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Yehuda Amichai (Hebrew: יהודה עמיחי‎; 3 May 1924 – 22 September 2000) was an Israeli poet. Amichai is considered by many, both in Israel and internationally, as Israel's greatest modern poet.^[1] He was also one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew.^[2]

"Yehuda Amichai [was] for generations the most prominent poet in Israel, and one of the leading figures in world poetry since the mid-1960s." (The Times, London, Oct. 2000) He was awarded the 1957 Shlonsky Prize, the 1969 Brenner Prize, 1976 Bialik Prize, and 1982 Israel Prize. He also won international poetry prizes: 1994 – Malraux Prize: International Book Fair (France), 1995 – Macedonia`s Golden Wreath Award: International Poetry Festival, and more.

Biography[link]

Yehuda Amichai (Ludwig Pfeuffer) was born in Würzburg, Germany, to an Orthodox Jewish family, and was raised speaking both Hebrew and German.^[3]

Amichai immigrated with his family at the age of 11 to Petah Tikva in Mandate Palestine in 1935, moving to Jerusalem in 1936.^[4] He attended Ma'aleh, a religious high school in Jerusalem. He was a member of the Palmach, the strike force of the Haganah, the defense force of the Jewish community in Mandate Palestine. As a young man he volunteered and fought in World War II as a member of the British Army, and in the Negev on the southern front in the Israeli War of Independence.^[4]

After discharge from the British Army in 1946, Amichai was a student at David Yellin Teachers College in Jerusalem, and became a teacher in Haifa. After the War of Independence, Amichai studied Bible and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Encouraged by one of his professors at Hebrew University, he published his first book of poetry, Now and in Other Days, in 1955.^[5]

In 1956, Amichai served in the Sinai War, and in 1973 he served in the Yom Kippur War.^[6] Amichai published his first novel, Not of This Time, Not of This Place, in 1963. It was about a young Israeli who was born in Germany, and after World War II, and the war of Independence in Israel, he visits his hometown in Germany,recalls his childhood, trying to make sense of the world that created the Holocaust. His second novel, Mi Yitneni Malon, about an Israeli poet living in New York, was published in 1971 while Amichai was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a poet in residence at New York University in 1987.^[7] For many years he taught literature in an Israeli seminar for teachers, and at the Hebrew University to students from abroad.^[8]

Amichai was married twice. First to Tamar Horn, with whom he had one son, and then to Chana Sokolov; they had one son and one daughter. His two sons were Ron and David, and his daughter was Emmanuella.^[9]

He died of cancer in 2000, at age 76.

Poetry[link]

Amichai's poetry deals with issues of day-to-day life, and with philosophical issues of the meaning of life and death. His work is characterized by gentle irony and original, often surprising imagery. Like many secular Israeli poets, he struggles with religious faith. His poems are full of references to God and the religious experience.,^[10] He was described as a philosopher-poet in search of a post-theological humanism.^[11] Amichai has been credited with a "rare ability for transforming the personal, even private, love situation, with all its joys and agonies, into everybody's experience, making his own time and place general."^[12]

Some of his imagery was accused of being sacrilegious.^[13] In his poem "And this is Your Glory" (Vehi Tehilatekha), for example, God is sprawled under the globe like a mechanic under a car, futilely trying to repair it. In the poem "Gods Change, Prayers Stay the Same" (Elim Mithalfim, ha-Tfillot Nisharot la-Ad), God is a portrayed as a tour guide or magician.^[8]

Amichai's poem Memorial Day for the War Dead was set to music for solo voices, chorus and orchestra in Mohammed Fairouz's Third Symphony.^[14]

Language and poetic style[link]

In an interview published in the American Poetry Review, Amichai spoke about his command of Hebrew:

"I grew up in a very religious household... So the prayers, the language of prayer itself became a kind of natural language for me... I don't try—like sometimes poets do—to 'enrich' poetry by getting more cultural material or more ethnic material into it. It comes very naturally."^[12]

Robert Alter describes Amichai's poetry as a "play of sound." He "builds a strong momentum that moves in free association from word to word, the sounds virtually generating the words that follow in the syntactic chain through phonetic kinship."^[15]

Amichai's work was popular in English translation, but admirers of his poetry in the original Hebrew claim his innovative use of the language is lost in translation. Subtle layers of meaning achieved using an ancient word rather than its modern synonym to impart a biblical connotation cannot always be conveyed. In Amichai's love poem In the Middle of This Century, for instance, the English translation reads: "the linsey-woolsey of our being together." The Hebrew term, shatnez, refers to the biblical taboo on interweaving linen and wool, which a Hebrew reader would grasp as an image of forbidden union.^[16]

Literary work[link]

Amichai traced his beginnings as a poetry lover to when he was stationed with the British army in Egypt. There he happened to find an anthology of modern British poetry, and the works of Dylan Thomas, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden. That book inspired his first thoughts about becoming a writer.

