Shortly after resigning as associate director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in February 1995, Christopher Edley Jr. prepared to resume teaching duties at Harvard Law School, where he had been tenured since 1986. But before he could leave the government, Edley was approached by White House officials who wanted him to chair a high-profile, interagency working group on affirmative action.

Edley considered the assignment a risky one. At the time, the national news media was reporting that affirmative action had become one of the most divisive issues in the country. Controversial lawsuits challenging it were pending in the federal courts. President Bill Clinton had come under pressure to make clear to the nation where his administration stood on the topic.

Nonetheless, Edley realized his political experiences -- spanning from the Carter presidential campaign of 1976 to the Dukakis presidential campaign to the Clinton Administration's OMB -- had brought him too far in public life to avoid duty on a policy matter he deemed critically important to the nation. Well-versed in civil rights law and social policy, Edley had believed himself among the best prepared in the Administration to lead such a working group. He feared that his refusal to participate would allow the working group to fall under the domination of staffers less sensitive to affirmative action policies than he. He took the job.

The president followed the recommendation the working group under Edley's leadership and defended affirmative action as morally just and necessary. Clinton won praise from the civil rights community and from observers who applauded his firmness on the issue. Edley, who departed the administration during the summer of 1995, called the experience one of the best he has had in public life. "I wouldn't change a thing," he said.

During the first term of the Clinton Administration, Edley stood out as one of several hundred African Americans holding appointed political position. Yet from the ranks of faculty and administrators at American universities and colleges, Edley found himself belonging to a much smaller category of black appointees. This small but well-placed group of academics-turned-public servants included others such as Drew S. Days III of Yale University Law School, Dr. Walter Broadnax of the University of Maryland, Ron Noble of New York University Law School, Dr. Joycelyn Elders of the University of Arkansas, and current Assistant Secretary of Lahor Dr. Bernard Anderson.