Hoover Institution Congratulates 2025 Winners Of HIPSBC Essay Competition

Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) - Four students from the United States, Israel, and Austria received awards on February 22, 2026, for the papers they submitted after attending the 2025 Hoover Institution Summer Policy Boot Camp (HISPBC).

The awards were issued before an audience of Hoover's most dedicated supporters, who gathered in Washington, DC, for the organization's annual Winter Board of Overseers Meeting,

Hoover Institution Director Condoleezza Rice congratulated the four Director's Award recipients for their superb research on issues ranging from the US defense industrial base to ways to automate the production of freedom-of-information requests.

The HISPBC is an intensive, four-day residential immersion program in the essentials of today's national and international US policy.

The papers were judged by HISPBC codirectors and Hoover Senior Fellows Scott W. Atlas and Joshua D. Rauh. Each proposal attempted to offer a solution to a complex, ongoing public policy matter.

"This year, 46 percent of participants submitted proposals for consideration," Rauh said. "As codirectors of the program, Scott Atlas and I selected four participants to receive this year's Director's Award. The winning proposals demonstrate particular creativity in addressing complex policy issues."

Atlas added that the 2025 winners demonstrated excellent use of facts and critical thinking skills in the creation of their research papers.

"We teach that public policy should always derive from evidence, data, and critical thinking," Atlas said. "The process is: learn the facts, think critically, synthesize an informed opinion, and then formulate policy. We are delighted to congratulate this year's winners, all of whom used that process to generate their outstanding policy proposals."

The winning 2025 papers are described below.

"Policy Recommendations to Bolster the United States Defense Industrial Base,"
by Megan Cameron, Princeton University

Cameron's paper recommends new uses of existing legislation and updated procurement practices to ramp up and solidify the production of critical components, munitions, and other items for the US military,

"A Republic of Volunteers: A Modern Model for Voluntary National Service,"
by Michael Cartier, US Naval Postgraduate School

Cartier's paper envisions a new suite of measures to nudge more young American adults to choose national service by offering new opportunities to link voluntary military, Peace Corps, Teach for America, or AmeriCorps service to student loan forgiveness, paid college tuition, and other incentives.

"FOIA Accelerate: A Governance-First NLP Pilot to Cut the Federal FOIA Backlog,"
by Alon Mannor, Reichman University

Mannor calls for a new automated assessment and processing system for incoming freedom-of-information requests to reduce request turnaround times and cut the backlog of outstanding requests, which stood at more than 250,000 in 2024.

"Allied Mettle, Allied Metals: A Market-Based Playbook for Critical-Mineral Supply Chains,"
by Peter Vartanian.

Vartanian describes a new comprehensive program to reshore critical mineral supply chains, which the United States has largely ceded to China. The key to this effort is a series of tax credits that would incentivize domestic rare earth mineral exploration, mining, and refinement.

All four winning papers can be read here.

Forty-three other participants in the 2025 HISPBC Program who submitted essays earned distinction honors.

The HISPBC program is intended to instruct college students and recent graduates on the economic, political, and social aspects of American public policy. The goal is to teach students how to think critically about public policy formulation and its results.

Designed to foster fact-based critical thinking on the most important policy issues, the program gives students a unique chance to interact directly with the faculty of the Hoover Institution. Session topics are selected based on their immediate relevance to today's and tomorrow's challenges.

Learn more about the 2026 cycle of the program here.