Literary scholar Boaz Arpaly wrote about the influence of biography on Amichai's poetry: "Literary criticism made the determination long ago that despite the autobiographical character of Amichai's poetry, the individual depicted in it is the typical Israeli everyman, and even in a wider sense, the individual as an individual of the twentieth century (a poetics that interweaves the private with the typically generic)... Amichai routinely conflates biographical details from different times into one poetic framework, and exploits drafts and poetic ideas that were recorded in different periods, for a poem that would be written years later".^[17]

Almost every poem by Amichai is a statement about the general human condition and Amichai, in a certain sense, is always a philosophical poet".^[18]

He changed his name to Yehuda Amichai("my people lives") around 1946. In her biography of Amichai,^[19] literary critic Nili Scharf Gold writes that the idea for the name change, as well as the name "Amichai", came from his girlfriend, Ruth Herrmann, who moved to the United States and then married Eric Zielenziger.^[20] Contrary to Gold's claim, Amichai said in an interview that it was his idea to choose the name Amichai: "...it was common at that time to change (foreign) names into Hebrew names... 'Amichai' was a right name, because it was Socialist, Zionist and optimistic."^[21]

The only influence this relationship had on his poetry is on one poem "The Rustle of History’s Wings, As They Used to Say" in which he wrote:

"... For five shillings I exchanged the exile name of my fathers for a proud Hebrew name that suited hers. That whore ran off to America and married a man, a spice dealer, pepper, cinnamon, and cardamom, leaving me with my new name and with the war".

Gold also believes that a childhood trauma in Germany had an impact on Amichai's later poetry. She claims in her book that Amichai had an argument with a childhood friend, Ruth Hanover, which led to her cycling home angrily. Ruth was caught in a traffic accident, as a result of which she had to have a leg amputated, and Gold claims that Amichai felt guilt and responsibility.^[20] Ruth later died in the Holocaust. Amichai occasionally referred to her in his poems as "Little Ruth". However, in Amichai's account of this episode in his journal, the accident happened some days after his dispute with Little Ruth, and there was no connection between the dispute and the accident:

"I remember that in 1934 the little Ruth accident happened. Days before, we argued a little because I easily gave up the leading part of Yehuda Maccabi in the school show and the son of the headmaster got it. She argued that I had to fight more and not to give up immediately".^[22]

In an interview Amichai said: "Little Ruth is my Anne Frank", "I found out that she (Little Ruth) was in the last transport in 1944. This knowledge goes with me all the time, not because of guilt."^[21] "If there is any guilty feeling it's like the guilt that soldiers feel when they survive the battle while their friends were killed".^[22]

Robert Alter wrote about Gold's contention: "Again and again Gold asks why Amichai did not represent his German childhood in his poetry, except fragmentarily and obliquely. The inconvenient fact that his major novel, Not of This time, Not of This Place, devotes elaborate attention to Wurzburg (which is given the fictional name Weinburg) is not allowed to trouble Gold's thesis of suppression, because the book is fiction, not poetry, and hence is thought somehow to belong to a different category in regard to the writer's relation to his early years. But Gold's notion of Amichai's 'poetics of camouflage' rests on an entirely unexamined assumption- that it is the task of the poet to represent his life directly and in full…"^[23] It should be noted, however, that Gold argued that Amichai only wrote extensively about Wuerzburg in his novel because it was not his primary genre and therefore would be read by fewer people. Moreover, "Not of This Time, Not of This Place" does not hide the fact that it is based on Amichai's autobiography, including both his trip to his former hometown (and, explicitly, his search for closure about Little Ruth) and his affair with an American woman. ^[24] Contrary to Gold argument ,it should be noted that Amichi wrote many plays and radio plays^[25]. a book of short stories,^[26] a second novel^[27] and he never said or wrote in any interview that he hoped that fewer people would read his prose. Boaz Arpaly wrote: "Amichai did not hide in his poetry the fact that he was an immigrant and a son of immigrants, but he chose to tell the story of his childhood in his hometown, in his novel Not Of This Time, Not of This Place, and like any other writer, he decided which material of his life will become material to his poetry.. ".

