List of Swarthmore College people

The following is a list of notable people associated with Swarthmore College, a private, independent, liberal arts college located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

Nobel laureates

Listed chronologically by year of the award.

MacArthur Fellows

Listed chronologically by year of the grant.

List of Alumni

Listed in alphabetical order by surname.

Architecture

• Frances Halsband, FAIA – Former Dean of School of Architecture at Pratt Institute
• Margaret Helfand, FAIA (Attended 1965–68)
• Steven Izenour
• Marianne McKenna, RIBA
• Catherine Paplin

Arts, film, theatre, and broadcasting

• Joseph Altuzarra – Fashion Designer, winner of the 2011 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award
• Peter Bart – Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Variety
• Gabriel Quinn Bauriedel — Co-Artistic Director of Pig Iron Theatre Company
• Al Carmines – Composer of Off-Broadway musicals, Pastor
• Marshall Curry – Documentary Filmmaker of Street Fight, 2006 Oscar nominee for Documentary Feature
• David Dye – Radio personality and host of the World Cafe
• Judith Edelman – Musician
• David Gelber – Executive Producer, 60 Minutes on CBS
• Steven Izenour – Architect. Co-author of Learning from Las Vegas
• Nick Kazan (1969) – Screenwriter
• H. C. Robbins Landon – Musicologist
• Stephen Lang – Tony Award nominated actor and playwright. Star of Gods and Generals, Gettysburg, Tombstone, and Terra Nova.
• David Linde – Executive Producer of the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Y Tu Mamá También, co-founder of Focus Features, Co-Chair of Universal Studios
• Beth Littleford – Former Daily Show correspondent, Comedy Central personality, and actress
• Dana Lyons (1982) – Independent singer/songwriter
• Richard Martin (1967) - Art and fashion historian and former Curator-in-Chief of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Erik Rehl – Art Director for Oscar Winning Best Live Action Short Film 2006, Six Shooter, by Martin McDonagh
• Dan Rothenberg — Co-Artistic Director of Pig Iron Theatre Company
• Ike Schambelan – Founder, the Theater By the Blind in New York City
• Peter Schickele – Composer (often under the comic pseudonym P. D. Q. Bach).
• Robert Storr – Dean of the Yale School of Art, curator, painter, critic.
• Darko Tresnjak (1988) – Director, Artistic Director of the Old Globe Shakespeare Festival in San Diego, CA.
• Kenneth Turan – movie reviewer, Los Angeles Times.
• Robert C. Turner – Ceramic artist
• Dito van Reigersberg — Co-Artistic Director of Pig Iron Theatre Company
• Michael J. Weithorn (1978) – Television Producer and Writer, The King of Queens, Family Ties, Ned & Stacey
• Paul Williams – Founder and Publisher of Crawdaddy!
• Evan Gregory- Member of The Gregory Brothers (creators of Auto-tune the News)^[5]

Business

• Burt Alper (1991) – CEO, Catchword
• Neil R. Austrian (1961) – Former President of NFL, Interim Chairman and CEO, Office Depot
• Sherry F. Bellamy (1974) – President & CEO, Bell Atlantic-Maryland
• Mark Benerofe (1981) – Vice-President, Sony Online Ventures
• Peter Cohan (1979) – President, Peter S. Cohan & Associates
• John Diebold (1949) – Founder of Diebold Group, Diebold, Inc., and The Diebold Institute for Public Policy
• John D. Goldman (1971) – CEO, Richard N. Goldman & Co. Insurance Services, President, San Francisco Symphony
• Samuel L. Hayes III (1957) – Director, Tiffany & Co., Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School
• Mickey Herbert (1967) – President and CEO, the Bridgeport Bluefish Baseball Club
• Roger Holstein (1974) – CEO, WebMD
• Gil Kemp (1972) – President and Founder, Home Decorators Collection
• Jerome Kohlberg, Jr. (1946) – Billionaire (Forbes 400 Richest in America), Co-founder, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
• Frederick W. Kyle (1954) – Chairman, BioRexis Pharmaceutical Corporation
• Eugene M. Lang (1938) – Founder of REFAC Technology Development Corporation, philanthropist
• Randall Larrimore (1969) – Former President and CEO, United Stationers Inc., a Fortune 500 company
• Leland S. MacPhail (1939) – President, National League Baseball, General Manager, the New York Yankees
• Thomas B. McCabe (1915) – Chairman, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, President, Scott Paper
• John N. Montgomery (1977) – Founder, President, and Director of Bridgeway Funds
• Thomas Rowe Price, Jr. – Founder of T. Rowe Price
• Carl Russo (1979) – President and CEO, Calix, Former Vice President of Optical Strategy Cisco Systems
• Shola Abidoye (1997) – Co-Founding Manager, Africast.com
• Michael Wing (1970) – Vice President, Strategic Communications, IBM
• George Zinkhan (1974) – Suspect in homicide of his wife and two others in Athens, Georgia; Former Professor of Marketing at the University of Georgia.

