an

Beyond, they commented on the recall of Governor Gray Davis,the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the budget debacle of 2003and challenges facing the state.

Morris Fiorina discussed the innovative statewide voter surveyusing the Internet and a facsimile of the proposed ballot that heand David Brady, along with Stanford professor Shanto Iyengar,undertook during the lead-up to the October 7 election. The poll,administered by Knowledge Networks of Menlo Park, California,showed that from the very first of the three surveys in the seriesSchwarzenegger had solid support.

Thomas MaCurdy challenged solving the California budget gapwith the sale of bonds, noting that bonds are borrowing from thefuture and debt service is ignored.

He pointed out that the legislature,with the approval of the gov-ernor, spent funds that werent in state coffers and that state rev-enues are too dependent on taxes paid by high-income families.

Former California governor Pete Wilson said he believed thelegislature, as well as Governor Davis, were culpable in the economic mess the state faces. This was an election about anger.think that if the names of the legislators were on the October 7ballot, the voters would have recalled all of them, he said.Wilsonalso said he felt that solving the budget crisis with bonds waillegal.

Regarding other issues of concern to Californias future, he saidhe would recommend an independent commission to reapportionthe states voting districts and return the legislature to a part-timeschedule.


advice and counsel when the ministerrequested it, and we provided liaisonbetween Iraqi educational officials andpeople in the CPA.

The White House had specifically toldmy colleagues and me to concentrate ongetting the children, teachers, and text-books back in the classrooms. We werewisely admonished by White House offi-cials to offer our best advice when asked by Iraqis but to avoid directly imposingextensive reforms on the Iraqi schools. Wefollowed this suggested course.

Q: How, then, would you judge the workyou did?A: As a success. And Id call it a successbecause we helped remove totalitarianteachings from the classrooms, helped theschools and ministry resume operations,and kept our advisory office small. NowIraqis themselves are restructuring theministry organization, considering decen-tralization plans, and holding forums oncurriculum reform and the future of Iraqsschool system.

We almost always handed on responsi-bilities that were handed to us, as soon aspossible, to Iraqis.The big exceptions weremonitoring money and progress. Natu-

rally, with so much American taxpayersmoney going into Iraqi schools, the advis-ers had to watch where the money wasgoing. The Ministry of Education has itsproblems,including the need for a replace-ment for a headquarters building that waslooted and burned.But because Iraqis haveassumed responsibility in the schools andthe ministry, Iraqis themselves are nowcharting the future course of education intheir country.

As the Coalition Provisional Authorityturns over civilian and military responsi-bilities to the Iraqis between now and theend of June, I hope the process goes as welin other fields as it has in education.


Q & A

F ALL R ETREAT MEETING



11/16 11

P U B L I C A T I O N R E V I E WT he Hoover Institution presents a widerange of opinions,expert research,and com-mentary in four recognized and acclaimedpublications.

Hoover Digest www.hooverdigest.org

The War on Terror: Ripples of Battle.The continuing aftershocks of September11.By Senior FellowVictor Davis Hanson . Iraq:We Got Him: How We Ran Saddamto Ground. By Research Fellow BruceBerkowitz . Foreign Aid and the National Interest:How Should the United States ApproachForeign Aid? Andrew Natsios and Hooversenior fellow Larry Diamond recommendtough love.

Asia: The Outlook. Former secretary of state and Hoover distinguished fellowGeorge P. Shultz surveys the current Asianpolitical and economic landscape. Taxes: The Double Benefit of Tax Cuts.How tax cuts keep government spending incheck and prompt the development of askilled, productive workforce. By Hooversenior fellows Gary S. Becker, Edward P.Lazear, and Kevin Murphy .

Education Next

www.educationnext.org Fiscal Indiscipline:Why School DistrictsCant Downsize. Mounting Debt. By JonFullerton. Academic Freedom. By WilliamG.Ouchi. Competing Visions: Head Start Gets aMakeover. By Ron Haskins.

