Michael Hillard
HE | HIM | HIS
- Emeritus Faculty
Michael Hillard is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Southern Maine. He retired in 2022 after 36 years of service, during which he held several leadership roles including Chair of the Department of Economics and Director of the USM Food Studies Program. His teaching included macroeconomics, U.S. labor and economic history, labor economics and labor relations, and courses on food, labor, and American capitalism.
He is a scholar of U.S. labor relations, working-class history, and the political economy of labor and capitalism. He is the author of Shredding Paper: Labor and the Rise and Fall of Maine’s Mighty Paper Industry (Cornell University Press/ILR, 2020). His articles “Labor at Mother Warren” (Labor History, 2004) and “Capitalist Class Agency and the New Deal Order” (Review of Radical Political Economics, 2013, with Richard McIntyre) both received best essay awards. More recent publications (with McIntyre) include “Class Conflict,” the lead chapter in Radical Political Economics: Principles, Perspectives, and Post-Capitalist Futures (2025), and “Stakeholderism: The Folly of a Kinder, Gentler Corporate America” (New Labor Forum, 2023).
His long-standing collaboration with Richard McIntyre (University of Rhode Island) includes more than ten journal articles and book chapters. Their current book project, Burning Down Your House: Confronting America’s Exceptional Capitalist Class, examines how the outsized power of the U.S. capitalist class shapes workplace dynamics, politics, and the country’s extreme inequality.Dr. Hillard regularly provides expert analysis on macroeconomic issues affecting working people. He is frequently interviewed by Maine Public Radio’s Maine Calling, the Portland Press Herald, the Bangor Daily News, and local television news, and he is a regular op-ed contributor. He also assisted the Maine AFL-CIO in developing the Charles Scontras Center for Labor and Community Education at the University of Southern Maine, serving as Acting Coordinator (2022–23) and continuing as a member of its Board of Advisors.