Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) – On Wednesday, October 4, 2023, the Hoover Institution hosted the winners of its second annual Distinguished Undergraduate Essay Competition for an award ceremony and reception in the David & Joan Traitel Building.
The award winners, Stanford undergraduate students pursuing majors across a wide variety of departments, distinguished themselves through the strength of their writings on values, institutions, and history relating to liberty and public policy—the key themes of the Hoover competition.
The ceremony began with the winners taking a group photo with the competition’s chair and organizer, Hoover senior fellow and Stanford humanities professor Russell Berman, and Hoover Institution director Condoleezza Rice. The photo was followed proximately by remarks from both Hoover scholars.
After thanking Professor Berman for his founding and leadership of the Hoover student essay competition, Secretary Rice reflected on the relationship between the contest and the work of the Hoover Institution.
“It’s a perfect marriage—writing and liberty and freedom,” said Rice. “As people who are fortunate enough to live in a democracy, we believe that the most creative work is done by free peoples.”
Secretary Rice also highlighted how the essay competition fits into the broader context of a well-rounded Stanford undergraduate education.
“We believe at Stanford that a liberal education involves the whole range of human knowledge,” Rice said. “And so I’m delighted that this really is representative of a range of disciplines here at Stanford. . . . Thank you for being a part of the commemoration of liberty and human freedom.”
Following remarks from Secretary Rice, undergraduate award recipients were recognized by Professor Berman, who highlighted the topic and key approaches of each essay before thanking students for their contributions to American democracy. “If we are going to have a democracy that thrives, we need people to be able to express their ideas, to rebut bad ones, and to engage in public-sphere discussion,” said Berman. Students were welcome to bring a faculty mentor or family guest to the ceremony, which fostered a warm and congratulatory atmosphere during the portion of the proceedings recognizing the honorees.
First-Year Student Distinguished Essay Award
Oliver Szavuj (Major: Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, class of 2026)
Essay Title: The Soviet Space Program: Successes That Were Destined to Fail
Summary: Szavuj’s work delves into the space race, pinpointing critical decisions and moments that contributed to the Soviet Union’s inability to reach the Moon. His essay argues that the Soviet pursuit of propaganda “firsts” misdirected the country’s initial technological advantages from the ultimate Moon-landing goal, which highlights by contrast the impact of good institutional policies on human freedom. He concludes his work by suggesting that history might have reflected an entirely different outcome had the Soviet Union overcome compartmentalization and internal competition in its agencies.
Distinguished Essay Award
Mary Fetter (BS, Engineering Physics, class of 2023)
Essay Title: Guiding Principles in Creating South Carolina’s 1790 Constitution: Liberty vs. Slavery
Summary: Fetter argues that South Carolina’s constitution of 1790 underwent significant changes from the 1776 and 1778 versions, partly in response to the increased federal power outlined in the 1787 US Constitution and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. Despite the proclamations of liberty and equality by South Carolina’s leaders, she concludes, a guiding principle in each of these changes was a desire to protect and preserve the institution of slavery.
Distinguished Essay Award
Margot Hutchins (Major: Mathematics, class of 2025)
Essay Title: The Communist Sovereign: A Schmittian and Girardian Analysis of Stalin
Summary: Hutchins’s essay explores the internal politics of the Stalinist regime in the 1930s, focusing in particular on the significance of Bolshevik revolutionary Sergei Kirov’s death and changes to NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) leadership in cementing Joseph Stalin’s power over the USSR. She argues that Stalin’s actions can be understood through two complementary lenses—René Girard’s mimetic theory and Carl Schmitt’s legal theories—using supporting evidence from sources including the Hoover Archives.
Distinguished Essay Award
Ethan J. Lee (Major: BA, Political Science, class of 2023)
Essay Title: International Entertainment and Foreign Influence for Ascending Totalitarian Powers
Summary: Lee’s essay examines the cultural dimensions of Sino-U.S. relations and China's approach to expanding its international cultural power through entertainment. Lee proposes a joint framework to understand China's actions in entertainment governance: hierarchical mimicry and international cultural persuasion. Lee illustrates this framework through a comparative case study on the 1998 Walt Disney Pictures animated film Mulan and its 2020 live-action adaptation, concluding that international entertainment has become a significant element of cultural power.
Distinguished Essay Award
Jessica Faith Lee (Major: Political Science, class of 2024)
Essay Title: Policy Memo: Russia’s Arctic Oil and Gas Drilling
Summary: Lee wrote a policy memo that addresses Russian oil and gas drilling in the Arctic. Analyzing the interactions between Russia’s geopolitical interests and its environmental policies, this memo provides the US secretary of state with feasible policy recommendations aimed at effectively regulating Russia’s Arctic drilling. This memo concludes by affirming the necessity of taking robust but measured action against Arctic drilling in order to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.
