Lawrence W. Reed



 
       Lawrence W. Reed is president of The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan-based research and educational organization devoted to advancing a free-enterprise perspective on Michigan economic issues.
       Dr. Reed taught economics at Midland's Northwood Institute from 1977 to 1984 and chaired the department of economics from 1982 to 1984. In 1982, he was a major party nominee in the general election for the U.S. House of Representatives in Michigan's 10th District. He moved to Idaho in 1984 to direct a policy institute there before moving back to Michigan to head The Mackinac Center in December 1987.
In the past ten years, he has authored over 500 newspaper columns, 200 radio commentaries, dozens o articles in magazines and journals in the U.S. and abroad, as well as three books. He has delivered more than 700 speeches in that time, in forty states and nine foreign countries. He is also a commentator for Michigan Public Radio.
       Dr. Reed's interests in political and economic affairs have taken him as a freelance journalist to thirty-four countries since 1985, including five visits to Russia, three to China, four to Nicaragua, two to Poland, two to Kenya, and others to such places as Cambodia, East Germany, Mozambique, Haiti, Japan, Bolivia, Brazil, Australia, Singapore and Malasia.
       From firsthand experience, he has reported on hyperinflation in South America, voodoo in Haiti, black markets behind the Iron Curtain, reforms and repression in China and Cambodia, the recent stunning developments in Eastern Europe, and civil war inside Nicaragua and Mozambique.
       Dr. Reed serves as a member of the board of directors of the Voluntary Action Center of Midland, Michigan; a member of the board of directors of Eagle Village in Osceola County; and chairman of the International Service Committee of the Midland Morning Rotary Club.
       Dr. Reed's essay appeared in the April 1992 issue of Freedom Daily, published by The Future of Freedom Foundation.


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