All right. Hello, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Jean Cannon. I'm the curator for North American Collections here at the Hoover Archives. Lovely to see you all. I just want to let you know we're going to take a few minutes to let people enter the webinar. Maybe two or three minutes so that everyone can get acquainted with the site.
And then I'm going to introduce our deputy director of the Hoover Institution and also director of Library and Archives, Eric Waken, who is going to introduce you today to our speaker, Luke Nichter. Thank you. Okay, good afternoon to everyone here in the room and on Zoom. Thanks for coming. I'm Eric Waken. I'm the deputy director of the Hoover Institution and the Sparky and Jane Houck director of the Library and Archives.
It's my great pleasure to welcome you to today's talk by Luke Nichter, who will be speaking on Watergate at 50, which is the second lecture in our accompanying our current gallery exhibit about which there are cards on your chairs, unprecedented Watergate and power in America. A few minutes more on Luke in a moment. Let me just welcome you to the webinar. Thank you.
to the Hoover Institution, and thanks some of the people who made this event possible. First of all, our director, Condoleezza Rice, who's been an unstinting supporter of the Library and Archives and of the growth of this institution in our second hundred years. Also the overseers and the other donors that support the institution and our mission. Without their generous donations, nothing we do would be possible. Although we're fully part of Stanford University, we are 100%
privately funded, and Stanford gives us a tiny bit of money to support the archives. So it's without the generosity of our donors, nothing we do here would be possible. We're here because of the vision of one man, Herbert Hoover, who more than a hundred years ago sent his famous telegram, which said, among other things, it was quite short, collect materials on war. He gave a $50,000 donation in 1919, and today's purchasing power is roughly $900,000 or a million dollars.
That was his deed of gift. And from that Hoover War Library, we've become the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace. And our mission has expanded from being essentially a library to being a public policy research institute. And by operating budget, we're the largest think tank in America, just for comparison, which is quite amazing. We have economists, historians, political scientists, professors of literature, culture, and otherwise working both in the archives on our
library and on the library. And we're a big part of the library. And we're a big part of the library and archives collections, but also in working groups on various things from state and local taxation issues, macroeconomic issues, national security issues, and so on. So it's a really unusual institution in having a library and archives and a public policy side. Mr. Hoover said
this about the Hoover Institution. The institution is not and must not be a mere library, but with these purposes as its goal, the institution must dynamically point the road to peace, to personal freedom, and to the safeguards of the American civilization. And I think that's a really important
And I like to think that these talks are exactly what Mr. Hoover would have wanted. We're not just a mere library, we are engaging with culture and economics and politics and thinking and history, and that's why Luke is here to help us out with that. Now, let me say a few words about Luke and then we'll let him speak. As many of you have already noted, today's the actual 52nd anniversary of perhaps the most famous burglary in American history.
June 17, 1972, when a group of folks broke into the DNC headquarters in Watergate, thereby causing Watergate to be a term that denoted all sorts of political scandals in the world since then. This afternoon, we're welcoming Professor Luke Nichter, who's one of the foremost experts on many things. One of which is the secret White House recordings from the times of FDR through Richard Nixon.
Luke is currently Professor of History and James H. Kavanaugh Endowed Chair in Presidential Studies at Chapman University. His specialty is the Cold War, the modern presidency and U.S. political and diplomatic history, with a focus on the long 1960s. He's also a bestselling author or editor of eight books, including most recently The Year That Broke Politics, Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968. Today, Luke is going to share his knowledge and research on the Nixon era.
Before I hand the podium over to him, I just want to take a minute to thank our exhibitions team, Samira Bazzorghi, Kira Peacock and Marisa Rhee, who've worked tirelessly along with the curator, Jean Cannon, on the exhibition that's upstairs in the tower. I urge you to take a look at it when you have a moment. Now, please give a warm Hoover welcome to Luke. Thank you very much for that kind introduction, Eric, and also to Jean and the rest of your library and archives team for inviting me here.
For the speaker series that coincides not only with the 50th anniversary of Watergate, specifically the 52nd, as we heard of the actual break in, which sort of got that whole process started back in the early 1970s, but also coinciding with your important exhibit. As Eric just mentioned over in the tower, I went over and saw it myself earlier today. So if you haven't seen it, I would encourage you to do so. I also want to give a special welcome.
I have several students here in the room or on Zoom from the library. I have a few students here on Zoom from Chapman. At this point, grades are turned in. You owe me nothing further. But you came here and, you know, good on you for doing that. I teach -- the most popular class I teach is a course called U.S. politics in the age of Richard Nixon. So it's as much about that era as it is our own.
And they probably all agree the number of times we get sidetracked and we really talk about politics today. But so much about that era is a -- it's a -- it's a very important thing. And I think it's a very important thing. And I think it's a very important thing. And I think it's a very important thing. And I think it's a very important thing. And I think it's a very important thing. Because the history of the history of the era is a starting point for politics today.
So it's not hard to look for those similarities if you're looking for them. It's also great to be back at the Hoover Institution which is becoming one of the last places, in my opinion, where one can engage in serious historical inquiry alongside encouraging colleagues supported by a world-class library and archives. I've been fortunate to visit more often in recent years since my academic home moved from Texas to California in 2012. And I think that's what's important to me.
And I think that's what's important to me. And I think that's what's important to me. And I think that's what's important to me. And I think that's what's important to me. And I think that's what's important to me. And I think that's what's important to me. And I think that's what's important to me. I think that's what's important to me. And I think that's what's important to me. And I think that's what's important to me. And I think that's what's important to me.
And I think that's what's important to me. you you