GoodFellows: Conversations from the Hoover Institution

Stirring the Melting Pot

For decades, America has struggled to make sense of whom to allow legally into the nation, whether to create pathways to citizenship for those who have slipped across the border illegally, and how to maintain the ideal of a welcoming society. Reihan Salam, president of the Manhattan Institute and author of 2018’s Melting Pot or Civil War? A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders, joins Hoover senior fellows Niall Ferguson, H. R. McMaster and John Cochrane to discuss the present crisis at the southern border and what a 21st-century version of immigration reform should resemble.

Recorded April 27, 2021

A New Chill in the Classroom

What to make of elite universities with scant conservative representation in their faculty ranks; mankind’s tendency to dwell on the negative; plus the question of whether this is indeed the best time to be alive? Harvard cognitive psychologist and best-selling author Steven Pinker joins Hoover senior fellows Niall Ferguson, H. R. McMaster and John Cochrane to make the case for optimism in this time of the “Great Awokening.”

Recorded April 20, 2021

Question Time!

In this week’s episode, we dove into our mailbag of viewers’ letters. The end result: Hoover senior fellows Niall Ferguson, H. R. McMaster, and John Cochrane answering 15 questions on a variety of subjects: the threat of hostilities between China and Taiwan; the potential effect of Scottish independence on the future of corporate woke politics; alternate versions of higher learning; how to re-instill youthful optimism in America; plus what books the three “GoodFellows” recommend.

Recorded April 13, 2021

We’ll Always Have Paris

Climate change no longer is a conversation confined to saving the planet; for the woke left, it’s a segue to “environmental justice and equitable economic opportunity,” in the words of Joe Biden’s campaign platform. Hoover visiting fellow Bjorn Lomborg, author of False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet joins Hoover senior fellows H. R. McMaster and John Cochrane for a conversation about sensible climate policy moving forward.

Recorded April 6, 2021

The Great Awokening With Bari Weiss

What does the future hold for the workplace and institutions of learning when diversity of thought prompts cancel-culture condemnation, ridicule, and ouster? Journalist, author, and Substack Common Sense writer Bari Weiss joins Hoover senior fellows Niall Ferguson, H. R. McMaster, and John Cochrane for a conversation about a changed world in which, she warns, “curiosity is a liability.”

Recorded March 30, 2021