Did Amichai want to become a national poet?... his poetry embodied a silent but piercing revolution against the social and political institutions that enslave the life and happiness of the individual for their need – He should bother so much to build for himself the mythology of a national poet? All the things that Gold thinks he was hiding were not in any contrast to the unique "nationality" embodied in his poetry. I did not find in Gold's book an explanation to the concept 'national poet' but in the first place, this concept appears in her book she is pointing to my article (1997) that says: "of all the poets who began to at the time of Amichai, or in later years, since Alterman there was not a poet more popular than Amichai. In this he is unique. He is probably the only canonic poet read by so many, also by people that do not belong to the Literary Community. In this matter he has no rivals. From this aspect, at least, he may be considered a national poet, a title that does not suite him from any other point of view..." Gold's use of that title is not clear and not responsible."^[28][29]

Critical acclaim[link]

Amichai poetry in English appeared in the first issue of "Modern Poetry in translation" edited by Daniel Weissbort and Ted Hughes in 1965. In 1966 he appeared at the Spoleto poetry festival with Ezra Pound, W.H. Auden, Pablo Neruda and others. In 1968, he appeared at the London Poetry Festival. His first book in English, Selected Poems (1968), was translated by Assia Hughes, (Hughes' lover and mother to his daughter Shura).^[30] Referring to him as "the great Israeli poet," Jonathan Wilson wrote in The New York Times that he "is one of very few contemporary poets to have reached a broad cross-section without compromising his art. He was loved by his readers worldwide...perhaps only as the Russians loved their poets in the early part of the last century. It is not hard to see why. Amichai's poems are easy on the surface and yet profound: humorous, ironic and yet full of passion, secular but God-engaged, allusive but accessible, charged with metaphor and yet remarkably concrete. Most of all, they are, like the speaking persona in his Letter of Recommendation, full of love: Oh, touch me, touch me, you good woman! / This is not a scar you feel under my shirt. / It is a letter of recommendation, folded, / from my father: / 'He is still a good boy and full of love.' "^[31]

In the Times Literary Supplement, Ted Hughes wrote: "I've become more than ever convinced that Amichai is one of the biggest, most essential, most durable poetic voices of this past century – one of the most intimate, alive and human, wise, humorous, true, loving, inwardly free and resourceful, at home in every human situation. One of the real treasures."^[32]

Novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, who attended a reading by Amichai at Princeton University, said that Amichai had moved him.^[33] Foer's wife, author Nicole Krauss, said that her novel The History of Love was inspired by Amichai's poems.^{[citation needed]}

Amichai's poetry has been translated into 40 languages.^[34]

Awards and honours[link]

• 1957 – Shlonsky Prize
• 1969 – Brenner Prize
• 1976 – Bialik Prize for literature (co-recipient with essayist Yeshurun Keshet)^[35]
• 1981 – Wurzburg's Prize for Culture (Germany)
• 1982 – Israel Prize for Hebrew poetry.^[36][37] The prize citation read, in part: "Through his synthesis of the poetic with the everyday, Yehuda Amichai effected a revolutionary change in both the subject matter and the language of poetry."^[34]
• 1986 – Agnon Prize
• 1994 – Malraux Prize: International Book Fair (France)
• 1994 – Literary Lion Award (New York)
• 1995 – Macedonia`s Golden Wreath Award: International Poetry Festival
• 1996 – Norwegian Bjornson Poetry Award

Amichai received an Honor Citation from Assiut University, Egypt, and numerous honorary doctorates. He became an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1986), and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991).^[38] His work is included in the "100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature" (2001), and in a great number of international anthologies such as:"Poems for the Millennium"by J.Rothenberg and P.Joris ,and "100great Poems of the 20th Century" by Mark Strand. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times, but never won.^[34] Tufts University English professor Jonathan Wilson wrote, "He should have won the Nobel Prize in any of the last 20 years, but he knew that as far as the Scandinavian judges were concerned, and whatever his personal politics, which were indubitably on the dovish side, he came from the wrong side of the stockade."^[31]

