Shabbat in Commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King

Peter Edelman

Professor Edelman has been on the faculty since 1982. He took leave during President Clinton's first term to serve as Counselor to HHS Secretary Donna Shalala and then as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Professor Edelman has been Associate Dean of the Law Center, Director of the New York State Division for Youth, and Vice President of the University of Massachusetts. He was a Legislative Assistant to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and was Issues Director for Senator Edward Kennedy's Presidential campaign in 1980. Earlier, he was a Law Clerk to Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg and before that to Judge Henry J. Friendly on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He also worked in the U.S. Department of Justice as Special Assistant to Assistant Attorney General John Douglas. Professor Edelman's book, Searching for America's Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope, was published by Houghton-Mifflin in January 2001. He co-authored Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men, which was published by the Urban Institute in 2006, and is the author of many articles on poverty, constitutional law, and issues about children and youth. Peter Edelman has chaired and been a board member of many organizations and foundations. He is currently chair of the District of Columbia Access to Justice Commission, board president of the New Israel Fund, board chair of the National Center for Youth Law, and a board member of the Public Welfare Foundation, the Center for Law and Social Policy, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and a half dozen other nonprofit organizations. He has been a United States-Japan Leadership Program Fellow, was the J. Skelly Wright Memorial Fellow at Yale Law School, and has received numerous honors and awards for his work. He grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota.