George P. Shultz

George P. Shultz is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was sworn in on July 16, 1982, as the sixtieth U.S. secretary of state and served until January 20, 1989. In January 1989, he rejoined Stanford University as the Jack Steele Parker Professor of International Economics at the Graduate School of Business and as a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution.

He is a member of the board of directors of Fremont Group and Accretive Health. He is chairman of the J. P. Morgan Chase International Council, chairman of the California governor's Council of Economic Advisers, and U.S. chair of the North American Forum. He is the advisory council chair of the Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency at Stanford University, chair of the MIT Energy Initiative External Advisory Board, and chair of the Energy Task Force at Hoover Institution.

He was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, on January 19, 1989. He also received the Seoul Peace Prize (1992), the Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Service (2001), and the Reagan Distinguished American Award (2002). He is the recipient of the Elliot Richardson Prize for Excellence and Integrity in Public Service, the James H. Doolittle Award, and the John Witherspoon Medal for Distinguished Statesmanship. The George Shultz National Foreign Service Training Center in Arlington, Virginia, was dedicated on May 29, 2002. Shultz was named a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association in 2005. He received the American Spirit Award from the National World War II Museum in 2006 and the Truman Medal for Economic Policy in 2007.

His most recent publication is Putting Our House in Order: A Guide to Social Security and Health Care Reform (W.W. Norton, 2008), coauthored with John Shoven, Hoover senior fellow and director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. His other publications include Implications of the Reykjavik Summit on Its Twentieth Anniversary: Conference Report (Hoover Institution Press, 2007), coauthored with Hoover senior fellow Sidney Drell, Economic Policy beyond the Headlines (2nd edition), cowritten with Kenneth Dam (University of Chicago Press, 1998), and his best-selling memoir, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993). His monograph Economics in Action: Ideas, Institutions, Policies was published in 1995 as a part of the Hoover Essays in Public Policy series.

He also authored Workers and Wages in the Urban Labor Market (1970); Guidelines, Informal Controls, and the Market Place (1966); Management Organization and the Computer (1960); and Labor Problems: Cases and Readings (1953).

From 1981 until his appointment as U.S. secretary of state, Shultz was chairman of President Ronald Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board.

He became secretary of the Treasury in May 1972, serving until May 1974. During that period he also served as chairman of the Council on Economic Policy. As chairman of the East-West Trade Policy Committee, Shultz traveled to Moscow in 1973 and negotiated a series of trade protocols with the Soviet Union. He also represented the United States at the Tokyo meeting of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

In 1974, he left government service to become president and director of Bechtel Group, where he remained until 1982. While at Bechtel, he maintained his close ties with the academic world by joining the faculty of Stanford University on a part-time basis.

Shultz served in the administration of President Richard Nixon as secretary of labor for eighteen months, from 1969 to June 1970, at which time he was appointed director of the Office of Management and Budget.

From 1968 to 1969, he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.

In 1957, Shultz was appointed professor of industrial relations at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He was named dean of the Graduate School of Business in 1962.

He taught in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1948 to 1957, taking a year's leave of absence in 1955 to serve as senior staff economist on the president's Council of Economic Advisers during the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower.

Shultz graduated from Princeton University in 1942, receiving a B.A. degree in economics. That year he joined the U.S. Marine Corps and served through 1945. In 1949, Shultz earned a Ph.D. degree in industrial economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Shultz holds honorary degrees from the universities of Columbia, Notre Dame, Loyola, Pennsylvania, Rochester, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, City University of New York, Yeshiva, Northwestern, Technion, Tel Aviv, Weizmann Institute of Science, Baruch College of New York, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tbilisi State University in the Republic of Georgia, and Keio University in Tokyo.

1920       George Pratt Shultz born in New York City; grows up in Princeton, New Jersey

1942       Graduates Princeton; enlists in U.S Marine Corps to serve in Pacific Theater, WWII

1962       Appointed Dean, University of Chicago School of Business

1968       Appointed Secretary of Labor by President Richard Nixon

1970       Appointed Director of the Office of Management and Budget by President Richard Nixon

1972       Appointed Secretary of the Treasury by President Richard Nixon

1973       Becomes President of Bechtel Group, Inc.

1982       Appointed Secretary of State by President Ronald Reagan
                September: Israel controls Beirut, Lebanon. Massacre of PLO refugees, Marines return to Beirut
                November: Newsweek announces US overseeing training of Contras
                December: Boland amendment prohibits use of Defense or CIA funds to overthrow government of Nicaragua

1983       February: Secretary Shultz arranges meeting between Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin and President Reagan
                March: President Reagan reveals “Star Wars”
                August: Philippine dissident, Ninoy Aquino assassinated
                September: White House authorizes secret aid to Contras
                October: 241 Marines killed by suicide bomber in Beirut, Lebanon
                November: President Reagan announces willingness to reduce nuclear weapons

1984       January: Secretary Shultz testifies before Foreign Relations Committee against withdrawal from the Middle East
                October: 2nd Boland Amendment prohibits third parties from sending funds to Contras
                November: President Reagan reelected

1985       March: Konstantin Chernyenko dies; Mikhail Gorbachev becomes new General Secretary of the Communist Party of Soviet Union
                November:  Geneva Summit between President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev

1986       February: Philippine election; Marcos flees to Hawaii
                September: Arms delivered to Iran
                October: Reykjavik summit begins
                November:  Revelation of Iran/Contra activity, discovered by Attorney General Edwin Meese, Secretary Shultz appears on
                Face the Nation, Reagan orders investigation

1987       March: President Reagan makes nationally televised speech on Iran/Contra
                April: Secretary Shultz attends Jewish Seder at US embassy in Moscow
                June: President Reagan delivers “Tear Down this Wall” speech at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate
                October: Jews and other minorities win appeal, and are allowed to leave the Soviet Union for Israel
                December: General Secretary Gorbachev in Washington to sign INF treaty eliminating 49% of U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals

1988       February: General Secretary Gorbachev announces Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan
                May: Moscow summit
                November: George W. Bush elected president

1989 - 2021
                George Shultz awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom, retires as Secretary of State, becomes Distinguished Fellow of the
                Hoover Institution at Stanford University

                George Shultz died at age 100 at his home in Stanford, California, on February 6, 2021