The Hoover History Lab held Thinking Historically: A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy, a book talk with the author, Francis J. Gavin on Thursday, October 02, 2025 from 4:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. PT in the Shultz Auditorium, George P. Shultz Building.

It seems obvious that we should use history to improve policy. If we have a good understanding of the past, it should enable better decisions in the present, especially in the extraordinarily consequential worlds of statecraft and strategy. But how do we gain that knowledge? How should history be used? Sadly, it is rarely done well, and historians and decision-makers seldom interact. But in this remarkable book, Francis J. Gavin explains the many ways historical knowledge can help us understand and navigate the complex, often confusing world around us.

Good historical work convincingly captures the challenges and complexities the decisionmaker faces. At its most useful, history is less a narrowly defined field of study than a practice, a mental awareness, a discernment, and a responsiveness to the past and how it unfolded into our present world—a discipline in the best sense of the word. Gavin demonstrates how a historical sensibility helps us to appreciate the unexpected; complicates our assumptions; makes the unfamiliar familiar and the familiar unfamiliar; and requires us, without entirely suspending moral judgment, to try to understand others on their own terms. This book is a powerful argument for thinking historically as a way for readers to apply wisdom in encountering what is foreign to them.

FEATURING

Francis J. Gavin is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS. Previously, he was the first Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy Studies at MIT and the Tom Slick Professor of International Affairs and the Director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas. From 2005 until 2010, he directed The American Assembly’s multiyear, national initiative, The Next Generation Project: U.S. Global Policy and the Future of International Institutions. He is the founding Chair of the Board of Editors for the Texas National Security Journal. Gavin’s writings include Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958-1971; Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age ; and Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy (Brookings Institution Press), which was named a 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. His IISS-Adelphi book, The Taming of Scarcity and the Problems of Plenty: Rethinking International Relations and American Grand Strategy in a New Era was published in 2024. In 2025, he published Wonder and Worry: Contemporary History in an Age of Uncertainty with Stolpe Press, 2025 and Thinking Historically – A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy with Yale University Press.

MODERATED BY

Stephen Kotkin is director of the Hoover History Lab, Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has been conducting research in the Hoover Library & Archives for more than three decades.

In this wide-ranging Hoover History Lab discussion, Kleinheinz Senior Fellow Stephen Kotkin joins Research Fellow Dan Wang to explore the craft of history and its relevance to the present. 

From his office in Hoover Tower, Kotkin reflects on his efforts to answer the big questions of history, guided by a methodology rooted in rigorous archival research, deliberate engagement with contradictory evidence, and a strategic approach to empathy in order to grasp the contexts and motivations that shape human choices at critical historical junctures. In constructing what he calls an “analytical narrative approach” with audiences, he explains how historians can apply their training and skills to show historical patterns, as well as illuminate drivers of change, relationships between structures and agency, and the workings of power: how it is accumulated, exercised, and leaves its mark on societies. 

Wang and Kotkin talk about the enormous demand for historical understanding across society and sectors. In responding to that demand, Kotkin underscores the historian’s responsibility to reach both scholarly and public audiences, the dangers of using “junk history” to inform policymaking, and the need for emerging scholars to engage thoughtfully with Artificial Intelligence. 

The conversation closes with Kotkin’s reflections about what historical perspective can show us about achieving sustained global peace and prosperity; details about his work and vision at the Hoover History Lab aimed at cultivating rising generations of scholars and meeting widespread public  demand for policy-relevant history; and his recommendations for five books that the audience should consider reading.

ABOUT THE HOOVER HISTORY LAB

The Hoover History Lab is not a traditional academic department but instead functions as a hub for research, teaching, and convening—in person and online, in the classroom and in print. The Lab studies and uses history to inform public policy, develops next-generation scholars, and reinforces the work of Hoover’s world-class historians to inform scholarship and the teaching of history at Stanford and beyond.

The Lab’s work is driven by its principal investigators, who spearhead research and research-based policy projects. The Lab also encompasses a strong cohort of “staff scientist-equivalents”:  research fellows ranging from the most senior, world-renowned scholars to a full slate of exciting next-generation talents who bring fresh, multifaceted insights to our research. Rounding out our team, some of our postdoctoral scholars serve as research and teaching fellows, and we also leverage the talents of exceptional Stanford undergraduates as our student fellows, who participate in leading-edge research, just as in a scientific laboratory.

This full-range approach to personnel, spanning all ages and levels of experience, ensures that the mission of the lab carries forward into the future and across to other institutions with a positive, powerful impact.

The following conversation was part of the KGB and Western Plots Against the Soviet Union event, hosted by the Hoover Applied History Working Group on on Friday, May 9, 2025.

