Robert Reischauer Stepping Down As President Of The Urban Institute

Washington, D.C. (July 6, 2011) - After serving more than eleven years as president of the Urban Institute, Dr. Robert D. Reischauer will be stepping down at the end of 2011, the Institute’s board chairman Joel Fleishman announced today.

During Reischauer’s tenure, the Institute established the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, formed the multi-institutional CALDER consortium on K–12 education, and refocused its interdisciplinary research about welfare reform on low-income working families. New research capacity was added in nonprofit governance, prisoner reentry, asset-building by the poor, long-term unemployment, retirement, and dozens of other public policy issues on his watch.

Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office (1989-95), testified frequently before Congress while running the Institute, and the national media regularly turned to him for comment on the federal budget and health care. While president, he also served as vice chairman of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission for nearly a decade. Currently, he is one of two public trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds and the senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation—positions he will continue to hold after leaving his Urban Institute post. In 2011, Reischauer became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Joel Fleishman, an author and professor of law and public policy at Duke University, accepted Reischauer’s resignation with these words: “Bob Reischauer has steadily built upon the superb foundation that founding president Bill Gorham created over some thirty years. His vision and dedication have helped make the Urban Institute preeminent among the nation’s social policy think tanks, providing the public with nonpartisan, objective, evidence-based policy research on domestic issues. All of us privileged to work with Bob will miss his wit, energy, and tenacity, and his record of truly distinguished service will follow him and the Institute. His next endeavors are sure to further solidify his reputation as a consummate public policy analyst and a great American.”

The vice chairman of the Urban Institute’s board, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert M. Solow, added: “A successful Urban Institute head needs a broad and solid understanding of economics, a pragmatic grasp of major policy issues, a feeling for the politically possible, and the ability to inspire and manage an intellectually vibrant organization. Because Bob Reischauer has all of these, the Institute has extended its reach and prospered under his leadership. We wish our now-senior statesman well, and we will carry on the tradition he and Bill Gorham forged.”

The national search for a new leader for the Urban Institute is being conducted by the Institute’s board of trustees with help from the executive search firm Russell Reynolds Associates. Together, they will identify and interview nationally known figures from government, academia, the nonprofit world, and other spheres of service.

Contact: Stu Kantor, (202) 261-5283, skantor@urban.org