Message from Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, May 10, 2024:
Dear Berkeley Law Community,
It is with a very heavy heart that I am writing to inform you that our beloved colleague and former dean Chris Edley died on Friday morning.
Chris had an amazing life and career, including being a transformative dean for Berkeley Law.
Chris graduated from Swarthmore College and the Harvard School of Public Policy and Harvard Law School. He then had an exemplary career in academia and in public service.
Chris spent 23 years as a professor at Harvard Law School, including co-founding the Harvard Civil Rights Project, before coming to Berkeley Law as dean in 2004. He served as dean until 2013. As dean, he made an enormous positive difference in every aspect of the law school, from the hiring of many terrific faculty, to his initiative to build the south addition (with the library and classrooms and Café Zeb), to dramatically increasing support for public interest grants for students, to the creation of many centers.
Chris 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. 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. From 2011-2013, he co-chaired the congressionally chartered National Commission on Education Equity and Excellence.
Chris was 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 chaired a committee to evaluate NAEP performance standards, and a committee to design a national system of education equity indicators.
Since completing his deanship, he has served the Law School and the campus in countless ways, including recently serving for two years as the Interim Dean of the School of Education. Chris and Maria Echaveste directed the Opportunity Institute.
Chris and I were law school classmates. He has been a dear friend and has provided me invaluable wisdom and support in my years as a dean. I know I speak for all of us in saying how terribly much we will miss him.
I will keep you posted of plans for memorials.
Sadly,
Erwin