First-Year Honorable Mentions
Hanyi Chen (Major: Economics and Data Science, Class of 2026)
Essay Title: A Female Despair, A Family Taboo, A Social Shackle: A Glimpse into Chinese Birth Control Policies’ Impact on Perspectives of Gender Roles Through the Stories of Three Generations of Chinese Women.
Summary: Chen's essay delves into the impact of Chinese birth control policies on the systematic perpetuation of gender inequality by drawing upon the experiences and perspectives of three generations of Chinese women. She examines Chinese women's experiences spanning from the era before birth control policies, through the enactment of the one-child policy, the subsequent implementation of the two-child policy, and then into a contemporary context. Her work highlights the evolving dynamics of gender inequality throughout these periods.
Jason Hu (Major: Undeclared, class of 2026)
Essay Title: What's Trickling Down in Reagan's Economy?
Summary: President Ronald Reagan’s complicated economic policies have been condemned and praised to equal extremes, reducing a complex legacy into a political tug-of-war. Hu’s essay scrutinizes three contemporary interpretations of Reagan's economy—in Howard Zinn’s A People's History of the United States, in Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen’s A Patriot’s History of the United States, and in William Kleinknecht’s The Man Who Sold the World—to tease out the overarching themes that characterize “Reaganomics” as we perceive it today.
Jeannette Wang (Major: Political Science, class of 2026)
Essay Title: Young People’s Unique Vulnerability to Affective Polarization: Key Contributing Characteristics of Newer Social Media Platforms.
Summary: Current research on the effects of social media has been largely limited to dominant platforms like Facebook and Twitter and their users. Yet, there is reason to be concerned that key characteristics of newer social media platforms (like Instagram and TikTok) may be uniquely contributing to affective polarization, especially among younger users. In this paper, Wang discusses the potential consequences of these platforms’ characteristics: the centralized “influencer” networks key to their culture; the impersonal design of their distributive discovery pages; and their prevalence of politically inexplicit content.
Upperclass Honorable Mentions
Karen Cho (Major: Political Science, class of 2024)
Essay Title: Walking the Political Tightrope: The Role of Great-Power Politics in Servicing the Illiberal Project of Viktor Orbán
Summary: Cho’s essay argues that great-power competition—the United States and the European Union versus Russia and China—has emboldened and justified Viktor Orbán in his project to undermine the rule of law, freedom of the press, and human rights in Hungary. She utilizes this case study to construct a broader argument about how great-power politics can offer modern autocratic leaders the opportunity to walk the political tightrope, offering the great powers geopolitical incentives in return for international legitimacy.
Sarina Deb (BA, Political Science; MA, Communications, class of 2023)
Essay Title: Opened Doors and Blocked Entry: Transitional Justice in South Africa’s Education System
Summary: Deb’s essay evaluates South Africa’s transitional justice process through the lens of education. It argues that while South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) engaged in some good-faith efforts to enact education reform through integration of a human rights–based curriculum in K–12 schools, the postapartheid South African government and the TRC did not deliver on the promise of fomenting equality and justice in society. This was because they failed to address the larger structural, racial, and socioeconomic factors contributing to lasting educational disparities between the country’s Black majority population and more advantaged groups.
Tianyu M. Fang (Major: Political Science, class of 2024)
Essay Title: The End of the “End of History”? A Discussion of Ideology in Post-Socialist China
Summary: Fang’s essay evaluates the challenges that China’s post-Mao development has posed to Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis. It points to contradictions between economic marketization and political liberalization and argues that the authoritarianism in the People’s Republic of China has only been tightened over the past four decades because of, not despite, the country’s market reforms. It further contends that while China’s rise under the Communist Party’s authoritarian rule challenges the “end of history,” Beijing proposes no viable ideological alternative other than a developmental model explicitly devoid of ideology.
Andrew Gerges (Major: Economics, class of 2025)
Essay Title: Eradicating Water Scarcity: Securing Sustainable Clean Water Access in Rural India and Global Applications
Summary: Gerges’s essay explores the impact of water scarcity on development across the world. Using rural India as a case study, it delves into the causes of the lack of access to clean water in the area, and its economic and social impacts on the people affected. It also looks at current efforts to eradicate water scarcity in rural India and elsewhere and provides several recommendations and future steps to provide clean water for all. Ultimately, it argues that access to clean water is the most fundamental step toward development and must be guaranteed.
