BOARD MEMBER PETER EDELMAN INTERVIEWED ON NPR ABOUT HIS BOOK "SEARCHING FOR AMERICA'S HEART" AND RFK'S LEGACY ON POVERTY

2/1/2010

Publication:

RFK Center Board Member, Georgetown Law Professor and former legislative aide to Robert F. Kennedy, Peter Edelman, was recently interviewed on NPR's Tell Me More about his book "Searching for America's Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope", RFK's legacy on issues of poverty and what it means today.

Read the Entire Transcript or Listen to the Interview at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12302472

TRANSCRIPT FROM NPR.ORG

MICHEL MARTIN, host: I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Now it's time for our Wisdom Watch. That's the part of the program where we hope to learn from those who've made an impact with their work.

Today, on the eve of the president's first formal State of the Union address, we understand that the president is planning to put a new focus on the needs of the middle class. He's offering a package of programs to support the so-called sandwich generation, those who are raising children and caring for elderly parents.

But what about the needs of the poor? Who speaks for them? For perspective, we decided to call Peter Edelman. He's a lawyer and professor at Georgetown University Law Center. He's written extensively about issues of justice and the poor.

He's also a former legislative assistant to the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, who, before his untimely death in 1968, became a voice for those without one. Professor Edelman also worked in the Clinton administration as a counselor to the secretary of health and human services, a post from which he eventually resigned. He's also the author of "Searching for America's Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope," and he's with us now in our Washington, D.C. studio.

Welcome, thank you for joining us.

Professor PETER EDELMAN (Georgetown University): Thank you, I'm so delighted to be here.

MARTIN: How did you meet Robert F. Kennedy, and why did you want to work for him?

Prof. EDELMAN: I met him because when I finished my judicial clerkship on the Supreme Court, Justice Arthur Goldberg, for whom I clerked, said you really need to go to work in this administration, there won't be that many more like it in your lifetime. And I didn't know what he was talking about, but it turned out I think he was right.

So I got a job in the Justice Department, working for the assistant attorney general, John Douglas(ph), in the civil division, and through that it was the time, 1963, President Kennedy was killed while I was there. And then Robert Kennedy decided to run for the Senate.

And I thought, gee, that'd be fun if I could get involved in his campaign, and from that he offered me a job in his Senate office, and I was with him until he passed away.

MARTIN: I've read interviews with you where you talked about how you grew up happily middle class. I think the term you used in one interview was a reasonably happy, unremarkable childhood.

Your father was a lawyer, your mother a homemaker. Robert F. Kennedy, of course, was a son of great privilege. I wanted to ask: How did you and he become so committed to fighting poverty? It wasn't something that you grew up with.

Prof. EDELMAN: More importantly about him, because I think he always had an instinct for people who were on the edges, who were excluded in our society, whether he was the seventh child, whether he was smaller of stature. Whatever it was, there was something in him, and so when he was on his own, after President Kennedy was murdered, then it really came out, when he was a senator from New York. For myself...

MARTIN: Yeah, I was going to ask about you.

Prof. EDELMAN: Yes.

MARTIN: I mean, the fact is you clerked for a justice of the United States Supreme Court. You had gone to some very fine schools. You could have gone to what they call a so-called white-shoe firm and made a lot of money. You had other choices, so you too.

Prof. EDELMAN: To be honest, I was probably headed there. My idea of being doing something different from my father was to go practice law in New York instead of Minneapolis, but then I just fell into it. It was a fortunate thing.

I got an education going around the country with him and meeting people who were completely excluded from our society, and of course I met my wife going down to Mississippi on some hearings about the poverty program, and so that certainly had a huge influence on me.