Recycling Reforms: The Department of Education Enters the Innovation Business.By Diane Ravitch , member, Koret TaskForce on K12 Education. The Knowledge Guild: The Tensionbetween Unions and Professionals. By

Denis P. Doyle. Why Choice Is Good for Teachers:Ending the Pedagogical Holy Wars. By David J.Ferrero. Money and Motivation: Michigan LinksCollege Scholarships to High SchoolResults. By John H. Bishop. To Catch a Cheat: How to Stop TestingFraud. By Brian J. Jacob and Steven D.Levitt. The Revolving Door: Why TeachersLeave. By Eric A. Hanushek , Paul and JeanHanna Senior Fellow and member, KoretTask Force on K12 Education;John F. Kain;and Steven G. Rivkin. The American Dream and the PublicSchools. By Jennifer Hochschild andNathan Scovronick. Reviewed by William A.Galston. All Else Equal: Are Public and PrivateSchools Different? By Luis Benveniste,Martin Carnoy, and Richard Rothstein.Reviewed by Paul T. Hill , member, Koret

Task Force on K12 Education.Policy Reviewwww.policyreview.org

Sovereignty and Democracy: Self-Gov-ernment Needs the Nation-State.By Marc F.Plattner.

Keeping the Information Edge: Reform-ing Intelligence for the Age of Terror. BKevin OConnell and Robert R. Tomes. European Union, Properly Construed:Americans Need to take Europe More Seriously. By Reginald Dale. Down on the Biopharm: Missing Out onthe Latest Benefits of Pharmacology. BResearch FellowHenry I. Miller and DavidLongtin. Representation without Taxation: TheColonial Roots of American Taxation17001754. By Senior Fellow AlvinRabushka.

China Leadership Monitor www.chinaleadershipmonitor.org

Foreign policy: Chinas Foreign Policy

Leadership: Testing Time. By Robert LSuettinger. Military affairs: The Mystery of thMissing Godfather: Civil-Military Relationand the Shenzhou-5 Manned SpaceMission. By James Mulvenon. Economic policy: An Economic BubbleChinese Policy Adapts to Rapidly ChangingConditions. By Barry Naughton. Political reform: The Third PlenarySession of the 16th Central Committee. ByJoseph Fewsmith. Party affairs: Hu Jintao and the PartyPolitburo. By Senior Fellow H. LymanMiller. The provinces: Chinas Northeast: FromLargest Rust Belt to Fourth EconomiEngine. By Li Cheng.

However, past success does not guaran-tee that integrating newcomers will be easy or automatic. As immigrants continue tomake and remake the country, the UnitedStates must develop an immigration policy for the twenty-first century.

Philip Martin is professor of agriculturaland resource economics at the University of California, Davis, chair of the University of Californias Comparative Immigration andIntegration Program, and editor of Migrant News and Rural Migration News.

http://migration.ucdavis.edu.Peter Duignan is the Lillick Curator and

senior fellow emeritus at the Hoover Insti-tution and has written or edited more than

forty books and monographs.

H OOVER ESSAY R USSIA S O IL IN A MERICA S F UTURE : P OLICY , P IPELINES ,

AND P ROSPECTS by William Ratliff

Russia may be the largest oil exporter inthe world, but very little has yet to come tothe United States, according to Hoover

research fellow William Ratliff.Writing in Russias Oil in America

Future, Ratliff addresses the many prob-lems arising in Russias oil industry, which

is dominated by rich and aggressive youngprivate companies.Generally,they are eagerto deal with foreigners, but despite significant state reforms they often are still inhib-ited by a dilapidated, state-controlled deliv-ery system and a residue of traditionalthinking and institutions.

