Rexford Tugwell occupation academic
Early life and education
Rexford Tugwell was born in 1891 in Sinclairville, New York. In his youth, he gained an appreciation for workers’ rights and liberal politics from the works of Upton Sinclair, James Bryce, Edward Bellamy, Frederick Winslow Taylor, and Charles Richard van Hise. Tugwell began studying economics in graduate work at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and completed his doctorate at Columbia University.  At university, he was influenced by the teaching of Scott Nearing and Simon Patten, as well as the writings of  John Dewey in philosophy.Career
Academic economist
After graduation, Tugwell served as junior faculty at the University of Washington, American University in Paris, and Columbia University. At Columbia University he taught economics from 1920 to 1932.Tugwell's approach to economics was experimentalist, and he viewed the industrial planning of World War I as a successful experiment. He advocated agricultural planning (led by industry) to stop the rural poverty that had become prevalent due to a crop surplus after the First World War. This method of controlling production, prices, and costs was especially relevant as the Great Depression began.Return to academia
After his stint as governor, Tugwell returned to teaching at a variety of institutions.  He had years of service at the University of Chicago, where he helped develop their planning program. He moved to Greenbelt, Maryland, one of the new suburbs designed and built by the Resettlement Administration under his direction.
After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tugwell believed that global planning was the only sure way to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. He participated in the Committee to Frame a World Constitution from 1945 to 1948. He also thought the national constitution needed to be amended to enable economic planning.
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