Walter Galenson (1914 – December 30, 1999) was a professor of economics at Cornell University and a noted U.S. labor historian and economist.
He left Harvard in 1951 to teach economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where, from 1957 to 1961, he was chair of the Center for Chinese Studies.
[2] Galenson became increasingly active in labor and Third World economic development issues, and from 1961 to 1971, he served as a consultant to the International Labour Organization (ILO).
In 1970, Galenson spent an academic year as Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.
[1] He married, and he and his wife Marjorie (also a professor of economics) had a son, David Galenson, and two daughters.
His 1960 book, The CIO Challenge to the AFL: A History of the American Labor Movement, is still cited as one of the fundamental works in the field.
[4] His 1981 study of the U.S. policy toward the International Labour Organization remains the most valuable work on that topic.