Mission Statement

Looking to the past, we maintain a museum of FDR’s years as a college student, the restored 1904 FDR Suite at Adams House, Harvard College.

Looking to the future, we utilize our unique position within one of Harvard’s undergraduate Houses to harness the Roosevelt legacy for the future. Through active cross-disciplinary collaboration between policy-shapers, scholars and students, we reintroduce tomorrow’s decision-makers to the New Deal philosophy that inspired the most effective and long-lasting reforms of that era: bold, persistent experimentation and above all, harnessing the power of hope to promote a spirit of social cooperation and activism.

We are particularly invested in building FDR’s “creative citizenry” to better face the disruptions of the 21st century. To that end, we have founded the Roosevelt Scholars Program at Harvard to provide research and paid mentorship opportunities for our first-generation and lower income students. More broadly, we work to inspire the empathy and social conscience so evinced by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt among all our undergraduates, knowing that upon their shoulders will fall the responsibilities of building our future. In particular, we are dedicated to educating and engaging our students, alumni and organizational partners about:

• the social impacts of climate change and automation on high-risk populations
• threats to democracy within our nation and across the globe
• the dangers of disinformation