Ryan

Right before he mysteriously disappeared, Jimmy Hoffa gave a series of lectures at the ILR School. Stephen Ryan '77 followed Hoffa, former president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, everywhere during that visit. "I remember him as interesting and charismatic," Ryan said.

Subsequently, Ryan gained national attention for investigating and trying to eliminate organized crime from business and unions. He talked about his work and gave advice to students thinking about careers in public service at an ILR School lecture, "Getting Rid of the 'Godfather': Front Line Stories from Prosecuting Organized Crime in Unions and Business," Feb. 10.

"My career is inverted," Ryan said. "I think I did the most important things as a kid, during the early part of my career."

From 1983 to 1986, he served as deputy counsel of the President's Commission on Organized Crime. He led the commission's effort against labor-management racketeering and helped expose corruption in the Teamsters union and in other unions.

"We knew that most unions were clean, but the government didn't know why some were clean and others were not," Ryan said.

Ryan collaborated with ILR Professor Emeritus George Brooks to create the first predictive model to provide insight on why "certain unions and industries were 'mobbed up,'" he said. That model became a useful tool in the government's work.

He said organized crime is on both sides -- unions and businesses -- but it was more common to hear about it on the labor side and overlooked, at times, on the business side.

Ryan's aggressive efforts to pursue business corruption put him out of favor with some, including influential members of the presidential administration.

"The message is, if you press too hard and make too many waves for the powers that be, there's a price to be paid," Ryan said.

He later moved on to a position as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for Chairman John Glenn, then an Ohio senator. Ryan works today in private practice for McDermott Will and Emery LLP in Washington, D.C.

Ryan told students that public service can be very rewarding, even if it doesn't pay as much as the private sector: "I took a 50 percent pay cut to move from private practice into government work. I used everyone I knew to get that job as a federal prosecutor, and I'm very proud of the work I've done. I loved that job."

At the start of his presentation, Ryan acknowledged a guest in the audience, Professor Emeritus Walter LaFeber. Ryan said LaFeber, a renowned historian, is the professor he learned the most from while at Cornell: "Generations from now, people will look back and think of him as one of the all-time 'rock stars' of the university."

What does Ryan think about unions more than three decades after he took classes at the ILR School and considering all the work he's done prosecuting union crime?

"I'm a working-class kid from New York City, and my dad was vice president of a union," he said. "I have a deep belief in unions. The union movement made me what I am today."

Joe Zappala is the ILR School's assistant dean for communications and marketing.