Brain Trust

Brain Trust, the group of close advisers to Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he was governor of New York state and during his first years as President. The name was applied to them because the members of the group were drawn from academic life. This informal advisory group on the New Deal included Columbia Univ. professors Raymond Moley, Adolf A. Berle, Jr., and Rexford G. Tugwell and expanded to include many more academicians. It soon disintegrated, but the term has remained in common usage for similar groups.

See study by R. G. Tugwell (1968).

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