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Early life and career Robert Reich was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1946, and grew up in the rural community of South Salem, New York State, where his father owned a clothing store. He was born with Fairbanks disease, also known as Multiple epiphyseal dysplasia (MED) a rare genetic disorder (1 in 10,000 births) which affects the growing ends of bones. (Bones usually elongate by a process that involves the depositing of cartilage at the ends of the bones, called ossification. This cartilage then mineralizes and hardens to become bone. In MED, this process is defective.) This disease left him of short stature, at 4 ft 10 1/2 inches. He went on to attend Dartmouth College, where he was involved in numerous campus activities, including the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern humor magazine. He graduated in 1968, and went on to obtain an M.A. as a Rhodes Scholar at University College of Oxford University, as well as a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1973. For more than 20 years, he lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, Clare Dalton, a law professor at Northeastern University, Boston 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. 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 that appealed to the suburban swing voter. 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.) 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. Although his campaign had little funding , he came in second in the Democratic primary, with 25% of the vote. In 2003, he was awarded the prestigious Vaclav Havel Vision Foundation Prize, by the former Czech president, for his writings in economics and politics. In 2001 Reich received a LL.D. from Bates College. 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 September 2005 he testified against John Roberts at his confirmation hearings for Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Trivia He played himself as a detective in a skit on Late Night with Conan O'Brien; they amusingly contrasted each other in height, as Conan is 6'4. Books | ||||||||||
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