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SHASS awardee George Shultz to speak on 'Reflections' April 9

George Shultz
Caption:
George Shultz

The Robert A. Muh Award honoring an MIT graduate for noteworthy achievements in the humanities, arts and social sciences will be presented to former Secretary of State George P. Shultz on April 9. As part of the ceremonies, he will give a talk titled "Reflections" in Bartos Theater.

Shultz, who earned the Ph.D. in industrial economics from MIT in 1949, taught here from 1948-57. He then joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and served as dean of the school from 1962-68.

He has served in senior staff positions under three U.S. presidents and has been a critical participant in economic and foreign policy developments over four decades. Shultz held two key positions in the Reagan administration: chairman of the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board from 1981-82 and Secretary of State from 1982-89. He was appointed Secretary of Labor by President Nixon in 1969, Secretary of the Treasury in 1970 and director of the Office of Management and Budget in 1972.

He served as a senior staff economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisors during the Eisenhower administration, taking a year off from his teaching duties at MIT.

Shultz joined the Bechtel Group in 1974 and rejoined it in 1989 as director and senior counselor. In 2001, he was named the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The Robert A. Muh Award was first announced in October 2000 at the 50th anniversary celebration of the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (SHASS).

Muh (S.B. 1959 in management), a life member of the MIT Corporation and longtime chair of the Humanities Visiting Committee, endowed the award to honor an MIT alum who has made significant contributions to education, scholarship or performance, academic administration or arts management in the humanities, arts or social sciences. The award will rotate among the three major areas in SHASS.

Muh and his wife, Berit, have two daughters, Alison and Carrie. Carrie received the S.B. in biology from MIT in 1996 and the S.B. and S.M. in political science in 1997.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 2, 2003.

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