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PETER EDELMAN, when he was Legislative Assistant to Senator Robert F. Kennedy in the 1960s, came face to face with youth poverty in America. During his visits to Watts in California and Mississippi, he saw people lacking the basics of life in the richest country of the world. Since then, Mr. Edelman has devoted his time to reaching the excluded. Now a Georgetown Law Center Professor and expert in constitutional and poverty law, his mission is to eradicate poverty and reform the U.S. welfare system so that low-income people are treated humanely, fairly, with dignity, and receive equal justice under the law. A strong advocate for the well-being of at-risk children and youth, Mr. Edelman co-authored Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men, which presents strategies to reform educational and training programs for disadvantaged youths. He also co-edited Adolescence and Poverty, a compilation of writings on the subject. He wrote America’s Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope to remind people of how Robert Kennedy’s followers believe the disadvantaged should be cared for and treated in a country with so much wealth. As Director of New York State’s Division for Youth in the 1970s, Mr. Edelman was an innovative and outspoken advocate for the hardest-to-serve young people. Soon afterwards, when he moved to Washington, D.C., he began championing the cause of educational quality in inner-city, disadvantaged public schools by co-founding Parents United, a D.C. parental advocacy organization. Parents United encourages parents to take an active role in the fight for quality curricula and teachers in their community. Mr. Edelman has held many governmental posts including clerk for Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources during the Clinton Administration. As an active board member of the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) for 15 years, he was instrumental in expanding its influence in effecting policy in this country. Mr. Edelman continues to fight for the underprivileged as board chair of the National Center for Youth Law and the District of Columbia Access to Justice Commission. He is a board member of the Public Welfare Foundation, the Center for Law and Social Policy, the American Progress Action Fund, the American Bar Association Presidential Task Force on Access to Justice, the Juvenile Law Center, and Board President of the New Israel Fund. For more than four decades, Peter Edelman has been a leading voice for youth. He has been an uncompromising force for the most powerless among us.
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