Laird Bell (1883–1965) was a distinguished attorney and Democrat who founded a leading Chicago law firm and endowed several charitable institutions.

[1] 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.

[5] 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.

[citation needed] 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 Schacht.

[citation needed] Bell received a KBE knighthood for his war-time activities on behalf of British War Relief.

[citation needed] In 1945 and 1946, Bell "stalked the corridors of Foggy Bottom" in a "one-man crusade against 1067" a US rule that proposed a "barbarous" dismantling of Germany.

[citation needed] As president of the Alumni Association of Harvard University in June 1947 Laird Bell organized the commencement speeches where Secretary of State George Marshall launched the European Recovery Plan.

[9][10] In the spring of 1949, Bell joined Columbia President Dwight Eisenhower and a group of other notables, chaired by Allen Dulles, in The National Committee for Free Europe, Inc, a private organization which gave aid to intellectuals and political refugees in newly communist European countries.