Many of Russias as-yet-unresolved post-Soviet problems exploded in mid-2003when the prosecutor generals officeattacked Yukos, the countrys most mod-

H OOVER ESSAYS


continued on page 1


12/16

The fateful meeting on July 1,1981, between Sandra Day OConnor and President

Reagan had been long in the making,according to Joan Biskupic, of USA Today,who discussed Reagans Choice: HowSandra Day OConnor Became the FirstWoman Justice on November 12.

Biskupic, a Hoover media fellow fromNovember 10 to November 14,said, for hispart, President Reagan had promised in hispresidential campaign to appoint the first

woman justice. OConnor was one of thefew women in the state and federal courtsystems at the time. She was politically connected as well; before serving as a judgeOConnor had been in the Arizona legisla-ture. In 1971, Chief Justice Warren Burgerhad threatened to quit if Nixon named awoman but in 1981 quietly planted OCon-nors name with White House officials evenbefore there was a vacancy.

OConnor in some ways seems like shewas plucked from nowhere, Biskupic said,but Burger was very instrumental ingetting her name before the right people.

After the meeting between OConnorand Reagan took place, he said he didntwant to meet with anyone else. OConnorwas nominated and approved by a vote inthe Senate of 99 to 0, with one senatorabstaining.

Biskupic has covered the SupremeCourt since 1989: first as a writer forCon- gressional Quarterly s weekly magazine,then as the Supreme Court reporter for theWashington Post , and now as a writer forUSA Today. Since joining USA Today in2000, she has written in-depth profiles of several of the justices, including WilliamRehnquist, Sandra Day OConnor, andAntonin Scalia. She is currently workingon a book focused on OConnor to be pub-lished by the Ecco Press division of

HarperCollins.

The Media Fellows Program allowsprint and broadcast media professionals tospend time in residence at the HooverInstitution. Media fellows have the oppor-tunity to exchange information and per-spectives with Hoover scholars throughseminars and informal meetings and withthe Hoover and Stanford communities inpublic lectures. As fellows, they have thefull range of research tools Hoover offersavailable to them. More than 100 of thenations top journalists have visited theHoover Institution recently and interactedwith Hoover fellows on key public policy issues, including

Philip Terzian , Providence Journal (Febru-ary 913)

Stephen Goode, Insight Magazine (Febru-ary 37)

David Isaac, Investors Business Daily(Feb-ruary 37)

Stan Crock, Business Week (January2631)

Terry Eastland , Weekly Standard (January2631)

Eric Schmit, New York Times (January2631)

Jacob Heilbrunn , Los Angeles Tim(January 1923)

Reid Sams, San Francisco Chronicl(January 1923)

Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journa(January 1618)

Kathy Kiely,USA Today(December 812)Carla Marinucci, San Francisco Chronicl

(December 812)Rosemary Goudreau, Tampa Tribune

(December 812)Carl Hulse, New York Times (December

812)Helle Bering-Dale, Heritage Foundation

(December 15)Reginald Dale, European Affairs (Decem-

ber 15)

Carla Robbins, Wall Street Journa(December 15)Thomas Edsall, Washington Post (Novem-

ber 2428)Matthew Miller, syndicated journalist and

author (November 1721)Par Ridder, San Luis Obispo Tribun

(November 1014)

12

MEDIA FELLOW JOAN BISKUPIC D ISCUSSES JUSTICE S ANDRA D AY OC ONNOR S A PPOINTMENTTO SUPREME COURT

ernized, productive, and pro-Americanprivate oil company. Thus, even as Wash-ington and American oil industry leadersactively sought alternatives to unstablesources in the Middle East, Africa, andLatin America, basic questions reemergedin Russia about the privatizations of the1990s, the security of private property, the

mixing of law and politics,and the exercise

of power in the Kremlin.Today Russians, with the support of American and European allies, must createconditions that will welcome the foreignfunds, technology, and expertise needed todevelop the critical oil industry and to lay foundations of law and infrastructure thatwill help make Russia a stable member of the world community.

