Think Tank At Stanford Draws Fire

Students and faculty at Stanford University have raised a storm this year over the political activities of the school's independent center for political studies, the Hoover Institute.

The Institute has had a close relation with the Reagan Administration, providing the White House with research, as well as several prominent advisors.

Impartial Reputation

Many have charged that the institute's participation in partisan politics is hurting Stanford's reputation for academic impartiality. Two protest petition drives one organized by students, the other by faculty have taken place.

The institute was founded in 1919 to house documents from the peace conference of Versailles that settled World War I Money for the collection was provided by Herbert Hoover, then a millionaire mining engineer with close connections to Stanford.

Archives

From that beginning, the institute has grown into one of the largest private archives in the United States. It is a premiere location for study of Nazi German and Russian history.

It has also been a partisan political institution from early on In 1959, as part of a statement of the institute's official purpose Hoover wrote that the center existed to "demonstrate the evils of the doctrines of Karl Marx and protect the American way of life from such ideologies."

Following Reagan's election in 1980, a sign on the institute's main door read. Last one to leave for Washington please turn out the lights."

Reagan has called the institute the brightest star in a small constellation of conservative think tanks."

Petitions

The existence of a partisan organization whether liberal or conservative within the university raises grave questions concerning academic independence," reads a section of the petition signed by 69 Faculty members.

A similar petition, signed by more than 1600 students, protests not only the academic influence of the research center, but the broader implication it casts on the university's political position.

The student petition calls for "an open and reasoned debate among the Stanford community as to the proper role, if any, of the Hoover Institute at Stanford."

Homogeneous

Protesters have also charged that the demographic breakdown of the think tank is unsuited to the broad educational goals of Stanford as a university.

Today, all of the institute's leadership i white, more than 90 percent male and more than 90 percent corporate-affiliated. The institute's only administrative connection to the academic life of the university is through Stanford president Donald Kennedy, one of the 68 Overseers.

Official Response

Official response to the protests has been carefully noncommital. While an official probe into the activities of the institute's think tank is unlikely, a "study" of the relationship of the Institute and the university is a possibility, William Kimball, Chairman of the university's Board of Trustees, said in the Stanford Daily last week.

"Don [Kennedy], the Board of Directors and I hope to cool the furor and somehow bring Hoover and the university closer together," Kimball said.