A prolific scholar of labor and discrimination law, William B. Gould IV has been an influential voice on worker-management relations for more than 40 years and served as chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. Professor Gould has been a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators since 1970 and has arbitrated and mediated more than 200 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 Independent Monitor for FirstGroup America, addressing freedom of association complaints (2008-2011). Professor Gould has acted as Special Advisor to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (2011-2012).

A critically acclaimed author of 10 books and more than 60 law review articles, Professor Gould’s work includes his historical record of the experiences of his great-grandfather in Diary of a Contraband: The Civil War Passage of a Black Sailor, and his own Washington story, Labored Relations: Law, Politics and the NLRB: A Memoir. A 10th book, Bargaining with Baseball: Labor Relations in an Age of Prosperous Turmoil appeared in 2011.

Professor Gould is the recipient of five honorary doctorates for his significant contributions in the fields of labor law and labor relations. Before joining the Stanford Law School Faculty in 1972, he was a professor of law at Wayne State University Law School and was an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board, as well as for United Auto Workers.