Economics

• Dean Baker (1980) – Macroeconomist, co-founder and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
• Robert Cooter (1967) – Scholar in law and economics, Professor at UC Berkeley School of Law
• Andre Gunder Frank (1957) – German-American economic historian and sociologist, developer of dependency theory
• Michael Greenstone (1991) – 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at MIT, director of the Hamilton Project
• Peter J. Katzenstein (1967) – Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies at Cornell University, member of the Council on Foreign Relations
• Clark Kerr (1932) – Industrial economist, first chancellor of University of California, Berkeley, twelfth president of the University of California
• William N. Kinnard (1947) – Former Director of the Institute of Urban Research and the Founding Director of the Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics. He was widely regarded as one of the leading authors, lecturers, and experts on the topic of real estate valuation. His text, Income Property Valuation, published in 1971, is still considered a classic in the field.
• Arnold Kling (1975)- A founder and co-editor of EconLog, a popular economics blog.
• Jeffrey Miron (1979) – Served as the chairman of the Department of Economics at Boston University from 1992 to 1998, and is currently teaching at Harvard University
• William Poole (1959) – Eleventh president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
• Edward C. Prescott (1962) – Winner of 2004 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics
• Iqbal Quadir (1982) – Founder of Gonofone and GrameenPhone, and currently the Founder and Director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Hans Stoll (1962) – The Anne Marie and Thomas B. Walker, Jr. Professor of Finance and Director of the Financial Markets Research Center at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management. He also served as the president of American Finance Association
• Peter Temin (1959) – Economic historian, Elisha Gray II Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• E. Roy Weintraub (1964) – Professor of Economics at Duke University focusing upon the history of the interconnection between mathematics and economics in the twentieth century
• Martin Weitzman (1963) – Environmental economist and Professor of Economics at Harvard University

Education

• Patrick Awuah (1988) – Founder, Ashesi University, Ghana's first liberal arts college
• David Baltimore (1960) – President of California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Nobel Prize winner
• Nancy Y. Bekavac – First female president of Scripps College
• Detlev W. Bronk – Former President, Johns Hopkins University
• Paul Courant – Provost, University of Michigan
• Christopher Edley, Jr. – Dean University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall)
• Neil R. Grabois – Former Provost, Williams College; Former President, Colgate University
• Tori Haring-Smith – President, Washington and Jefferson College
• John H. Jacobson – Former President, Hope College
• Clark Kerr – First Chancellor, the University of California, Berkeley and 12th President, the University of California.
• Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot (1966) – Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education; Chairman of the Board, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; first African-American woman in Harvard University's history to have an endowed professorship named in her honor
• Richard Wall Lyman – Former President (7th), Stanford University
• Christina Hull Paxson - President-elect (19th), Brown University
• Robert Prichard – Former President (13th), University of Toronto
• Dorothy Kathryn Robinson (1972) – Vice President and General Counsel of Yale University
• Lawrence Schall (1975) – President, Oglethorpe University
• Alan Valentine – Former President, University of Rochester
• Helen Magill White – The first woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D.
• Phyllis Wise – Provost, University of Washington

Historians

• Pamela Kyle Crossley – Dartmouth College
• Philip Curtin – Distinguished professor of African history, Johns Hopkins University
• Daniel Headrick – Roosevelt University
• Pieter M. Judson – Swarthmore College
• Thomas Laqueur – University of California, Berkeley
• David Montgomery – Yale (emeritus)
• Nayan Shah – University of California at San Diego
• Linda Gordon – New York University (NYU)
• Barbara Sicherman – Trinity College
• Matthew H. Sommer – Stanford
• Seth Koven – Rutgers
• Margaret Lavinia Anderson – University of California, Berkeley
• John H. Morrow Jr. – University of Georgia at Athens
• Tara Zahra – University of Chicago

