Reed has also written for a variety of non-academic publications such as The Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Oxford American.
He taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1969 until his retirement, in 2000, as William Rand Kenan Jr.
Professor of sociology and director of the Howard Odum Institute for Research in Social Science.
He has lectured at over 300 colleges and universities in the United States and abroad and held visiting positions at over a dozen, including Fulbright lectureships in Israel and India, and the Pitt Professorship of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University.
After his retirement from the University of North Carolina, he held visiting positions at a number of institutions; among other things, he was a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University and a lieutenant colonel in the South Carolina Unorganized Militia while he was teaching at The Citadel, in Charleston.