With the goal of “[teaching] students how to think critically about public policy formulation and its results,” the Hoover Institution is gathering students and recent graduates at Stanford University this month for a week-long program featuring high-profile speakers and experts. Starting Sunday, students will study topics including economics, monetary policy, foreign policy, and the Constitution under the mentorship of experts such as John Yoo, Shelby Steele, and Niall Ferguson.
In a Friday interview with the Washington Examiner, Hoover senior fellows Joshua Rauh and Scott Atlas discussed the importance of investing in policy education for young people, especially in the era of heightened partisanship, rising populism, and social media.
1. Do you feel substantive policy discussions are being drowned out of the larger political conversation?
Joshua Rauh: One of the keys to appropriate policy direction is to ensure that our future leaders are trained to think critically about policy decisions and understand that facts and data should underlie policy formulation. In this era as in any other, emotions can run high, as public policy defines society and our path forward as a country.
Scott Atlas: Hoover’s Summer Boot Camp gives students the opportunity to learn from the expertise of Hoover fellows, who are world-renowned experts and deeply experienced in their fields of discipline. We want our students to become immersed in fact-based analysis of policy, and to carry with them the ability to become leaders in substantive policy discussions about today’s issues and those of the future.
2. Where is the administration’s best opportunity to find compromise on a policy solution?
Rauh: Our course highlights the critical importance of first understanding the facts about an issue before devising policies. By engaging people in fact-based discussion, pre-conceived notions and emotional reactions become less important. This approach lays a foundation for moving forward on common ground with improvements in public policy.
3. What is the benefit of investing in policy educations for young people?
Atlas: Young people today often operate in the emotional and rather extreme circles of social media. Social media has a democratizing effect in the market for ideas to be sure, but it can also contribute to the propagation of misperceptions and incorrect information. Our goal is to foster an environment of fact-based, data-based, and analysis-based policy thinking, and to inspire our students to raise the level of discourse in policy discussions.
4. How do you engage young people in a world where they’re so saturated in sensationalist partisan media?
Rauh: We confront them with facts and expert research. The Hoover Institution is uniquely poised to do so. We want students to be able to think critically for themselves about each issue — fiscal policy, monetary policy, international relations, health care, education, national security — and not to fall back on preconceived ideas and assertions.
5. Has President Trump’s new brand of populist conservatism impacted the broader discussions of foreign and domestic policy making?
Atlas: Populism has been on the rise in America in both political parties, and with that, strident opinions in our politics with little consideration of the facts. There is no more important time than now to ensure that our young people are able to take an objective look at today’s issues and to analyze them and the policies being proposed using facts, data-driven research, and reason.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
