Talks from the Hoover Institution

For the past 20 years, the Brazilian Supreme Court has become one of the most influential political players in the nation. In the name of democracy and the fight against misinformation, the Court has authorized a flurry of arrests and media bans that have garnered international attention. But Brazil is not alone. It belongs to a long list of nascent democracies around the world that are struggling to contend with ever-expanding judicial power. Using Brazil as our model, the question before us remains: how and why has this power arisen and what does it mean for the future of democracy?

SPEAKER

Chief Justice Luís Roberto Barroso studied Law at the State University of Rio de Janeiro in 1980 and received his LL.M. from Yale Law School in 1989. After receiving his LL.M., Justice Barroso was a Foreign Associate with the American law firm Arnold & Porter. He also holds a JSD degree from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (2008) and attended Harvard Law School’s Visiting Scholar program in 2011. Justice Barroso practiced as a private attorney in Brazil before being appointed to the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court in 2013.

MODERATOR

Professor Diego Werneck Arguelhes is an Associate Professor of Constitutional Law at Insper - Institute for Education and Research, São Paulo. He holds J.S.D. and LL.M. degrees from Yale Law School, and LL.B. and M.A. (Public Law) degrees from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ).

The Hoover History Lab and Hoover Institution Library & Archives held a special hybrid event with Benjamin Nathans, introduced by Stephen Kotkin, as he launched his latest book To The Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement.

Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was unexpectedly confronted by a dissident movement that captured the world’s imagination. Demanding that the Kremlin obey its own laws, an improbable band of Soviet citizens held unauthorized public gatherings, petitioned in support of arrested intellectuals, and circulated banned samizdat texts. Soviet authorities arrested dissidents, subjected them to bogus trials and vicious press campaigns, sentenced them to psychiatric hospitals and labor camps, sent them into exile—and transformed them into martyred heroes. Against all odds, the dissident movement undermined the Soviet system and unexpectedly hastened its collapse. Taking its title from a toast made at dissident gatherings, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause (Princeton, 2024) is a definitive history of a remarkable group of people who helped change the twentieth century.

Learn more about the book.

This hybrid talk with Benjamin Nathans, with an introduction by Stephen Kotkin, took place in the Shultz Auditorium at the Hoover Institution on the Stanford University campus at 4:30 pm PT.

​About the Speakers

Benjamin Nathans

Stephen Kotkin

Thursday, July 25, 2024

Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann and Cambridge University’s Hugo Bromley join Hoover distinguished research fellow Glenn Tiffert for a conversation about an economic contingency plan for a Taiwan crisis, based on their new report, On Day One: An Economic Contingency for a Taiwan Crisis.

FEATURING

Hugo Bromley is a research associate at the Centre for Geopolitics at Cambridge and an affiliated research associate at Robinson College, Cambridge. He is a historian of British manufacturing and global economic statecraft in the early modern and modern periods. Dr. Bromley received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2022.

Thursday, July 25, 2024

The China's Global Sharp Power Project at the Hoover Institution held the launch of On Day One: An Economic Contingency Plan for a Taiwan Crisis on Thursday, July 25, 2024, from 5:30-7:30 PM ET.

FEATURING

Dr. Hugo Bromley is a research associate at the Centre for Geopolitics at Cambridge and an affiliated research associate at Robinson College, Cambridge. He is a historian of British manufacturing and global economic statecraft in the early modern and modern periods. Dr. Bromley received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2022.

Dr. Eyck Freymann is a Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a nonresident research fellow at the China Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College. He is the author of One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World (Harvard University Press, 2021).

Dr. Rozlyn Engel is Managing Director of the Treasury, Economics, and Commerce Division at the MITRE Corporation, a nonprofit corporation that has worked in the public interest for more than six decades. In her role, she leads MITRE’s efforts to support the economic policy community while also working to strengthen the integration of economic considerations into national security strategy and policy development. Roz joined MITRE in August 2022, after a long career at the intersection of economics and national security.

MODERATED BY

Dr. Glenn Tiffert is a distinguished research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a historian of modern China. He co-chairs Hoover’s project on China’s Global Sharp Power and directs its research portfolio.

Historian and author Luke Nichter will present on Watergate @ 50: Looking Back and Looking Forward at the next Hoover Institution Library & Archives hybrid event in the Un-Presidented Speaker Series.

Fifty years is often sufficient for revisionism to reshape our understanding of even the most complex and controversial subjects. Not so with Watergate. Today the history we have is remarkably similar to what journalists wrote in the 1970s. However, there is hope for a breakthrough in the near future.

Join us for this talk by Luke Nichter, American historian, professor of history and James H. Cavanaugh Endowed Chair in Presidential Studies at Chapman University, and author or editor of eight books, including most recently The Year That Broke Politics. With introduction by Victor Davis Hanson, the Martin and Illie Anderson senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Luke A. Nichter is a 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 is a New York Times bestselling author or editor of eight books, including, most recently, The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968 (Yale University Press), which was chosen as a Best Book of 2023 by the Wall Street Journal.

About the Un-Presidented Speaker SeriesThe Un-Presidented Speaker Series highlights conversations with historians and experts of the Nixon era, and is presented by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in conjunction with the exhibition Un-Presidented: Watergate and Power in America now on view in the Lou Henry Hoover gallery of Hoover Tower at Stanford University.

