Braintrusters

The New Deal 2.0 Braintrusters are a select group of the country’s leading thinkers, including economists, historians, political scientists, and policy experts who support the effort to explore key questions at the heart of the economic debate.

The views expressed by these individuals here are theirs alone and should not be attributed to the Roosevelt Institute, its boards, or its officers.



  • Andy Rich
    Andrew Rich

    Dr. Andrew Rich became the President and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute on January 1, 2009. Prior to that, Rich was Deputy Director and Director of Programs at the Colin Powell Center...

  • Ann O'Leary
    Ann O'Leary

    Ann is the executive director of the Berkeley Center for Health, Economic & Family Security (CHEFS) at University of California-Berkeley School of Law. The CHEFS mission is to develop...

  • Anna Burger
    Anna Burger

    Anna Burger is the chair of Change to Win, America’s newest labor federation, and a top-ranking officer at the Service Employees International Union, where she oversees national political...

  • Arjun Jayadev
    Arjun Jayadev

    Arjun Jayadev is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and a visiting research fellow at the Columbia University Committee on Global Thought....

  • Barbara Arnwine
    Barbara Arnwine

    Barbara R. Arnwine, the executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law since 1989, is internationally renowned for contributions on critical justice issues,...

  • Bill Black
    Bill Black

    Bill Black is an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri – Kansas City (UMKC). He was the executive director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from...

  • Bo Cutter
    Bo Cutter

    Bowman Cutter has been a managing director of Warburg Pincus, a major global private equity firm headquartered in New York City, since 1996. He has served as the firm’s economist...

  • Bruce Judson
    Bruce Judson

    Bruce Judson is a senior faculty fellow at the Yale School of Management and the author of "It Could Happen Here: America on the...

  • Christopher Hayes
    Christopher Hayes

    Christopher Hayes is the Washington, D.C. editor of The Nation and a fellow at the New America Foundation. Since 2002, he's written on issues including union organizing and economic...

  • Daniel Berger
    Daniel Berger

    Daniel Berger graduated with honors from Princeton University and Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone academic scholar.  He is presently a senior member and shareholder...

  • David Woolner
    David Woolner

    David Woolner is senior vice president of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park New York, and associate professor of history at Marist College, in Poughkeepsie, New...

  • Deepak Bhargava and Sally Kohn
    Deepak Bhargava

    Deepak Bhargava is executive director of the Center for Community Change, a national nonprofit organization that develops the capacity of low-income people, especially low-income people...

  • Eric Liu
    Eric Liu

    Eric Liu is an author and civic entrepreneur based in Seattle. He served as a White House speechwriter in President Bill Clinton's first term and as the president's domestic policy adviser...

  • Greenberg Stanley
    Stanley Greenberg

    Stanley B. Greenberg is CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. Greenberg has served as pollster to several world leaders and collaborates with a Republican polling firm on bi-partisan surveys...

  • Heather Gerken
    Heather Gerken

    Heather Gerken is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law, Yale Law School and an expert in election law and constitutional law. She has published numerous articles on those topics in...

  • Hendrik Hertzberg
    Hendrik Hertzberg

    Hendrik Hertzberg is a senior editor at The New Yorker, where he blogs and contributes to the opening “Comment” column in “The Talk of the Town.” He has been an officer in the...

  • Henry Liu
    Henry Liu

    Henry C.K. Liu is an independent commentator on culture, economics and politics. Born in Hong Kong and educated at Harvard University in architecture and urban design, Liu developed...

  • James H. Carr
    Jim Carr

    Jim Carr is chief operating officer for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), a national association of 600 local development organizations dedicated to improving the...

  • James K. Galbraith
    James K. Galbraith

    James K. Galbraith holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen, jr. Chair of Government/Business Relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin, and a...

  • Jeff Madrick
    Jeff Madrick

    Jeff Madrick is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for The New York Times. He is currently editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting...

  • Joe Conason
    Joe Conason

    Joe Conason is a national correspondent for The New York Observer, where he writes a weekly column distributed by Creators Syndicate. He is also a weekly columnist for Salon.com and...

  • Joe Costello
    Joe Costello

    Joe Costello has been involved in communications, energy and political economy for three decades. He was communications director for Jerry Brown's innovative 1992 presidential campaign...

  • john a. powell
    john a. powell

    Professor john a. powell is an internationally recognized authority on civil rights and civil liberties, race, structural racism, ethnicity, housing, poverty and democracy. He is executive...

