Christopher Edley Jr.
Co-Founder and President Emeritus
Christopher Edley, Jr. has spent 40 years influencing public policy and teaching law at Harvard and Berkeley.
He is also the Honorable William H. Orrick, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law, after serving as dean from 2004 through 2013. His academic work is in administrative law, civil rights, and education policy. Before Berkeley, Chris was a professor at Harvard Law School for 23 years, where Professor Gary Orfield and he co-founded the Harvard Civil Rights Project.
Chris co-chaired the congressionally chartered National Commission on Education Equity and Excellence (2011-13). He served in White House policy and budget positions under presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Chris also held senior positions in five presidential campaigns: policy director for Michael Dukakis (1988); and senior policy adviser for Al Gore (2000), Howard Dean (2004), Barack Obama (2008), and Hillary Clinton (2016). In 1993, he was a senior economic adviser in the Clinton Presidential Transition, responsible for housing and regulation of financial institutions. In 2008, he was a board member for the Obama presidential transition, with general responsibility for healthcare, education, and immigration.
Chris is a fellow or member of: the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; the National Academy of Public Administration; the Council on Foreign Relations; the American Law Institute; the Advisory Board of the Hamilton Project, the Brookings Institution; and the board of Inequality Media. He is a National Associate of the National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academies of Science, for which he recently chaired a committee to evaluate NAEP performance standards, and a committee to design a national system of education equity indicators.
Chris is a graduate of Swarthmore College (mathematics), Harvard Kennedy School (public policy), and Harvard Law School.