John Raisian: an appreciation

By Clark S. Judge, managing director.

Early on the morning of Tuesday, April 25, I received a text message from Peter Robinson that John Raisian, Director of the Hoover Institution (1989-2015), had passed away. Nine days earlier Hoover Senior Fellow John Cogan had conveyed to me John’s desire that I post the statement now elsewhere on this site. I knew from Peter and John C. the gravity of John’s condition. Thanks to them, I had had the opportunity to tell John my gratitude, admiration, and appreciation for him. Now, on behalf of all at WHWG, I share these thoughts:

John Raisian was a quietly brilliant leader who transformed the institution he loved from an important but sleepy research center into the major force it is today.

The fruit of his labors is that, at a time when the nation urgently needs voices and pens reminding and instructing it in the principals and irreplaceable moral force of the American experiment in the world, including the essential place of our free economy in that experiment, among the most insightful and impactful voices and pens are those he recruited – and they are heard and read so clearly because of the modern platforms of communications that he introduced to Hoover.

Our time on earth is short, but our achievements endure. What John Raisian did for human happiness and human freedom during his tenure heading the Hoover Institution ranks among the landmark contributions of our age.