Robert Reich
Robert Bernard Reich (/raɪʃ/ RYSHE;[2] born June 24, 1946) is an American professor, author, lawyer, and political commentator.[3] He worked in the administrations of presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and served as Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997 in the cabinet of President Bill Clinton.[4][5] He was also a member of President Barack Obama's economic transition advisory board.[6]
Not to be confused with Robert Raich or Rob Reich.
Robert Reich
Perian Flaherty
- Sam
- Adam
The VIZE 97 Prize (2003)
2015–present
656,000[1]
(May 2024)
74 million[1]
(May 2024)
Reich has been the Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley since January 2006.[7] He was formerly a lecturer at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government[8] and a professor of social and economic policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University. In 2008, Time magazine named him one of the Ten Best Cabinet Members of the century,[9] and in the same year The Wall Street Journal placed him sixth on its list of Most Influential Business Thinkers.[10]
Reich has published multiple books,[11] including the best-sellers The Work of Nations, Reason, Saving Capitalism, Supercapitalism, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, and Beyond Outrage. The Robert Reich–Jacob Kornbluth film Saving Capitalism debuted on Netflix in November 2017, and their film Inequality for All won a U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Achievement in Filmmaking at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.[12][13] In 2015, Reich and Kornbluth founded Inequality Media, a nonprofit digital media company.[14] He is also board chair emeritus of Common Cause and blogs at Robertreich.org.[15]
Early life and career[edit]
Reich was born to a Jewish family in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the son of Mildred Freshman (née Dorf) (1919-2006) and Edwin Saul Reich (1914–2016), who owned a women's clothing store.[16][17] As a teenager, he was diagnosed with multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, also known as Fairbank's disease, a genetic disorder that results in short stature and other symptoms. This condition made Reich a target for bullies and he sought out the protection of older boys; one of them was Michael Schwerner, who was one of the three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964 for the registration of African-American voters. Reich cites this event as an inspiration to "fight the bullies, to protect the powerless, to make sure that the people without a voice have a voice".[18]
He attended John Jay High School in Cross River, New York. Reich received a National Merit Scholarship and majored in history at Dartmouth College, graduating with an A.B., summa cum laude, in 1968 and winning a Rhodes Scholarship to study Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at University College, Oxford.[19] While at Dartmouth, Reich went on a date with Hillary Rodham, the future Hillary Clinton, then an undergraduate at Wellesley College.[20] While studying at Oxford, Reich first met Bill Clinton, also a Rhodes Scholar. Although Reich was drafted to serve in the Vietnam War, he did not pass the physical examination; due to his dysplasia condition, Reich is only 4 feet 11 inches (1.50 m) tall, shorter than the required minimum height of 5 ft 0 in (1.52 m).[21] Reich subsequently earned a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. At Yale, he was a classmate of Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham, Clarence Thomas, Michael Medved, and Richard Blumenthal.[22]
From 1973 to 1974, Reich served as a law clerk to Judge Frank M. Coffin, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. From 1974 to 1976, he was an assistant to U.S. Solicitor General Robert Bork, under whom he had studied antitrust law while at Yale.[23] In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed him director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Federal Trade Commission. From 1980 until 1992, Reich taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he wrote a series of books and articles, including The Next American Frontier and The Work of Nations.
Personal life[edit]
Reich married British-born lawyer Clare Dalton in Cambridge, UK, in 1973;[81] they divorced in 2012.[82] During their marriage, the couple had two sons: Sam, CEO and owner of Dropout (previously known as CollegeHumor), and Adam, a sociology professor at Columbia University.[82][83] Reich was subsequently married to photographer Perian Flaherty.
Reich was born with Multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, a form of Dwarfism also known as "Fairbank's Disease" and stands four foot ten inches tall, an issue he publicly addressed in a July 2023 Blog post titled "Why I'm So Short".[84]
In 2020, Reich wrote letters to the City of Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission objecting to the construction of ten housing units (including one low-income unit) on a lot near Reich's home.[85][86][87]