Americans must decide how muchinvolvement Russia can constructively absorb to promote not only short-term oil

supplies but also long-term Russian devel-

opment and broader U.S. foreign policygoals. Finally, the critical long-term lessonof 9/11 and other recent experiences forAmericans is that even as we cultivatRussia as an ally and major source of oilwe must actively develop alternativesources of energy. In an unstable world,theUnited States must not forever be heldhostage by other nations with their oftenvery different cultures, institutions, andinterests.

H OOVER ESSAYS



13/16

Research Fellow Williamson Evers , whospent five months in Iraq working to revivethat countrys education system, discussedthe project on CNN-TV on January 15.

The anniversary of the Supreme Courtdecision on Brown v. Board of Educationwas discussed by Research FellowShelby Steele on December 30 on KXTV-TV(ABC, Sacramento/Stockton/Modesto).

Relations with Russia were addressed by Senior FellowMichael McFaul on Decem-ber 26, on All Things Considered onNational Public Radio.

Saddam Hussein and Iraq were the topicsdiscussed by Research Fellow DonaldAbenheim and Senior Fellow Larry

Diamond on December 15 on KCBS-AMradio (CBS, San Francisco). LarryDiamond was featured on the topic onDecember 1 on KCBS-AM.

Senior FellowTerry Moe discussed teacherunions and their effect on education on BiStory/Weekend Edition, Fox News Channeon November 30.

The economy in the twenty-first centurywas the subject of discussion by SenioFellow Robert Barro , November 26, onOdyssey, on WBEZ-FM (NPR) radio,Chicago.

13

Prize winner in economics, and professor of economics and law, George Mason Univer-

sity Prophets and Losses: The Rise and Declineof Islamic Civilization

Guests:John Esposito,professor of Islamicstudies, Georgetown University; Azim Nanji,

director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies;and Vali Nasr, professor of national security

affairs, Naval Postgraduate SchoolOf Burkhas and Ballots: The Future of Democracy in the Arab World

Guests:John Esposito,professor of Islamicstudies,Georgetown University; Azim Nanji,

director of the Institute of Ismaili Studiesand Vali Nasr, professor of National SecurityAffairs, Naval Postgraduate SchoolPutin the Terrible? Vladimir Putin andRussian Democracy

Guests:Steven Fish, professor of politicascience, University of California, Berkeleyand Michael McFaul, professor of politicascience, Stanford University, and seniorfellow, Hoover Institution

U NCOMMON K NOWLEDGE

The Hoover Institution Newsletter is published quarterly and distributed bthe Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-601650/723-0603, fax, 650/725-8611. 2003 by the Board of Trustees of theLeland Stanford Junior University.Send comments and requests for information to Newsletter Editor Michele M.Horaney,APR, Manager of Public AffaStanford Design Group. The Hoover Institution Home Page is on the WoWide Web at www.hoover.org.

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford Universifounded in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, is one of the leading centers in the worlddevoted to interdisciplinary scholarship in domestic and international affairs

H O O V E R I N S T I T U T I O N W E B S I T E S

www.hoover.org

www.hooverdigest.org

www.educationnext.org

www.policyreview.org

www.chinaleadershipmonitor.org

Comprehensive information about the Institution, its fellows, work, scholarly output, andoutreach

QuarterlyHoover Digest available online

Presents the facts about education reform, gives voicewithout fear or favortoworthy research, sound ideas and responsible arguments.

The preeminent publication for new and serious thinking and writing about the issues ofour day. At this site find select articles from the current issue as well as an archive ofback issues, subscription information, and useful links to other web sites.

Seeks to inform the American foreign policy community about current trends in China'sleadership politics and in its foreign and domestic policies.

H O O V E R I N S T I T U T I O N N E W S L E T T E R

H OOVER ON THE A IR

continued from back page

AHoover Institution DirectorsSeminar, Time for FundamentalChange, tackled the issues of

health care and the cost of coverage onNovember 10. The seminar included pre-

sentations by Mark V. Pauly, of theWharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; Senior Fellow Scott Atlas,who also is a professor at the StanfordUniversity Medical School; and Research

Fellow Daniel Kessler, who also is a pro-fessor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford School of Law.

