Hoover Institution gets $10 million gift

The Hoover Institution at Stanford University has received a $10 million gift from the Annenberg Foundation to establish a fund to study public policy development in economics, national security and foreign policy by Hoover scholars.

"The Hoover Institution is deeply interested in generating 'ideas defining a free society' -- indeed it is guiding principle within our mission," Hoover Director John Raisian said. "Funds from this magnificent and imaginative endowment will spawn such creative ideas that are especially new, sweeping and undeveloped. The Annenberg Strategic Initiative will allow scholars a means for taking intellectual risks in addressing new areas of inquiry with new approaches pertaining to important issues of the day."

As an example, a new Stanford project is exploring the possibility of a world free of nuclear weapons. Hoover Fellows Sydney Drell, a physicist and nuclear weapons expert, and former Secretary of State George Shultz launched an initial conference a year ago.

"The idea never took hold and dropped out of sight," Shultz said. The new Hoover funds from Annenberg will now continue that effort. "To launch such an initiative, an effort required seed money, to see if the effort could sustain a major initiative," Shultz said.

-- Don Kazak

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Ah, where to start? First of all, if you're after a nuclear-free world, Rummy is not your guy. Second, isn't it amazing how the for-quite-some-time-now-dead Walter Annenberg continues his favored conservative policy from the grave?

Now, we finally find that even Stanford has its price and is willing to choke down Rumsfeld for $10 mil. I hope they have a suitable office for him somewhere off-campus, as it's not likely to be a very collegiate atmosphere between George Schultz, Condi and the cast-off orphan of Star Wars.

Academia--always interesting, always on the take.

* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Taking My Country Personally, check out Opinion-Columns.com