  • Jonathan Alter
    Jonathan Alter

    Jonathan Alter is an award-winning columnist, television analyst and author. Since 1991, Alter has been a Newsweek columnist and originator of the magazine's "Conventional Wisdom Watch,"...

  • Joseph Stiglitz
    Joseph Stiglitz

    Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University in New York and chair of Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought. He is also the co-founder and executive...

  • L. Randall Wray
    Randall Wray

    L. Randall Wray is a professor of economics and research director of the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. His current research...

  • Leuchtenberg William
    William Leuchtenberg

    William Leuchtenburg, scholar of the presidency and history professor emeritus at UNC-Chapel Hill, is the nation’s leading authority on Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The author of more...

  • Liu Goodwin
    Goodwin Liu

    Goodwin Liu is associate dean and professor of law at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law. His areas of expertise are constitutional law, education law and policy, civil...

  • Marcia Dyson
    Marcia Dyson

    The Reverend Marcia L. Dyson is a native of Chicago, where she attended high school, the University of Illinois and Chicago State University. She served as the first chief of staff for...

  • Mario Seccareccia
    Mario Seccareccia

    Mario Seccareccia holds a PhD in economics from McGill University and has been teaching at the University of Ottawa since 1978. He has authored, co-authored or co-edited nine books or...

  • Mark Schmitt
    Mark Schmitt

    Mark Schmitt is executive editor of The American Prospect. Schmitt has been a contributor to the Prospect since 2001 and a columnist for the magazine since 2005, as well as a frequent...

  • Marshall Auerback
    Marshall Auerback

    Marshall Auerback has 27 years of experience in the investment management business, serving as a global portfolio strategist for RAB Capital Plc, a UK-based fund management group with...

  • Matt Miller
    Matt Miller

    Matt Miller is the author of The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go Of the Old Ways Of Thinking To Unleash A New Prosperity, published by Times Books. Miller is a senior fellow at the...

  • Maya Rockeymoore
    Maya Rockeymoore

    Dr. Maya Rockeymoore is president and CEO of Global Policy Solutions, a Washington, D.C. consulting firm that partners with clients to develop strategic solutions that achieve maximum...

  • Mehta Jal
    Jal Mehta

    Jal Mehta is an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Jal received his Ph.D. in sociology and social policy from Harvard and has written on a variety of public...

  • Meizhu Lui
    Meizhu Lui

    For over 30 years, Meizhu Lui has dedicated herself to economic justice as an educator, organizer, and scholar. Currently, she is the Director of the Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative,...

  • Michael Waldman
    Michael Waldman

    Michael Waldman is executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law, a law and policy institute focusing on democracy and justice. Mr. Waldman...

  • Phillips Sarah
    Sarah Phillips

    Sarah Phillips, assistant professor of history at Boston University, is the author of This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal. Her research focuses on...

  • Rev. Jim Wallis
    Rev. Jim Wallis

    The Rev. Jim Wallis is the founder and president of Sojourners, the largest network of progressive Christians in the United States focused on the biblical call to social justice. Wallis...

  • Robert Dallek
    Robert Dallek

    Robert Dallek is an award-winning historian who specializes in the American presidency and foreign affairs. His most recent works include Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President...

  • Robert Johnson
    Robert Johnson

    Rob Johnson is the Director of Financial Reform at the Roosevelt Institute and is a regular contributor to NewDeal 2.0, which runs his "FinanceSeer" column. He serves on the United...

  • Robert Kuttner
    Robert Kuttner

    Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine and a Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow. He also writes columns in The Boston Globe. Bob is the author...

  • Samuel Issacharoff
    Samuel Issacharoff

    Samuel Issacharoff is the Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law. His research deals with issues in civil procedure (especially complex litigation...

  • Sarah Hicks
    Sarah Hicks

    Sarah Hicks (Alutiiq) is an enrolled member of the Native Village of Ouzinkie and the founding director of the Policy Research Center of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)....

  • Wilentz Sean
    Sean Wilentz

    Sean Wilentz is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the American Revolutionary Era and Professor of History at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1979. His books include...

Braintrusters

Deal Breakers




George Will
“Before we go into a new New Deal, can we just acknowledge that the first New Deal didn’t work?”

Read more »

New Deal Dictionary

Glass Steagall Act



What is the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933?
The Glass-Steagall Act was introduced during the Great Depression by former Treasury Secretary Sen. Carter Glass (D-VA) and Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee Rep. Henry B. Steagall (D-AL).

Read more »

Archives