Amichai left his archives to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University.^[34]

In 2005, he was voted the 82nd-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.^[39]

Works in English[link]

• A Life of Poetry, 1948–1994. Selected and translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.
• Amen. Translated by the author and Ted Hughes. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
• Even a Fist Was Once an Open Palm with Fingers: Recent Poems. Selected and translated by Barbara and Benjamin Harshav. New York: HarperPerennial, 1991.
• Exile at Home. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998.
• Great Tranquility: Questions and Answers. Translated by Glenda Abramson and Tudor Parfitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.
• Love Poems: A Bilingual Edition. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.
• Not of this Time, Not of this Place. Translated by Shlomo Katz. New York: Harper & Row, 1968.
• On New Year’s Day, Next to a House Being Built: A Poem. Knotting [England]: Sceptre Press, 1979.
• Open Closed Open: Poems. Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld. New York: Harcourt, 2000. (Shortlisted for the 2001 International Griffin Poetry Prize)
• Poems of Jerusalem: A Bilingual Edition. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.
• Selected Poems. Translated by Assia Gutmann. London: Cape Goliard Press, 1968.
• Selected Poems. Translated by Assia Gutmann and Harold Schimmel with the collaboration of Ted Hughes. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971.
• Selected Poems. Edited by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort. London: Faber & Faber, 2000.
• Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai. Edited and translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell. New York: Harper & Row, 1986. Newly revised and expanded edition: Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
• Songs of Jerusalem and Myself. Translated by Harold Schimmel. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
• Time. Translated by the author with Ted Hughes. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.
• Travels. Translated by Ruth Nevo. Toronto: Exile Editions, 1986.
• Travels of a Latter-Day Benjamin of Tudela. Translated by Ruth Nevo. Missouri: Webster Review, 1977.
• The World Is a Room and Other Stories. Translated by Elinor Grumet. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1984.
• Killing Him: A Radio Play. Translated by Adam Seelig and Hadar Makov-Hasson. Chicago: Poetry Magazine, July–August 2008.

See also[link]

• List of Israel Prize recipients
• List of Bialik Prize recipients

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Robert Alter: [Only a Man], The New Republic, 31 Dec 2008 [1]
• Robert Alter:Israel's Master Poet, The New York Times Magazin,8 June 1986
• Adam Seelig: Introduction to "Killing Him," a radio play by Yehuda Amichai, Poetry Magazine, July–August 2008 [2]
• Boas Arpali: "The Flowers and the Urn" Amichai's Poetry – Structure, Meaning, Poetics, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1986
• Edward Hirsch: A Language Torn From Sleep,The New-York Times Book Review,August 3, 1986
• Boaz Arpali: Patuach, Patuach, Haaretz 16 Jan 2009 [3]
• Miriam Neiger, “Half a saint”: Eschatology, Vision and Salvation in the Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, M.A. Thesis (in Hebrew), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, The Department of Hebrew Literature.
• Nili Scharf Gold: Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel's National Poet, Brandeis University Press, 2008.
• Boas Arpaly: "The making of Israel National Poet" SHOFAR, winter 2010, Vol. 28 N0 2 pp-213
• Essi Lapon-Kandeslshein: To Commemorate the 70th Birthday of Yehuda Amichai: A Bibliography of His Work in Translation, Ramat Gan (Israel): Institute of the Translation of Hebrew Literature, 1994
• Mel Gussow :Yehuda Amichai, Poet who turned Israel experience into verse, The New York Times',23 September 2000
• Sephen Kessler: Theology for Atheists Yehuda Amichai's Poetry of Paradox' Express Books, September 2000
• Charles M. Sennot :Poet Walks Jerusalem's Little Corners of Hope, The Boston Globe 9.5.2000
• Robyn Sara:'Look to Amichai for Poetry that Endures, The Gazette', Montreal, 28 October 2000
• Anthony Hecht: Sentenced To Reality, the New York Review of Books, 2 November 2000
• Irreverent Israeli Poet With A Comic Eye For Detail, The Irish Times, 7 October 2000
• Christian Leo: "Wischen Erinnern und Vergessen" – Jehuda Amichais Roman 'Nicht von jetzt' nicht von hier" im phiosophichen und literarischen Kontexext" Konigshausen&Neumann Wurzburg 2004
• Dan Miron: Yehuda Amichai-A Revolutionary With a Father, Haaretz, 3,12,14,October 2005
• Matt Nesvisky: Letters I wrote to you, The Jerusalem Report, 8 December 2008
• Yehudit Tzvik:Yehuda Amichai: A Selection of critical essays on his writing, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1988
• Lawrence Joseph (Spring 1992). "Yehuda Amichai, The Art of Poetry No. 44". Paris Review.
• The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself, 2003, ISBN 0-8143-2485-1
• Chana Kronfeld: "The Wisdom of Camouflage" Prooftexts 10, 1990 pp. 469–491
• Adam Kirsch:Opening Up the Great Human Emotions:A New Collection of Poetry from an Israeli Master of Metaphor:Forwards,5 May 2000
• Jonathan Wilson: The God of Small Things, New York Times Book Review,12.10.2000
• Joshua Cohen; "The Poet Who Invented Himself", Forwads.com 4 Sep 2008
• Hana Amichai : "Little Ruth, my Personal Anne Frank" Haaretz, 22,10,2010
• John Felstiner, “Paul Celan and Yehuda Amichai: An Exchange between Two Great Poets,” Midstream 53, no. 1 (Jan.–Feb. 2007)
• john Felstiner "Writing Zion" Paul Celan and Yehuda Amichai: An Exchange between Two Great Poets, The New Republic, 5 June 2006
• Chana Kronfeld : “Reading Amichai Reading,” Judaism 45, no. 3 (1996): 311–2
• Na'ama Rokem:" German–Hebrew Encounters in the Poetry and Correspondence of Yehuda Amichai and Paul Celan", Prooftext Volume 30, Number 1, Winter 2010 E-ISSN: 1086-3311 Print ISSN: 0272-9601
• Robert Alter, Amichai: The Poet at play, Jewish Review of Books, Vol 2 Nu 2 Summer 2011

