Laird Bell

Laird Bell (1883–1965) was a distinguished attorney and Democrat who founded a leading Chicago law firm and endowed several charitable institutions. Bell was an extraordinarily active contributor in a variety of social and not-for-profit causes. He served most notably as Chairman of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, Chairman of the University of Chicago Board of Trustees, and of Carleton College, and President of the Harvard Alumni Association. Bell was also an Overseer of Harvard College from 1948 to 1954.

Bell's active participation in the work of education began as President of the Board of Education of Winnetka, Illinois, in 1919. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, then, as now, based in Evanston, Illinois, serving as the first Chair of the Board of Directors. Bell founded a Chicago law firm, Bell, Boyd and Lloyd, which continued to bear his name until its merger with Pittsburgh-based K&L Gates in 2009.

Bell served as the interim Chancellor of the University of Chicago in 1951, during the interregnum between Robert Hutchins and Lawrence A. Kimpton. Prior to that, Bell had been one of Hutchins' chief defenders in several struggles with state legislators concerning academic freedom in the 1930s and 1940s. According to Milton Mayer, Bell was perhaps Hutchins' closest friend during his years at the University of Chicago.

In addition to his legal and philanthropic work, Bell was a senior executive and board member of the Weyerhauser Timber company, where his father, F.S. Bell, served as Chairman of the Board and President of the related Laird Norton Company. Bell was active in advising and advocating on behalf of Phil Weyerhauser during the firm's corporate changes during the Depression. Bell was eventually named Chairman of the Board of Weyerhauser, and Bell was also named publisher of the Chicago Daily News, when its publisher, Frank Knox died during the war, in 1944.

In foreign affairs, Bell was perhaps the main "interventionist" in Chicago before World War II, when Chicago was otherwise a national center of isolationism. Bell visited Nazi Germany frequently in the period before World War II, representing US bondholders who had lost more than $1 billion through "reappraisals" by the Reichsbank under the leadership of Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht. Bell's co-counsel in the representation was John Foster Dulles of the New York firm Sullivan & Cromwell. In 1940-1941, Bell was head of the Chicago chapter of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.

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