Richard Sousa is senior associate director and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He served as director of the library and archives from 2007 to 2012. He has been at Hoover since 1990.

Sousa, an economist, specializes in human capital, discrimination, labor market issues, and K–12 education. He coauthored School Figures: The Data behind the Debate (Hoover Institution Press, 2003). Using facts and figures, this volume provides a concise and understandable analysis of the state of K–12 education in the United States. He is coeditor of Reacting to the Spending Spree: Policy Changes We Can Afford (Hoover Institution Press, 2009), an early assessment of what the Obama administration faced and how it was reacting to the economic crisis of 2008–9.

His op-eds have appeared in newspapers including the San Francisco Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Dayton Daily News, and Providence Journal; his articles have appeared in School Reform News and the Hoover Digest.

As director of the Hoover Library and Archives, Sousa was responsible for the major upgrade to the archives preservation and conservation lab and was intimately involved with major acquisitions, including the Chiang Kai-shek diaries; the William Rehnquist papers; the Georgia, Estonia, and Lithuanian KGB files; and the Iraq Memory Foundation collection. As senior associate director, Sousa works with the Institution’s director to develop institutional policies, strategy, long-range planning, and external communications.

Sousa was also responsible for launching the Institution’s major communications initiatives: Hoover Digest: Research and Opinion on Public Policy, Education Next: A Journal of Opinion and Research, the Hoover Weekly Essays, the Facts on Policy and Focus on Issues series, and Uncommon Knowledge™ (the Institution’s television series). From 1990 to 1995, Sousa was the coordinator of the Diplomat Training Program.

Sousa is a senior consultant to the Soong Family Archives and Research Center at Fudan University, Shanghai, China. Sousa was an economist at the RAND Corporation, has taught economics and statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and has testified in class action legal cases.

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