External links[link]

• Poetry Foundation bio
• Academy of American Poets bio
• Lawrence Joseph (Spring 1992). "Yehuda Amichai, The Art of Poetry No. 44". Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2095/the-art-of-poetry-no-44-yehuda-amichai. 
• Yehuda Amichai's poetry in English translation at Poems Found in Translation
• Yehuda Amichai's Poetry Introduction to Amichai's poetry, in audio.
• "Yehuda Amichai", Kuusankosken kaupunginkirjasto: books and writers Petri Liukkonen (author) & Ari Pesonen. 2008
• -luljeta-lleshanaku, 3Mmagazin
• Biography from the international literature festival berlin
• Reading of Yehuda Amichai's "I, May I Rest in Peace" by Chana Bloch
• Excerpts from the translation by Stephen Mitchell
• Podcast audio recording of "Killing Him: A Radio Play by Yehuda Amichai" directed by Adam Seelig, produced by Poetry Foundation in association with One Little Goat Theatre Company.
• A poet who lives up to his Nobel Prize

Robert Bernard Reich ( /ˈraɪʃ/;^[2] born June 24, 1946) is an American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997.

Reich is currently Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was formerly a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government^[3] and professor of social and economic policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University. He has also been a contributing editor of The New Republic, The American Prospect (also chairman and founding editor), Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Reich is a political commentator on programs including Hardball with Chris Matthews, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, CNBC's Kudlow & Company, and APM's Marketplace. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the Ten Best Cabinet Members of the century,^[4] and The Wall Street Journal in 2008 placed him sixth on its list of the "Most Influential Business Thinkers".^[5] He was appointed a member of President-elect Barack Obama's economic transition advisory board.^[6]

He has published 14 books, including the best-sellers, The Work of Nations, Reason, Supercapitalism, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, and a best-selling e-book, "Beyond Outrage". He is also chairman of Common Cause and writes his own blog about the political economy at robertreich.org.

