Christopher Edley Jr., a prominent legal and public policy scholar who co-founded the Harvard Civil Rights Project with Dr. Gary Orfield, died over the weekend. He was 71.
Christopher Edley Jr.
“Chris Edley was a smart, caring, determined advocate for justice who could move easily and powerfully through the mazes of top levels of law, politics, and research,” said Orfield, who is Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA Graduate School of Education and co-director of The Civil Rights Project at UCLA.
“Working with him to create the Civil Rights Project was fascinating,” Orfield told Diverse. “He could take a complicated, heated, and many-sided debate and go right to the essence of the problem and, seemingly without effort, come out with the three basic points and a suggestion about how to move forward, while easing the tension with a great sense of humor. Gone far too soon.”
Edley spent more than two decades as a professor at Harvard Law School, where he and Orfield founded the Civil Rights Project in the aftermath of a 1996 court ruling that squelched race-conscious admission policies at many universities. The case stemmed from a reverse affirmative action lawsuit filed by white student Cheryl Hopwood, who was denied admission to the University of Texas law school. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled against the UT practices.
In 2004, Edley joined UC Berkely as dean of the law school, but stepped down from the role in 2013 and took a medical leave to battle prostate cancer. He returned as the Honorable William H. Orrick, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law and, in 2016, co-founded Opportunity Institute with Ann O’Leary, who served as chief of staff to California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The Berkeley-based nonprofit organization promotes social equity through education, using a cradle-to-career reach across four distinct demographic groups.
A graduate of Swarthmore College, Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Law School, Edley served as an advisor to Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. He also held senior positions in five presidential campaigns, serving as policy director for Michael Dukakis; and senior policy adviser for Al Gore, Howard Dean, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. 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.
