A
Harvard professor since 1981, Christopher Edley Jr. is a member of the
United States Commission on Civil Rights, where he has served since 1999.
Edley also held numerous positions in the Clinton administration. He served
as a senior advisor to former President Clinton for the Race Initiative,
and prior to that led the White House review of affirmative action programs
as the president’s special counsel. Edley also served as a consultant
to the President’s Advisory Board on Racial Reconciliation and as
associate director for economics and government at the White House Office
of Management and Budget. He has worked for the Carter administration,
the Dukakis presidential campaign, and the Clinton-Gore presidential transition
team.
Edley is the founding co-director of The Civil Rights Project, a Harvard think-tank assessing the prospects for justice and equal opportunity under the law for racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. He is the author of Not All Black & White: Affirmative Action, Race and American Values (Hill & Wang, 1996).