Early life and career[link]

Reich was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and attended John Jay High School in Cross River, New York. He attended Dartmouth College, graduating with an A.B. summa cum laude in 1968 and winning a Rhodes Scholarship to study Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford University.^[7] Reich subsequently earned a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. At Yale, he was classmates with Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Richard Blumenthal. He first met Bill Clinton when they both were Rhodes Scholars at Oxford.^[8] Before Hillary and Bill met each other, he allegedly went on a date with Hillary Clinton.^[9]

From 1973 to 1974 he served as law clerk to Judge Frank M. Coffin, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and from 1974 to 1976 was Assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General, Robert Bork. 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 influential books and articles, including The Next American Frontier and The Work of Nations. In The Next American Frontier he blamed the nation's lagging economic growth on "paper entrepreneurialism" -- financial and legal gamesmanship that drained the economy of resources needed for better products and services.

In The Work of Nations he argued that a nation's competitiveness depends on the education and skills of its people and on the infrastructure connecting them with one another, rather than on the profitability of companies headquartered within it. Private capital, he said, was increasingly global and footloose, while a nation's people—its human capital—constituted the one resource on which the future standard of living of a nation uniquely depended. He urged policy makers to make such public investments the cornerstone of economic policy.

Bill Clinton incorporated Reich's thinking into his 1992 campaign platform, "Putting People First," and after being elected invited Reich to head his economic transition team. Reich later joined the administration as Secretary of Labor. During his tenure, he implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), successfully promoted increasing the minimum wage, successfully lobbied to pass the School-to-Work Jobs Act, and launched a number of job training programs.

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.

Reich was born with multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, also known as Fairbanks disease, and as a result is 4 feet 10.5 inches (148.6 cm) tall. He has at times frankly discussed this fact about himself, often with a twist of humor. He once appeared with the 6 ft 4 in (193 cm) Conan O'Brien in a sketch on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.^[10][11] In the early days of the Clinton Administration, Reich confirmed to reporters that he was on Clinton's 'short list' for a cabinet appointment.

After the Clinton administration[link]

In 1996, between Clinton's re-election and second inauguration, Reich 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. After publication of the book, Reich received criticism for embellishing events with invented dialogue. The paperback release of the memoir revised or omitted the inventions.^[12]

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 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 a close second out of six candidates 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.^[13]

In 2004, he published Reason, a book 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, which he co-founded in 1990.^[14] He is also a frequent contributor to CNBC's Kudlow & Company and On the Money.

In early 2005, there was speculation that Reich would once again seek the Democratic nomination for Governor of Massachusetts. He instead endorsed the then-little-known candidacy of Deval Patrick, who had previously served as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Clinton Administration. Patrick won the party's endorsement, a three-way primary with nearly 50% of the vote, and the general election in November 2006.

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

On January 1, 2006 Reich joined the faculty of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Policy. Since then, he has taught a popular course called Wealth and Poverty.^[15] In addition to his professorship, Reich is also a Member of the Board of Trustees for the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley.^[16] The Center is focused on finding solutions to address the crisis of extreme poverty and disease in the developing world.^[17]

Two years later his book Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life was published. In it he argued turbo-charged corporate competition, fueled by consumers and investors seeking the best possible deals from anywhere in the world, was generating severe social problems. But governments were failing to address them because big corporations and Wall Street firms were also seeking competitive advantage over one another through politics, thereby drowning out the voices of ordinary citizens. The answer was to keep corporations focused on making better products and services and keep them out of politics. "Corporate Social Responsibility" is essentially forbearance from activities that undermine democracy.

During the 2008 primaries, Reich 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."^[18]

On April 18, 2008 Reich endorsed Barack Obama for President of the United States.^[19]

On April 3, 2009, Reich commented that published U6 employment figures indicate that the United States is in a depression.^[20]

In September, 2010, his book "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future" was published. In it, Reich explained how America's widening inequality had contributed to the great recession and made it difficult for the economy to recover, by undermining the purchasing power of the middle class relative to the nation's productive capacity. In April, 2012, his book "Beyond Outrage" was published as an e-book. In "Beyond Outrage" Reich focused on why an increasing portion of the public felt the game was rigged in favor of those with wealth and power, why the "regressive right" was nonetheless able to persuade many that taxes should be lowered even further on corporations and the wealthy while many public services should be cut, and what average people could do to take back the economy and reclaim democracy.