D IRECTOR S S EMINAR ON H EALTH C ARE


14/16

Unconditional Democracyby Toshio Nishi

(ISBN: 0-8179-7442-3)

In his book Unconditional Democ-racy: Education and Politics in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952 (Hoover InstitutionPress, originally published 1982),Toshio Nishi, a Hoover research fellow,documents the efforts of Americanoccupation forces to transform the basicvalues and behavior of the Japaneseafter Japans defeat in World War II.

General MacArthur knew the valueof compulsory education in politicalindoctrination. Aided by the Japanesepassion for learning and veneration forthe conquerors, MacArthur directed thepolitical reorientation of Japan.

Unconditional Democracy was origi-nally published as part of a series titledEducation and Society, a researchproject of the Hoover Institution,whichaddressed issues of educations role insocial, economic, and political affairs.The intent was to provide insight intothe relationship between inculcated

values and behavior and a societysapproach to revolution and develop-ment that will contribute to more effec-tive education for the establishment andpreservation of justice and peace.

In this reissue Nishi reiterates thisview in the preface, where he states thatit is his hope the book will illustrate thedifficult mission of a regime change, of asuccessful metamorphosis that amalga-mates incompatible cultures and reli-

gions, conflicting memories of hopesand disappointments, and then givesbirth to something greater than thepast.

Four years old when the war ended,

Nishi began school as new policies werebeing implemented. In Unconditional Democracy, Nishi captures not only thepractices, but also the feel of Japaneseculture as he relates how changesbrought about by educational and polit-ical reform of the new governmentaffected the Japanese.

After graduating from KwanseiGakuin University in Japan, Nishiearned his Ph.D. in political studies of education at the University of Washing-ton in Seattle. He was the first recipientof the Jean and Paul Hanna EndowmentFellowship at the Hoover Institution,with which the present book waswritten. For this book, Nishi undertookextensive archival research at the U.S.National Archives, the Harry S. TrumanLibrary, the Douglas MacArthur Memo-rial Library, the National Institute forEducational Research in Tokyo, and theHoover Institution. He also teaches atReitaku University in Japan and is thechairman of the editorial board, andcolumnist, for Kokkai News, Japansoldest monthly magazine on politics.

Neither Left nor Right:Selected Columnsby Tibor Machan

(ISBN: 0-8179-3982-2)

Social commentator and critic TiborMachan has brought together a collec-tion of his columns that span the pastfour decades in his most recent book,Neither Left nor Right: Selected Columns(Hoover Institution Press, 2004). Thisretrospective of his work, published by Freedom Communications, covers hisviews on a variety of topics.

In the book, his columns are sepa-rated into ten sections: Foundations,

How to Think, The Independent Self,Sex and Politics in America, Capitalismand Its Critics, The Individual versusthe State, People and Encounters,America under Attack, Endings, andLife Is Good, that capture his thoughtson the title subject of each section.

Throughout this collection, Machanrepeatedly seizes the intellectual offen-sive against those who seem to believethat only laws and bureaucrats can makelife betterand provides a rigorousmoral case for natural rights, individu-als, and capitalism. Whether he is dis-cussing what he terms a fatal politicaldisease, that of espousing conflictingpolitical views depending on the situa-tion, in one of his earlier columns,Freedom: Local and National, pub-lished in 1966, to a more recent columnpublished in early 2003 titled WhyIslamists Detest America wherein heexamines the political economy ofAmerican society, Machan providestimely commentary on the rights of theindividual.

Machan is a Hoover Institutionresearch fellow and Freedom Commu-

nications Professor of Business Ethicsand Free Enterprise in the LeatherbyCenter for Entrepreneurship & BusinessEthics at the Argyros School of Businesand Economics,Chapman University, inOrange, California. He is also professoremeritus in the Department of Philoso-phy at Auburn University,Alabama, andan adviser on public policy for FreedomCommunications, a privately ownedmedia corporation in Irvine, California.

