• Board President of the New Israel Fund
• Board member of the Center for Community Change and the Public Welfare Foundation
• Law professor at Georgetown University
• Strongly opposed the 1996 welfare reform bill

Peter Edelman is a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, where he focuses on issues of welfare, poverty, and the U.S Constitution. He is the Board President of the New Israel Fund, and a Board member of the Center for Community Change, the Public Welfare Foundation, Americans for Peace Now, the Center for Law and Social Policy, and several other nonprofit organizations.

Born January 9, 1938 and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Edelman holds a joint degree in law and public policy from Harvard University. Following his education, he began his legal career as a clerk for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Henry J. Friendly (1961-62), and then for Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg (1962-63). From 1963-64 he worked in the U.S. Justice Department for Assistant Attorney General John Douglas, and from 1964-68 he was a Legislative Assistant to Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

In 1968 Edelman married Marian Wright [Edelman], who would later found the Children's Defense Fund.

From 1972-75, Peter Edelman was Vice President of the University of Massachusetts, and from 1975-79 he was Director of the New York State Division for Youth.

Also in the 1970s, Edelman served as Chairman of the New World Foundation, a position later held (from 1982 to 1988) by Hillary Clinton.

In 1980 Edelman served as Issues Director for Senator Edward Kennedy's presidential campaign. Two years later he was hired as a professor at Georgetown Law School, where he continues to teach to this day.

Edelman took a leave of absence from his teaching duties during President Clinton's first term to serve as Counselor to Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, and then as the Clinton administration's Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.

Edelman was a passionate critic of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which was intended to move large numbers of people off the welfare rolls and into jobs. President Clinton signed the bill into law, thereby radically transforming America's welfare system. Echoing his [Edelman's] wife, who predicted that this legislation would cause the starvation of a million black children, Edelman characterized welfare reform as "a war on the poor of the United States" and "the worst thing" Bill Clinton had done during his presidency.

After the bill was enacted, America's welfare rolls declined by more than 50 percent, as millions of formerly dependent people were moved successfully into jobs where they were able to earn their own way instead of being the wards of American taxpayers. By May 2002, there were 2.3 million fewer children living in poverty than there had been in 1996.

Notwithstanding his disagreement with President Clinton regarding the welfare bill, in 1998 Edelman joined 429 fellow law professors, including Laurence Tribe and Cass Sunstein, in signing a letter to Congress opposing Clinton’s Impeachment.

In 2001 Edelman authored the book Searching for America's Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope. He also has written many articles on poverty, constitutional law, and issues of import to children.

In 2003, under Edelman’s guidance, the New Israel Fund (NIF)collaborated with the Ford Foundation to create the Ford Israel Fund, whose stated goals were: “promoting civil and human rights in Israel”; “promoting equality for the Palestinian minority in Israel”; and “promoting a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” For this project, the Ford Foundation granted NIF $20 million.

In October 2006, Edelman lent his name to a letter rebutting accusations that MoveOn.org was an anti-Semitic entity. Fellow signers included such notables as Eric Alterman, Heather Booth, Todd Gitlin, and Michael Lerner. The controversy over MoveOn had begun when that organization cited approvingly a CounterPunch piece depicting American Jews as dual loyalists who make policy decisions in the interests of Israel as much as the United States.

In October 2007, just prior to a Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, Edelman was a signatory to a letter addressed to President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The letter -- which was a joint initiative of the New America Foundation, the International Crisis Group, and the US/Middle East Project, Inc. -- urged open dialogue with the terrorist organization Hamas, and exhorted the White House to address "the Palestinian refugees' deep sense of injustice” by providing them with “meaningful financial compensation.” Another notable signer of this letter was Morton Halperin, Director of George Soros’ Open Society Policy Center.

Over the years, Edelman has made a number of campaign contributions to Democratic candidates running for both federal and state offices. Recipients include Bill Clinton, Ralph Neas, Tom Udall, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Barack Obama.