MDC hosts Professor Edelman as part of its 50th anniversary series of events focused on how Southern leaders can work together to shape a South where all people thrive.

His new book offers an analysis of the criminal justice policies, practices, and institutions that punish poor people in America for their poverty. He offers deep knowledge and insight into mass incarceration, anti-tax legislation, school-to-prison pipeline, and other issues critical to the fight to end poverty.

Professor Edelman is the faculty director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality and Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches constitutional and poverty law.

He served as a top legislative advisor to Senator Robert F. Kennedy from 1964 to 1968, and served in key roles in the Clinton Administration until resigning in protest after President Clinton signed the 1996 welfare reform legislation.