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Robert Reich

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Robert Reich
22nd United States Secretary of Labor
In office
1993–1997
PresidentBill Clinton
Preceded byLynn Morley Martin
Succeeded byAlexis Herman
Personal details
Born (1946-06-24) June 24, 1946 (age 78)
Political partyDemocratic
SpouseClare Dalton
ProfessionAcademic, commentator

Robert Bernard Reich (born June 24, 1946) is an American politician, academic, and political commentator. He served as the twenty-second United States Secretary of Labor, serving under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997. Reich is a former Harvard University professor and the former Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. He is currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy. Mr. Reich is also on the board of directors of Tutor.com He is a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security. He is an occasional political commentator, notably on Hardball with Chris Matthews.

Early life and career

Reich was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1946. He grew up in the suburban community of South Salem, New York, where his father owned a clothing store. Reich was born with Fairbanks disease, a rare genetic disorder which affects bone ossification, which is the cause of his short stature (four feet, 10.5 inches): were he half an inch shorter, he would meet the medical definition of dwarfism.)

Reich attended Dartmouth College, where he was involved in numerous campus activities and was a member of Casque and Gauntlet and the staff of the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern humor magazine. He graduated in 1968, and won a Rhodes Scholarship, earning a Master of Arts degree from University College, Oxford. He later attended Yale Law School, receiving his J.D. in 1973.

For more than 20 years, he lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, Clare Dalton, a law professor at Northeastern University who started and runs Northeastern's Center on Domestic Violence. Reich now lives in Berkeley, California. He has two sons, Sam and Adam.

He has worked as a faculty member at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, director of Policy Planning Staff of the Federal Trade Commission under President Carter, assistant to the Solicitor General under President Ford, and former chairman of the political magazine The American Prospect, which he co-founded. He was also one of the original founders of the Economic Policy Institute in 1986. He was part of the online faculty of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute (WBSI) in the late 1980s.

In 1992 Reich hosted the PBS documentary miniseries Made In America, which took an in-depth look at the then-current difficulties of American manufacturing in the face of stiff competition from overseas, particularly Japan, and what American companies could do to become more competitive.

Serving in Clinton administration

A longtime friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, going back to their days together at Oxford and Yale Law School respectively, he was invited to head Clinton's economic transition team. He later joined the administration as Secretary of Labor. During his tenure, he implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), fought sweatshops, successfully promoted increasing the minimum wage, improved workplace safety, successfully lobbied to pass the Pension Protection Act and the School-to-Work Jobs Act, and launched a number of job training programs.

At the same time, he lobbied Clinton to address bigger societal issues, and pushed for improvement of conditions for those in poverty. He had moderate success until the 1996 presidential campaign began, when Clinton, heeding the advice of political advisor Dick Morris, shifted right and promoted policies designed to appeal to the suburban swing voter as understood by Morris.

In addition, Reich used the office as a platform for focusing the nation's attention on the need for American workers to adapt to the new economy. He advocated that the country provide more opportunities for workers to learn more technology, and predicted the shrinkage of the middle class due to a gap between unskilled and highly skilled workers.

After the Clinton administration

In 1997, soon after Clinton's second inauguration, he decided to leave the department to spend more time with his sons, then in their teen years. He published his experiences working for the Clinton administration in Locked in the Cabinet. The memoir was criticized for factual inaccuracies and was revised in the paperback edition. (See links below.)

Reich became a professor at Brandeis University, teaching courses for undergraduates as well as in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. In 2003, he was elected the Professor of the Year by the undergraduate student body.

In 2001, Reich spoke at the 135th commencement ceremony of Bates College and received an honorary LL.D. from the institution.[1]

In 2002, he ran for Governor of Massachusetts. He also published an associated campaign book, I'll Be Short. Reich was the first Democratic candidate for a major political office to support same-sex marriage. He also pledged support for abortion rights, and strongly condemned capital punishment. His campaign staff was largely made up of his Brandeis students. Although his campaign had little funding, he surprised many and came in second in the Democratic primary with 25% of the vote.

In 2003, he was awarded the prestigious Václav Havel Foundation VIZE 97 Prize, by the former Czech president, for his writings in economics and politics.[2]

In 2004, he published Reason, a handbook on how liberals can forcefully argue for their position in a country increasingly dominated by what he calls "radcons", or radical conservatives.

In addition to his professorial role, he is a weekly contributor to the American Public Media public radio program Marketplace, and a regular columnist for the American Prospect.

In early 2005, there was speculation that Reich would once again seek the Democratic nomination for Governor of Massachusetts. He instead became one of the earliest endorsers of the then-little-known candidacy of Deval Patrick, who has previously served as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Clinton Administration. Patrick would go on to take the state party's endorsement, win the three-way primary with nearly 50% of the vote, and be elected Governor in a landslide in November 2006.

In September 2005 he testified against John Roberts at his confirmation hearings for Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

He was a featured speaker in the May 2007 commencement for Pacific Lutheran University, held in the Tacoma Dome.

Reich recently published an article that was extremely critical of the Clintons, referring to Bill Clinton's attacks on Barack Obama as "ill-tempered and ill-founded," and accusing the Clintons of waging "a smear campaign against Obama that employs some of the worst aspects of the old politics." [3]

Trivia

  • A selection from his book Locked in the Cabinet is featured in The Lanahan Readings in the American Polity, Fourth Edition
  • His son Sam Reich runs College Humor's CHTV portion of the website and is part of the web video comedy group Dutch West.

Books

  • 2007: Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life ISBN 0-307-26561-7
  • 2004: Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America ISBN 1-4000-7660-9
  • 2002: I'll Be Short: Essentials for a Decent Working Society ISBN 0-8070-4340-0
  • 2000: The Future of Success: Working and Living in the New Economy ISBN 0-375-72512-1
  • 1997: Locked in the Cabinet ISBN 0-375-70061-7
  • 1991: The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism ISBN 0-679-73615-8
    probably his most important work, it has been translated into at least 22 languages
  • 1990: Public Management in a Democratic Society ISBN 0-13-738881-0
  • 1988: The Power of Public Ideas (editor) ISBN 0-674-69590-9
  • 1989: The Resurgent Liberal: And Other Unfashionable Prophecies ISBN 0-8129-1833-9
  • 1987: Tales of a New America: The Anxious Liberal's Guide to the Future ISBN 0-394-75706-8
  • 1985: New Deals: The Chrysler Revival and the American System (with John Donahue) ISBN 0-14-008983-7
  • 1983: The Next American Frontier ISBN 0-8129-1067-2
  • 1982: Minding America's Business: The Decline and Rise of the American Economy (with Ira Magaziner) ISBN 0-394-71538-1

See also

The Trap (TV Documentary Series) Reich features in "The Trap", a BBC documentary.

References

  1. ^ http://www.bates.edu/x11528.xml
  2. ^ http://www.vize.cz/en/laureates.php
  3. ^ http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/01/bill-clintons-old-politics.html
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