About Robert Reich
Robert B. Reich, one of the nation's leading thinkers about work and the economy, is university professor and the Maurice B. Hexter professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis and its Heller Graduate School. He is a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
Before joining Brandeis, he served as the nation's 22nd secretary of labor during President Bill Clinton's first term. Under Reich's leadership, the Labor Department moved forward on several path-breaking initiatives to build the skills of American workers, cracked down on unsafe worksites and on fraudulent purveyors of pensions and health insurance, and began a national initiative to abolish sweatshops. As secretary he also oversaw the enactment of the Retirement Protection Act, and the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Before heading the Labor Department, Reich was a member of the faculty of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He served as an assistant to the Solicitor General in the Ford Administration where he represented the United States before the Supreme Court, and he headed the policy planning staff of the Federal Trade Commission in the Carter Administration.
Professor Reich's is the author of 10 books including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into 22 languages, the best seller Locked in the Cabinet, published by Alfred Knopf, and The Future of Success, ranked by BusinessWeek magazine as the #2 best-selling business book and his newest book is Reason, Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America. He has written more than 200 articles on the global economy, the changing nature of work and the centrality of human capital. He is a consultant to many governments and corporations. His commentaries are heard weekly on public radio, and his columns appear regularly in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and other major national newspapers.
In late 2003 professor Reich was awarded the prestigious Vaclav Havel prize, in Prague, for his original contributions to world thinking and culture.