ABOUT THE TALK

Stanford associate professor of history Amir Weiner joins Milbank Senior Fellow Niall Ferguson as part of a discussion of the Hoover Institution Applied History Working Group seminar series, previewing his forthcoming book, At Home with the KGB: A New History of the Soviet Security Service. Weiner examines how the Soviet security service-maintained control after Stalin—not through overt violence, but using methods such as psychological pressure, surveillance, and deeply embedded conspiratorial thinking.

The conversation explores how the KGB adapted, shaped leadership transitions, and ultimately failed to prevent the Soviet collapse—offering fresh insights into the Cold War era and the mindset of its most notorious alumnus, Vladimir Putin.

The Hoover Institution Center for Revitalizing American Institutions webinar series features speakers who are developing innovative ideas, conducting groundbreaking research, and taking important actions to improve trust and efficacy in American institutions. Speaker expertise and topics span governmental institutions, civic organizations and practice, and the role of public opinion and culture in shaping our democracy. The webinar series builds awareness about how we can individually and collectively revitalize American institutions to ensure our country’s democracy delivers on its promise.

The seventh session discussed Building Strategic Competence: An Urgent Priority for Government and the Academy with H.R. McMaster and Stephen Kotkin on Wednesday, May 7, 2025, from 10:00 - 11:00 am PT.

We might define strategic competence as the ability to integrate all elements of national power and efforts of like-minded partners to advance US interests. The nation needs leaders who can think in real time and understand what it takes to implement ideas and strategies on the ground. The academy has an important role in educating leaders to compete effectively in war and in competitions short of war. A reinvigoration of history in higher-level education is particularly important, as many courses in diplomatic and military history have been displaced by theory-based courses, which tend to mask the complex causality of events and obscure the cultural, psychological, social, and economic elements that distinguish cases from one another. Some theories risk sapping students of strategic empathy and encourage them to reduce complex problem sets into frameworks that create only the illusion of understanding. A growing interest in applied history in some universities is a promising development.

Hoover Senior Fellow Šumit Ganguly and Hoover Research Fellow Dinsha Mistree hosted a panel discussion and reception for the launch of "The Hoover Institution's Survey of India" at the Hoover Institution's Washington, DC office on Wednesday, April 30 from 5:30-6:30 pm ET.

The panel discussion featured a conversation with Senior Fellow Šumit Ganguly, twenty-fifth US Ambassador to the Republic of India Ambassador Kenneth I. Juster, Ashoka University Visiting Professor Ambassador Shivshankar Menon and Hoover Research Fellow Dinsha Mistree.

On behalf of Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and its National Security Task Force the Hoover Institution held a Taiwan Roundtable Discussion on Tuesday, February 18, 2025, from 5:00 - 6:00 pm PT.

Taiwan is facing a potential constitutional crisis. In December 2024, Taiwan’s opposition-controlled legislature voted to impose a 2/3 supermajority quorum for the Constitutional Court to hear new cases. The legislature then voted down all the new nominees to the Court, leaving it with only 8 of members and unable to meet the new quorum requirement. The government has appealed to the Court to meet anyway and rule that the new amendments are unconstitutional.

In this discussion, three experts on Taiwan’s politics and judicial system discuss the factors leading up to this confrontation, the options facing the court, and the potential for deeper reforms to strengthen judicial independence in the face of a deepening confrontation between the ruling and opposition parties.

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

Chien-Chih Lin is an associate research professor at Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica and an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of National Development, National Taiwan University. He received the LLM & JSD degrees from the University of Chicago. His academic interests focus on comparative constitutional law in Asia. Lin is the coauthor ofConstitutional Convergence in East Asia (2022) and Ultimate Economic Conflict between China and Democratic Countries (2022). His articles can be found in both peer-reviewed and student-edited law journals as well as edited volumes, including Oxford Handbook of Constitutional Law in Asia, American Journal of Comparative Law, and International Journal of Constitutional Law. He is the book review editor of International Journal of Constitutional Law.

Weitseng Chen is a faculty member at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law, specializing in law and economic development, law and politics, and legal history in the context of Greater China. He has recently published several books, including Regime Type and Beyond: The Transformation of Police in Asia (CUP, 2023), Authoritarian Legality in Asia: Formation, Development and Transition (CUP, 2019), The Beijing Consensus? How China Has Changed the Western Ideas of Law and Economic Development (CUP, 2017), Property and Trust Law: Taiwan (with Yun-Chien Chang & Y. J. Wu, Kluwer, 2017), and Law and Economic Miracle: Interaction Between Taiwan’s Development and Economic Laws After WWII (in Chinese, 2000). Weitseng Chen earned his JSD from Yale Law School. Prior to joining NUS, he served as a Hewlett Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Democracy,Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and practiced as a corporate lawyer in the Greater China region with Davis Polk & Wardwell.