Social media[link]

Reich has been an active user of social media. He has personally maintained a presence on Tumblr and Blogspot. In September 2011 he created an account on the internet forum reddit and opened an 'ask me anything' thread.^[21]

Political and philosophical stances[link]

Official Department of Labor portrait of Robert Reich

In an interview with The New York Times, he explained that "I don't believe in redistribution of wealth for the sake of redistributing wealth. But I am concerned about how we can afford to pay for what we as a nation need to do."^[22]

In response to a question as to what to recommend to the incoming president regarding a fair and sustainable income and wealth distribution, Reich said, "Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit — a wage supplement for lower-income people, and finance it with a higher marginal income tax on the top five percent. For the longer term, invest in education for lower income communities, starting with early-childhood education and extending all the way up to better access to post-secondary education."^[22]

Reich is pro-union, saying "Unionization is not just good for workers in unions, unionization is very, very important for the economy overall, and would create broad benefits for the United States."^[23][24]

Books[link]

• 2012: Beyond Outrage: What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy and how to fix it
• 2010: Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future ISBN 978-0-307-59281-1
• 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
• 1990: Public Management in a Democratic Society ISBN 0-13-738881-0
• 1989: The Resurgent Liberal: And Other Unfashionable Prophecies ISBN 0-8129-1833-9
• 1988: The Power of Public Ideas (editor) ISBN 0-674-69590-9
• 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[link]

• The Trap (television documentary series), BBC documentary featuring Reich
• 2008–2009 Keynesian resurgence

References[link]

This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (April 2012)

External links[link]

• Official website
• The American Prospect articles by Robert Reich
• US Department of Labor biography
• UC Berkeley bio
• Robert Reich's blog posts for the Why Democracy? project

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Robert Reich

v t e United States Secretaries of Labor Secretaries of Commerce & Labor Cortelyou Metcalf Straus Nagel Secretaries of Labor Wilson Davis Doak Perkins Schwellenbach Tobin Durkin Mitchell Goldberg Wirtz Shultz Hodgson Brennan Dunlop Usery Marshall Donovan Brock McLaughlin Dole Martin Reich Herman Chao Solis

v t e Cabinet of President Bill Clinton (1993–2001)   Cabinet Secretary of State Warren Christopher (1993 – 1997) Madeleine Albright (1997 – 2001) Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen (1993 – 1994) Robert Rubin (1995 – 1999) Lawrence Summers (1999 – 2001) Secretary of Defense Les Aspin (1993 – 1994) William Perry (1994 – 1997) William Cohen (1997 – 2001) Attorney General Janet Reno (1993 – 2001) Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt (1993 – 2001) Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy (1993 – 1994) Dan Glickman (1995 – 2001) Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown (1993 – 1996) Mickey Kantor (1996 – 1997) William Daley (1997 – 2000) Norman Mineta (2000 – 2001) Secretary of Labor Robert Reich (1993 – 1997) Alexis Herman (1997 – 2001) Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala (1993 – 2001) Secretary of Education Richard Riley (1993 – 2001) Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros (1993 – 1997) Andrew Cuomo (1997 – 2001) Secretary of Transportation Federico Peña (1993 – 1997) Rodney Slater (1997 – 2001) Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary (1993 – 1997) Federico Peña (1997 – 1998) Bill Richardson (1998 – 2001) Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jesse Brown (1993 – 1997) Togo West (1998 – 2000) Hershel Gober* (2000 – 2001) acting secretary.   Cabinet-level Vice President Al Gore (1993 – 2001) White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty (1993 – 1994) Leon Panetta (1994 – 1997) Erskine Bowles (1997 – 1998) John Podesta (1998 – 2001) Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Carol Browner (1993 – 2001) Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Korbel Albright (1993 – 1997) Bill Richardson (1997 – 1998) Richard Holbrooke (1999 – 2001) Director of the Office of Management and Budget Leon Panetta (1993 – 1994) Alice Rivlin (1994 – 1996) Franklin Raines (1996 – 1998) Jacob Lew (1998 – 2001) Director of National Drug Control Policy Lee Brown (1993 – 1995) Barry McCaffrey (1996 – 2001) Trade Representative Mickey Kantor (1993 – 1997) Charlene Barshefsky (1997 – 2001) Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency James Lee Witt (1993 – 2001)* Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch (1995 – 1996) George Tenet (1997–2001) Administrator of the Small Business Administration Erskine Bowles (1993 - 1994) Philip Lader (1994 – 1997) Aída Álvarez (1997–2001) took office in 1993, raised to cabinet-rank in 1996