The Roosevelt Institution launched its first chapter at Harvard on Saturday afternoon, drawing a crowd of over a hundred progressive students in the basement of the Student Organization Center at Hilles.
Billed as the country’s first student think tank, the Roosevelt Institution was founded jointly at Stanford and Yale in 2004, as a memorial to the progressive policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904. It now consists of almost 7,000 undergraduate members and over 70 college chapters nationwide
At the Saturday event, the keynote speaker Joseph R. Driscoll, a Mass. State Representative, told the group that if they joined the organization they would be able to participate in local, state, and even national policy debates.
“This is not just a think tank that will be a silo,” he said. “There are generations that get unique opportunities, and yours is one of them.”
Matthew Young ’12, a founding member of the Harvard chapter’s steering committee, said in his speech that members will work with their counterparts at other colleges to lobby for change on issues ranging from local politics to healthcare.
“If you want to go fast, go alone,” said Young, who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with Roosevelt’s face. “But if you want to go far, go together.”
Young added that students can work with professors on policy research, get published in national journals, and participate in “fireside chats,” where students and professors will talk politics over hot chocolate.
“Students underestimate their abilities to advance legislative goals, especially about the issues they care the most about,” Young said. “There’s actually a lot that students can do.”
Despite the think tank’s liberal bent, conservatives on campus did not protest the inception of the new chapter.
“What’s in a name, right?” said Brian J. Bolduc ’10, editor emeritus of the Harvard Salient and an active Crimson editorial editor, referencing the organization’s association with the famed architect of the New Deal. “As long as they’re willing to have different points of view expressed, the name isn’t that big of a problem.”
“Everyone can agree that FDR led this country through a difficult time,” said Colin J. Motley ’10, president of the Harvard Republican Club. “But from what I’ve observed, there’s a tendency in the work of the Roosevelt Institution to favor government intervention in the economy and other things that might make it difficult for conservative students to become involved in the organization.”
“We always welcome competition of ideas on campus,” said Rachel L. Wagley ’11, co-president of Harvard’s pro-abstinence group, True Love Revolution. “The more the merrier.”
—Staff writer James K. McAuley can be reached at mcauley@fas.harvard.edu.
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