Brain Trust

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The "Brain Trust" or "Brains Trust" was the name given to a group of diverse academics, including economists and professors who served as advisors to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the early period of his tenure. The group never met together but acted as informal advisors; having an academic team was first suggested in March 1932 by Roosevelt's legal counsel Samuel Rosenman. In 1918 President Woodrow Wilson had assembled The Inquiry, a group of academic advisors he brought to the Versailles Conference. The Brain Trust in 1932 to 1933 included Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and Adolf Berle, all professors at Columbia University. Later added were attorney Basil O'Connor and Felix Frankfurter of Harvard Law School

These men played a key role in shaping the policies of the First New Deal. Although they never met together as a group, they each had Roosevelt's ear. Other academic advisors to the New Deal were often called "brain trusters". Many newspaper editorials and editorial cartoons ridiculed them as impractical idealists. Moley broke with Roosevelt and became a sharp critic of the New Deal from the right.

The concept of Roosevelt's brains trust was an inspiration for The Roosevelt Institution, a student think tank trying to once again move ideas from academia into the policy discourse.