Professor William B. Gould IV – “Those Who Travail and Are Heavy Laden”

Legendary labor law scholar and longtime Stanford Law professor, emeritus, William B. Gould IV, shares the story of his life in a presentation on his new book as well as the remarkable discovery of a long‑forgotten manuscript in a relative’s attic. 

Q & A and book signing to follow the talk.

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Biography:

William B. Gould IV is Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Stanford Law School. A prolific scholar of labor and discrimination law, Gould has been an influential voice in worker–management relations for more than fifty years and served as Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB, 1994–98) and subsequently Chairman of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (2014-2017). Professor Gould has been a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators since 1970. As NLRB Chairman, he played a critical role in bringing the 1994–95 baseball strike to its conclusion and has arbitrated and mediated more than three hundred labor disputes, including the 1992 and 1993 salary disputes between the Major League Baseball Players Association and the Major League Baseball Player Relations Committee. He served as Secretary, Labor and Employment Law Section, American Bar Association (1980-81) as well as Independent Monitor for FirstGroup America, addressing freedom-of-association complaints (2008–10). Shortly after the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Professor Gould served as a Consultant to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (1966-67) providing recommendations on seniority disputes and conciliation procedures and in 1967 he was a member of the very first Fact Finding Board established under the New York Taylor Law. Gould also served as Special Advisor to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on project labor agreements (2011–12) and as Independent Reviewer on Equal Employment Opportunity for the Mayor of San Francisco (2020-21). A critically acclaimed author of 11 books and more than sixty law review articles, Professor Gould is the recipient of five honorary doctorates for his significant contributions to the fields of labor law and labor relations.

Education:

• BA University of Rhode Island 1958
• LLB Cornell University Law School 1961
• Graduate study London School of Economics 1962-63

Affiliations & Honors:

• Member (1970-Present), National Academy of Arbitrators
• Member (1994-1996), Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States
• Chairman (1994-1998), National Labor Relations Board