The Edley Center welcomes two new senior fellows with exceptional careers and talents: Libby Washburn and Donald K. Sherman. We also have several exciting upcoming events. The topics will be public corruption (March 4), political repression in the United States (March 17), and the causes of congressional gridlock (April 9).

Libby Washburn, the first new senior fellow, is the Associate Chief Executive Officer of the Native American Agriculture Fund, where she leads a philanthropic private trust that promotes sustainable food systems in Native American communities. Before this role, she held high-level roles in the Biden and Obama administrations. Washburn was Special Assistant to President Biden for Native Affairs, where she managed the President’s Native American policy portfolio. During the Obama administration, Washburn was Deputy Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for External and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Donald K. Sherman, the second new senior fellow, is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), where he oversees litigation and investigations of public corruption and conflicts of interest, and provides congressional testimony and public commentary regarding ethics and accountability issues. Sherman has held senior roles in both the Biden and Obama administrations; he was Special Assistant to President Biden for racial and economic justice and during the Obama administration he was Chief of Staff and Senior Counsel in the Office of General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Before those roles, Sherman was Chief Oversight Counsel to the late Rep. Elijah E. Cummings on the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Counsel on the House Ethics Committee. 

We look forward to publications and convenings with both these new senior fellows. In fact, Donald K. Sherman will join senior fellows Molly Gaston and J.P. Cooney, as well as former Watergate prosecutor and Berkeley Law instructor emeritus Henry Hecht for our next convening, on March 4 at 1:00 pm, on Combating Public Corruption to Protect and Sustain Democracy. We hope you will join us for this important conversation.

We also look forward, on March 17, to a conversation between Faculty Co-Director Dan Farber and former Faculty Co-Director Jonathan Gould on Political Repression & U.S. Public Law. And further down the road, on April 9, the Edley Center and the Goldman School of Public Policy will jointly present a conversation with Maya L. Kornberg on her new book Stuck: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress. As always, we hope you will join us. And we will post event recordings for those who miss the events.

As always, we appreciate your support for our work in these troubled times. We continue our efforts to mobilize expertise and inform the public about key issues.  

Onward!

Catherine E. Lhamon

Executive Director