HOOVER INSTITUTION
Peter M. Robinson
Peter M. Robinson is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he writes about business and politics, edits Hoover's quarterly journal, Hoover Digest, and hosts Hoover's television program, Uncommon KnowledgeTM.
Robinson is also the author of the book, It's My Party: A Republican's Messy Love Affair with the GOP, published by Warner Books in 2000, and of the best-selling business book, Snapshots from Hell: The Making of an MBA, published by Warner Books in 1994 and still available in paperback.
Born in 1957, Robinson grew up in Vestal, a town in the rolling hill country of upstate New York. In 1979, he graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College, where he majored in English. He went on to study politics, philosophy, and economics at Oxford University, from which he graduated in 1982.
Robinson spent six years in the White House, serving from 1982 to 1983 as chief speechwriter to Vice President George Bush and from 1983 to 1988 as special assistant and speechwriter to President Ronald Reagan. He wrote the historic Berlin Wall address in which President Reagan called on General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!"
After the White House, Robinson attended the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. (The journal he kept formed the basis for Snapshots from Hell.) He graduated with an MBA in 1990.
Robinson then spent a year in New York City with Fox Television, reporting to the owner of the company, Rupert Murdoch. He spent a second year in Washington, D.C., with the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he served as the director of the Office of Public Affairs, Policy Evaluation, and Research. Robinson joined the Hoover Institution in 1993.
As the editor of the Hoover Digest since its inception in 1996, Robinson selects and edits articles with the intention of making the work of the Hoover Institution readily available to the public. As host of Uncommon Knowledge since the program began, in 1996, Robinson seeks to engage his guests in lively, informative discussions of public policy. Topics on Uncommon Knowledge, which is broadcast on stations on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), range from the legalization of drugs to affirmative action to censorship on the Internet. Uncommon Knowledge is a coproduction of the Hoover Institution and KTEH, the San Jose PBS affiliate.
The author of numerous essays and interviews, Robinson has published in the New York Times, Red Herring, and Forbes ASAP. He is the editor of Can Congress Be Fixed?: Five Essays on Congressional Reform (Hoover Institution Press, 1995).
Robinson lives in northern California with his wife and their children.
(2002)
Hoover Institution Link
