GLICKMAN, DANIEL ROBERT

GLICKMAN, DANIEL ROBERT (Dan ; 1944– ), U.S. secretary of agriculture (1995–2001) and congressman (D-KS, 1976–1994). Glickman, a native of Wichita, Kansas, received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his law degree from George Washington University. He began his public service as member and president of the Wichita School Board. He was a partner in the law firm of Sargent, Klenda and Glickman and served as a trial attorney for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

During his 18 years in Congress, Glickman served on the House Agriculture Committee, House Judiciary Committee, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. For six years he chaired a key Agriculture Subcommittee which oversaw nearly 75% of the Agriculture Department's farm program budget. On the House Judiciary Committee, he staked out his leadership on aviation policy and authored landmark legislation creating product liability protection for small airplane manufacturers. He also was a member of the Intellectual Property Subcommittee. As chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, he led the effort to demystify and make more publicly accessible the activitiesof the U.S. intelligence community, and he presided over the committee's investigation of the Aldrich Ames case, the fbi agent convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.

He is the author of several major legislative proposals, including the law authorizing the United States Institute of Peace and several measures promoting alternative energy uses. Glickman also wrote the legislation that increases criminal penalties for the destruction of religious property.

His tenure as secretary of agriculture under Clinton was noted for the modernization of food safety regulations, an expansion of international trade agreements to open foreign markets to U.S. products, policies aimed at preserving forest lands and conservation, and an improved commitment to civil rights. Glickman was an advocate for farmers and ranchers in the face of the turbulent farm economy.

In 2004 Dan Glickman succeeded Jack Valenti, becoming only the fourth person to head the Motion Picture Association of America, the trade association founded in 1922 to advocate on behalf of the major motion picture studios. Immediately prior to his joining mpaa, Glickman was director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Glickman served on the board of directors of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange; Hain – Celestial Corporation; Ready Pac Produce Corporation; Communities in Schools; America's Second Harvest; Food Research and Action Center; the rfk Memorial Foundation; and Mazon, A Jewish Response to Hunger. He also is on the International Advisory Board of the Coca-Cola Company and co-chairs the U.S. Consensus Council (with former Governor Marc Racicot) and the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology (with former Congressman Vin Weber).

[Melissa Patack (2^nd ed.)]