The Hoover Institution Library & Archives recently acquired the papers of Robert W. Poole Jr., a co-founder of Reason magazine, and an expert on public policy related to aviation and surface transportation.
The Robert W. Poole Jr. collection consists of business files, correspondence, annual reports, newsletters, and associated documents related to Reason magazine, the Reason Foundation, and the libertarian movement in America. Robert W. Poole Jr. is director of transportation policy and Searle Freedom Trust Transportation Fellow at Reason Foundation. Poole, an MIT-trained engineer, advised the Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Trump administrations on infrastructure issues. In the field of surface transportation, Poole has advised the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Transit Administration, the White House Office of Policy Development, National Economic Council, Government Accountability Office, and the Department of Transportation in numerous states.
Poole co-founded the Reason Foundation with Manny Klausner and Tibor Machan in 1978 and served as its president and CEO from then until the end of 2000. He was a member of the Bush-Cheney transition team in 2000.
Poole is credited as the first person to use the term “privatization” to refer to the contracting-out of public services and is the author of the first-ever book on privatization, Cutting Back City Hall, published by Universe Books in 1980. He is also editor of the books Instead of Regulation: Alternatives to Federal Regulatory Agencies (Lexington Books, 1981), Defending a Free Society (Lexington Books, 1984), and Unnatural Monopolies (Lexington Books, 1985). He also co-edited the book Free Minds & Free Markets: 25 Years of Reason (Pacific Research Institute, 1993). Most recently he has published Rethinking America’s Highways (University of Chicago Press, 2018) and A Think Tank for Liberty (Jameson Books, 2018). Poole has written hundreds of articles, papers, and policy studies on privatization and transportation issues. His popular writings have appeared in national newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, and numerous other publications. He has also been a guest on network television programs such as Good Morning America, Huffington Post, NBC's Nightly News, ABC's World News Tonight, and the CBS Evening News. Poole writes a monthly column on transportation issues for Public Works Financing.
Poole earned his B.S. and M.S. in mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and did graduate work in operations research at New York University.