The China Global Sharp Power Project and the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region at the Hoover Institution held the Washington, DC launch of The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan, a new book edited by Matt Pottinger, Hoover Institution Distinguished Visiting Fellow, on Tuesday, June 4th, from 2:30-4:00 p.m. ET.

The Hoover Project on China’s Global Sharp Power and Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region held The Boiling Moat event on Thursday, May 30, 2024 from 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm PT.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has openly expressed his intention to annex Taiwan to mainland China, even threatening the use of force. An invasion or blockade of Taiwan by Chinese forces would be catastrophic, with severe consequences for democracies worldwide. In The Boiling Moat, a new book from the Hoover Institution Press, Matt Pottinger and a team of scholars and distinguished military and political leaders urgently outline practical steps for deterrence. The authors stress that preventing a war is more affordable than waging one and emphasize the importance of learning from recent failures in deterrence, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Featuring Matt Pottinger, Distinguished Visiting Fellow, and Larry Diamond, William L. Clayton Senior Fellow. Pottinger and Diamond will be joined by contributors to The Boiling Moatproject: Gabriel Collins, Andrew Erickson, Robert Haddick, Isaac Harris, Michael Hunzeker, Ivan Kanapathy, Mark Montgomery, and Grant Newsham.

The Hoover Project on China’s Global Sharp Power held Hong Kong After the National Security Law on Tuesday, May 14 from 4-5:30pm PT. 

This event presented perspectives on the current political and civic climate in Hong Kong since the passage of the National Security Law on June 30, 2020 and the imposition of Article 23 on March 23, 2024. How have these developments fit into the broader history of the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong? What has changed in Hong Kong’s once vibrant civil society? What is the latest on the trials of pro-democracy activists? How have diasporic advocates constructed a Hong Kong political identity in exile?

Four panelists—Ambassador James Cunningham, the Chairman of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong and former Consul General of the United States to Hong Kong and Macau (2005-2008); Sebastien Lai, a democracy advocate and son of jailed Hong Kong businessman and publisher Jimmy Lai; Sophie Richardson, the former China Director at Human Rights Watch; and Cherie Wong, the former leader of Alliance Canada Hong Kong (ACHK)—will discuss these issues and more in a conversation moderated by Hoover William L. Clayton Senior Fellow Larry Diamond.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Ambassador James B. Cunningham retired from government service at the end of 2014.  He is currently a consultant, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, an adjunct faculty member at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, and Board Chair of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation. He served as Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ambassador to Israel, Consul General in Hong Kong, and Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Ambassador Cunningham was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania and graduated magna cum laude from Syracuse University.  He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asia Society, the National Committee on US-China Relations, and the American Academy of Diplomacy.

Sebastien Lai leads the international campaign to free his father Jimmy Lai, the pro democracy activist and publisher currently jailed by the Hong Kong government. Having had international calls for his release from multiple states including the US and the UK, Jimmy Lai’s ongoing persecution mirrors the rapid decline of human rights, press freedom and rule of law in the Chinese territory. 

The Hoover Project on China’s Global Sharp Power, Stanford’s Center for East Asian Studies, and Stanford's Department of History held What China Remembers About the Cultural Revolution, and What it Wants to Forget on Friday, May 10, 2024 from 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm PT in the George P. Shultz Building, Shultz Auditorium.

The devastating movement unleashed by Mao in 1966, which claimed around two million lives and saw tens of millions hounded, shapes China to this day. Yet in a country where leaders have long seen history as a political tool, the Cultural Revolution is a particularly sensitive subject. How does the Chinese Communist Party control discussion of the topic? And how has an era which turned the nation upside down been used to maintain the political status quo?

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Tania Branigan writes foreign policy editorials for the Guardian and spent seven years as its China correspondent. Her book Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution won the Cundill History Prize 2023 and was shortlisted for the Kirkus non-fiction prize, the Baillie Gifford prize and the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. It was named as one of the Wall Street Journal’s ten best books of 2023 and TIME’s 100 must-read books of 2023.

Glenn Tiffert is a distinguished research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a historian of modern China. He co-chairs Hoover’s project on China’s Global Sharp Power and directs its research portfolio. He also works closely with government and civil society partners around the world to document and build resilience against authoritarian interference with democratic institutions. Most recently, he co-authored Eyes Wide Open: Ethical Risks in Research Collaboration with China (2021).

The Hoover Institution held Strengthening Trust With India: Implications of the 2008 US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement on  May 6, 2024 from 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm in Hauck Auditorium, David & Joan Traitel Building.

The conversation was between key figures who shaped modern US-India relations through the 2008 US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement, an emblem of strategic US-India partnership and a major innovation in sustainable energy to power India’s future. The engaging dialogue celebrates this important achievement and explores the future of US-India cooperation.

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FEATURING

Condoleezza Rice – Tad and Dianne Taube Director and Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy  

M.K. Narayanan – National Security Advisor of India (2005-2010)  

Shivshankar Menon – Visiting Professor 

David C. Mulford – Distinguished Visiting Fellow 

Nick Burns – US Ambassador to China 

Eric Garcetti – US Ambassador to India

MODERATOR

Anja Manuel – Executive Director, Aspen Strategy Group

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