Kharis Templeman is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and part of the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific. Templeman is a political scientist (Ph.D. 2012, Michigan) with research interests in Taiwan politics, democratization, elections and election management, party system development, and politics and security issues in Pacific Asia.

The Hoover Institution Program on the US, China, and the World hosted Digital Authoritarianism and Strategies to Promote a Democratic Digital Future, on Monday, April 28, 2025 from 4:00 – 5:30 PM PT in the Shultz Auditorium, George P. Shultz Building. 

The People's Republic of China is collecting and analyzing unprecedented volumes of data from both public and private sources, within and beyond its borders, for social control. It is leveraging advanced data-centric technologies such as artificial intelligence, neuro and immersive technologies, quantum computing, and digital currencies to enhance and export its authoritarian governance model. This has led to an erosion of privacy, personal freedoms, and a climate of fear and self-censorship within the PRC. As the PRC exports its technologies to other countries, these authoritarian practices may spread globally. What are the most effective strategies for democratic societies to prevent the misuse of emerging technologies for surveillance and control by authoritarian regimes? How can we effectively track and monitor the global spread of data-centric authoritarian practices? What approaches can democratic governments and civil society adopt to develop and promote privacy-preserving solutions that offer viable alternatives to authoritarian methods, while ensuring accountability, transparency, and the protection of human rights? How can we engineer democratic values into the architectures of our technology platforms? In this event, our panel will examine the unique aspects of the PRC’s approach to digital authoritarianism and the opportunities for a democratic response. 

The Hoover Institution Center for Revitalizing American Institutions webinar series features speakers who are developing innovative ideas, conducting groundbreaking research, and taking important actions to improve trust and efficacy in American institutions. Speaker expertise and topics span governmental institutions, civic organizations and practice, and the role of public opinion and culture in shaping our democracy. The webinar series builds awareness about how we can individually and collectively revitalize American institutions to ensure our country’s democracy delivers on its promise.

The sixth session discussed How Foreign Speech Restrictions Affect American Free Expression with Jacob Mchangama and Eugene Volokh on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, from 10:00 - 11:00 am PT.

Much of our speech to each other uses technology created by companies that operate throughout the world such as Google, Meta (Facebook), X, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple. Because these companies operate worldwide, they are potentially vulnerable to pressures from the countries in which they operate—if Google has assets or people in Germany or Turkey, then the German or Turkish government can force them to comply with German or Turkish law.

So long as countries have tried to regulate what tech companies do in their countries (e.g., what information Google shows to readers in Germany or Turkey), foreign restrictions end up having relatively little effect on what Americans can say to other Americans. But foreign countries are increasingly asking for worldwide restraints on things that are said on various multinational platforms (for instance, anything said anywhere about those countries’ citizens or politicians), sharply risking undermining American’s free speech rights.

The Hoover History Lab hosted a Book Talk with Dan Edelstein - A Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin on Tuesday, April 29, 2025 from 11:30 am - 1:00 pm PT.

Revolution! How did an event once considered the greatest of all political dangers come to be seen as a solution to all social problems? Political thinkers from Plato to America’s John Adams viewed revolutions as a grave threat to society and advocated for a constitution that prevented them by balancing competing interests and forms of government. The Revolution to Come traces how since the 18th century a modern doctrine of historical progress drove a belief in revolution’s ability to create just and reasonable societies.

SPEAKER

Dan Edelstein is the William H. Bonsall Professor of French, and Professor of Political Science and History (by courtesy) at Stanford. He studied at the University of Geneva (BA) and the University of Pennsylvania (PhD).  Revolution to Come is his fourth book on European intellectual and political history.

MODERATOR

In addition to his Hoover fellowship, Stephen Kotkin is a senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also the Birkelund Professor in History and International Affairs emeritus at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School), where he taught for 33 years. He earned his PhD at the University of California–Berkeley and has been conducting research in the Hoover Library & Archives for more than three decades.

Thursday, April 17, 2025

Hoover Institution | Stanford University

The Hoover Institution held a Fireside Chat With Stephen Kotkin & US House Select Committee on China on Thursday, April 17th at 8:00am PT/11:00am ET.

Speakers:

Committee Chairman John Moolenaar, US Representative for Michigan's 2nd congressional district 

Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi, US Representative for Illinois's 8th congressional district.

Professor Kotkin, Kleinheinz Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution