EncyclopediaReich, Robert Bernard
Reich, Robert Bernard (rīsh, rīk) [key], 1946–, American political economist, b. Scranton, Pa. He attended Dartmouth, Oxford (where he and Bill Clinton were Rhodes scholars), and Yale Law School. After graduation in 1973 he entered government service, becoming assistant solicitor general in the Dept. of Justice (1974–76) and director of policy planning in the Federal Trade Commission (1976–81). He taught at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (1981–92) and was secretary of labor (1993–96) in the first Clinton administration. A neoliberal, Reich supported the development of high-tech industries, economic flexibility, labor-management cooperation, limited government intervention in labor disputes, and the education of a technologically adept workforce. In 1997, he joined the Brandeis Univ. faculty as a professor of social and economic policy; he is also a professor of public policy at the Univ. of California, Berkeley. His books include The Next American Frontier (1983), The Work of Nations (1991), the memoir Locked in the Cabinet (1997), Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America (2004), and Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life (2007).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
