Hoover Institution: Bibliography

In discussing the history of the Hoover Institution, another book I shall draw on is W. Glenn Campbell. The Competition of Ideas: How My Colleagues and I Built the Hoover Institution, Jameson Books (800/426-7905, PO Box 758, Ottawa, IL 61350), 2001, pp. 440, $35. I give the telephone number because the announcement says that if you call, you should ask for a 50% discount. A real bargain. Campbell was the last director appointed by Hoover himself. As the title indicates, the book is a defense of Campbell's administration against even physical attacks on the buildings, and worse still on his own home. The attackers were louts against whom I protested sharply, saying that a university should be a home for civil, informed debate. Among Hoover's indebtedness to me is a parking ticket. When the buildings were under attack, I drove down there and found them surrounded by police. I parked my car where I could, and was rewarded with a ticket. I wrote a note to the DMV, which simply reaffirmed the fine. I paid up. Oh well, it was all in a good cause.

Campbell planned to have the Reagan Library established at Stanford, but many on the Stanford faculty and students hated Reagan as much as they hated Hoover, and subjected the proposal at all kinds of attacks. They were incapable of informed, balanced reasoning. Disgusted, Campbell gave up, and the Reagan Library and Archive were established in its present location in Southern California. Stanford lost a treasure.

I have expressed my ideas on the transfer of the Hoover Library to an off-campus storage space controlled by Green library. Under Campbell, the library added over one million volumes, and, with the archives, constitutes the largest private depository of its kind in the world. I wonder what he thinks about its move to a site still undetermined.

Ronald Hilton - 11/22/01