R E C E N T R E L E A S E S

14


15/16

E X H I B I T S

15

The Herbert Hoover Memorial ExhibitPavilion has played host to two uniqueshows this year with Troubled Images:Posters and Images of the Northern IrelandConflict, in collaboration with Belfasts his-toric Linen Hall Library, which will be upuntil late April, and, earlier, Isaac Babel: AWriters Life.

Troubled Images broke new groundwhen it was first shown in October 2001 inBelfast, reflecting as it does the emotionsand hopes of a deeply divided, conflict-

ridden society. Explaining the purpose of the exhibition, Linen Hall librarian JohnGray stated that our first intention was toopen doors to understanding in an accessi-ble way for our own community. In doingso we are also suggesting a way of actingthat may have a wider international reso-nance. After more than thirty years of con-flict we need to lift the blanket of silence.

The 70 posters on view at Hoover untilApril 19 were part of the collection of morethan 3,000 acquired by the library from

1969 to the present. They represent a widerange of opinions on major events andindividuals involved in the arduous years of struggle and the burgeoning peace process.

The Linen Hall Library is the uniquerepository for the Northern Ireland Politi-cal Collection, which contains more than aquarter of a million itemsbooks, docu-ments, cards, pamphlets, photographs, andother printed materialsrelating to thethirty-year conflict and the ongoing peaceprocess.

The Troubled Images project, whichincludes the exhibition, catalog, and CD-ROM, won the prestigious ChristopherEwart Biggs Literary Prize for 2003. Theprize is awarded every two years to individ-uals and/or organizations that promotepeace and reconciliation in Ireland, agreater understanding between the peoplesof Britain and Ireland, or closer coopera-tion between partners of the EuropeanCommunity.

The Hoover Institution Archives, whichhas collected political posters since 1919,encourages research on the iconography of political struggles. The Linen Hall Library sent its curator, Yvonne Murphy, to theHoover Archives twice over the past tenyears to consult with Hoover staff about thepreservation and use of postersas an educational tool.

A series of public events com-memorating the life and art of Isaac Babel, including an exhi-bition at Hoover, were held on

the Stanford campus in Febru-ary and early March. Alsooffered were a stage productionof Babels play Maria and an internationalconference, The Enigma of Isaac Babel.

Writing and violence, seduction and rev-olution, humanity and raw power were atthe core of the spare and brilliant legacy of Isaac Babel, a Russian Jewish master of theshort story, who began his career with theblessing of Maxim Gorky in 1916, rose tointernational renown with the publication

of his Red Cavalry in 1926, and perishedafter Stalin waved his executioners wand in1940.

He has also been the most translatedSoviet author of his generation and themost influential among Russias modernwriters in the United States. Americanauthors from Ernest Hemingway to GracePaley, Phillip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, andJohn Updike have all paid tribute to him.

The exhibition Isaac Babel: A WritersLife (18941940) was on display at the

Herbert Hoover Memorial Exhibit Pavil-ion. The exhibition was designed andorganized by Professor of Slavic CultureGregory Freidin in collaboration with EliBatuman, Amelia Glazer (Department ofComparative Literature), Joshua Walker(Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures), with assistance from Hooverdirector of library and archives ElenaDanielson, Cissie Hill, Linda Bernard, andother staff members of the Hoover Institu-tion Library and Archives. The exhibitionwas based on the Irwin T. and ShirleyHoltzman Collection at the Hoover Institu-tion Archives as well as other Hoover Institution holdings and private collections.

The United States premiere of Babelplay Maria, in late February at StanfordUniversity, was produced by the StanfordDrama Department under the direction of Professor Carl Weber, a famous German-born American director, who early in his

career collaborated withBerthold Brecht. Written in1933, Marias action unfoldsduring the Russian Civil War(19181921) in Petrograd, themoribund but still beautifulformer imperial capital, where

the Bolshevik revolution andthe suffering wrought by theCivil War have obliterated class

and status distinctions and erased the linebetween savagery and civilization.

