Robert Adler

Bob Adler recently retired as a Commissioner and Acting Chair at the U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in Washington, DC.  He was appointed as a Commissioner in 2009 by President Obama. He was renominated by President Obama and confirmed by the senate in 2014.  He served as Acting Chair from 2019-2021.

Prior to assuming office, Bob served as a Professor of Legal Studies at the University of North Carolina as the Luther Hodges Jr., Scholar in Ethics and Law at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. At the University of North Carolina, he served as the Associate Dean of the MBA Program and as Associate Dean for the School’s Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) Program. As a professor, he taught courses in business law, business ethics, business-government relations and negotiation. Bob won a university-wide teaching award, the Tanner Award, in 1996 and the undergraduate program’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1990. In 2004, he received the Gerald Barrett Faculty Award for outstanding teaching and service to the MBA Program.

Bob’s academic research interests include negotiation, product safety, product liability, regulation, commercial law, and medical malpractice. His article, When David Meets Goliath: Dealing With Power Differentials in Negotiation, in the Harvard Negotiation Law Review (co-authored with Elliot Silverstein) received the annual best article award by the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution.

Bob particularly enjoyed teaching negotiation, which he taught in the MBA, Executive MBA, and BSBA programs.  In addition, he taught in many Executive Education Programs to senior business and military officials.

Prior to his service at UNC, he served as an attorney-advisor to two commissioners at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in Washington, D.C.  Subsequently, he served as Counsel to the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the U.S. House of Representatives. While on the subcommittee, he worked on legislation relating to product liability, childhood vaccines, the Food and Drug Administration, medical malpractice, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Before his service at the CPSC, Bob served as a deputy attorney general for the Pennsylvania Justice Department, where he headed the southwest regional office of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Consumer Protection.

Bob has been involved in numerous consumer protection and education activities for many years. He was elected six times to the board of directors of Consumer Reports magazine.

Bob graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a major in political science. He received a JD from the University of Michigan Law School.