Faculty Directors

Professor Peter Edelman

Professor Edelman has been Associate Dean of the Law Center, Director of the New York State Division for Youth, and Vice President of the University of Massachusetts. He was a Legislative Assistant to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and was Issues Director for Senator Edward Kennedy's Presidential campaign in 1980. 

Professor Edelman's most recent book, So Rich So Poor: Why It's So Hard to End Poverty in America, was published by The New Press in May 2012. He previously wrote Searching for America's Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope, which was published by Houghton-Miffin in January 2001. He also co-authored Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men, which was published by the Urban Institute in 2006, and is the author of many articles on poverty, constitutional law, and issues about children and youth. His article in the Atlantic Monthly entitled, "The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done" received the Harry Chapin Media Award.

Professor Harry Holzer

Harry J. Holzer is a Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the American Institute for Research in Washington DC. He is a former Chief Economist for the U.S. Department of Labor and a former Professor of Economics at Michigan State University. He received his A.B. from Harvard in 1978 and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard in 1983. 

He is a Senior Affiliate of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan and a Research Affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, an Affiliated Scholar with the Urban Institute, and a member of the editorial board at the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Holzer has authored or edited 11 books and several dozen journal articles, mostly on disadvantaged American workers and their employers. 

Executive Director

Rebecca Epstein

Rebecca is the Executive Director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy. Previously, Rebecca served as a senior trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Rebecca also worked as a staff attorney at Public Justice, a public interest law firm in Washington D.C., and was Policy Counsel at the National Partnership on Women and Families through a fellowship awarded by the Women's Law and Public Policy Fellowship Program. In 2008, she helped lead the women's issues committee of the Obama campaign, with a particular focus on work/family issues. Rebecca clerked for the Honorable Raymond A. Jackson in the Eastern District of Virginia. 

Rebecca received her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was awarded a fellowship from the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program, and was awarded Best Brief and Best Oralist at the school-wide moot court competition. She received her B.A. in history with honors from Brown University.