The international conference The Enigmaof Isaac Babel, February 29 to March 2,wathe scholarly centerpiece of the Babeevents at Stanford University. The confer-ence featured speakers from several univer-sities in the United States,Russia, Hungary

Israel, and China.That event was sponsored by the

Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures; Taube Center for Jewish StudiesCenter for Russian, East-European, andEurasian Studies; Division of LiteraturesCultures, and Languages; Drama Depart-ment; Hoover Institution and Archives;Institute of International Relations; Stan-ford Humanities Center; Irwin T. andShirley Holtzman; and the LeytesFoundation.

E XHIBIT VIEWERS ENJOY DIVERSE SHOWINGS OFTROUBLED IMAGES AND ISAAC BABEL: A WRITERS LIFE

West Belfast Festival (Liles), 1993

The West Belfast Festival was aSinn Fin initiative establishedin 1988 to provide an alternativeto the rioting that had habituallymarked the August 9 anniver-sary of the internment of 1971and to foster pride and self-development in the cultural lifeof the area. The artist, Robert Ballagh, uses traditionalRepublican symbolismthe Easter lily, which representedthe Easter Rising of 1916and turns it into a dove of peace,cracking the concrete roadblock,a contemporary symbol ofBelfast.

Isaac Babel, 1933


16/16

HOOVER INSTITUTIONSTANFORD U NIVERSITYSTANFORD , CA 94305-6010

N ON -P ROFIT O RG .U.S. P OSTAGE

P A I DP ERMIT N O . 114

P ALO A LTO , CA

I D E A S D E F I N I N G A F R E E S O C I E T Yinvesting in knowledge and scholarship

U ncommon Knowledge, the

weekly public affairs televisionprogram coproduced by the

Hoover Institution and KTEH in San Jose,presents a wide array of issues and guests innew segments for 2004 now available on thePublic Broadcasting Service.

The program is hosted by Emmy-nominee and Hoover research fellow PeterRobinson. It is broadcast by more than 50PBS stations across the United States.

Details about each segment are availableat the Hoover Institution web site,www.hoover.org. The new programs thisseason includeKorean Beef: North Koreas NuclearWeaponsGuests: Peter Hayes, executive director,Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustain-

ability,and James Woolsey, former director,

Central Intelligence Agency Patriot Games: The Patriot Act in Review

Guests:Dorothy Ehrlich,executive director,American Civil Liberties Union of North-ern California, and Edwin Meese, formerattorney general of the United States anddistinguished visiting fellow, Hoover Insti-tutionThe Reluctant Empire: Is America anImperial Power?Guests:Niall Ferguson, professor of politi-cal and financial history,Oxford University,and author, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order; and DavidKennedy, professor of history, StanfordUniversity, and Pulitzer Prizewinningauthor, Freedom from Fear: The AmericanPeople in Depression and War

Bush Almighty: Two Views of George W.

BushGuests: John Podhoretz, author, BushCountry: How Dubya Became a Great Presi-dent While Driving Liberals Insane,and RonReagan, journalist and television commen-tatorThe High (and Mighty) Court: JudicialSupremacy Guests: Lawrence Alexander, professor of law, University of San Diego, and RobertGeorge,professor of jurisprudence and pol-itics, Princeton University High Wire Act: Reforming the Electricity Industry Guests: Ralph Cavanagh, energy programdirector, Natural Resources DefenseCouncil, and Vernon Smith, 2002 Nobel

NORTH K OREA , ELECTRICITY REFORM , DEMOCRACY IN A RAB WORLD AMONG TOPICSOF NEW U NCOMMON K NOWLEDGE PROGRAMS


hoover institution newsletter -winter 2004

Documents