Humanities and law

• Elizabeth Anderson – Professor of Philosophy (ethics, social and political philosophy), University of Michigan
• Hillyer Rudisill III – Professor of Philosophy (philosophy, ethics), Trident Technical College
• Stephen Diamond – Professor of Law, University of Miami
• Marjorie Garber – Director, the Humanities Center at Harvard University, Shakespeare scholar, cultural critic
• Allan Gibbard – Professor of Philosophy (ethics), University of Michigan
• Michael Hardt – Professor of Literature, Duke University. Author of Empire.
• Gilbert Harman – Professor of Philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind), Princeton University
• David Lewis – (d. 2001) Professor of Philosophy (philosophical logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics), Princeton University
• Alexander Nehamas – Professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature (Greek philosophy, philosophy of art), Princeton University
• Jerry (Jerome) Ravetz – Philosopher of Science, pioneer of post-normal science, founder of The Research Methods Consultancy, Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
• Jerome Schiller – Emeritus Professor of Philosophy (ancient philosophy), Washington University
• Barbara Partee – Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Peter Unger – Professor of Philosophy (epistemology, metaphysics), New York University
• Melissa Zeiger Professor of English Literature – Dartmouth College
• Cora Diamond – Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia
• Ray Jackendoff – Professor of Linguistics – Tufts University
• T. Alexander Aleinikoff (1974) – Dean, Georgetown University Law Center (law school)
• Christopher Edley, Jr. (1973) – Dean, University of California, Berkeley School of Law
• Frank H. Easterbrook (1970) – Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
• James C. Hormel (1955) – Former dean, University of Chicago Law School
• Stewart J. Schwab (1975) – Dean and Professor of Law, Cornell Law School
• Wilma A. Lewis (1978) – Former United States Attorney, District of Columbia
• Eben Moglen (1980) – Professor of law and legal history, Columbia University, General counsel and board member at the Free Software Foundation, co-author of the original GNU General Public License
• Alexander Mitchell Palmer (1891) – United States Attorney General (1919–1921)
• Richard D. Parker (1967) – Professor, Harvard Law School
• Jed S. Rakoff (1964) – legal scholar, judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
• Dorothy Kathryn Robinson (1972) – Vice President and General Counsel of Yale University
• Charles F.C. Ruff (1960) – Special Prosecutor during the Watergate scandal, defender of Anita Hill during confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, counsel to President Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal
• Randy Holland (1969) – Justice, Delaware Supreme Court
• Mary M. Schroeder (1962) – Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Mark D. Schwartz (1975) – attorney in private practice; former first vice president of Prudential-Bache Securities's public-finance department

Natural science, Medicine, and engineering

• Dave Bayer – Math consultant, A Beautiful Mind (feature film)
• Sandra Moore Faber – Astronomer, member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, diagnosis and repair of the Hubble Space Telescope's spherical aberration, design of the DEep Imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph (DEIMOS) for the Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii
• Dean Freed (1943) – Former CEO and Chairman of EG&G (now called PerkinElmer, Inc.)
• Neil Gershenfeld – Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences^{[dead link]} at MIT, director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms
• William H. Goldstein – Associate Director for Physics & Advanced Technologies, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)
• John J. Hopfield – Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society
• Martin Krafft (2001) – Free software researcher and activist, Debian developer
• Tyler Lyson (2006) – Discovered a mummifed hadrosaur^[6]
• Robert MacPherson (1966) – Mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University, National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics (1992), Leroy P. Steele Prize (2002, with Goresky), Heinz Hopf Prize (2009)
• John C. Mather^[7] – Senior Astrophysicist, Infrared Astrophysics Branch at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, 2006 Nobel laureate in physics for his work on the cosmic microwave background
• Holbrook Mann MacNeille – Mathematician, Professor, Scientific Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, chief of the Fundamental Research Branch of the United States Atomic Energy Commission
• Ted Nelson – Computer visionary. Coined the term hypertext
• Frank Oski – Director of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
• Nancy Roman – Astronomer. One of "the inspirational women" of NASA.
• Anne Schuchat – Acting Director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID), Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
• Maxine Frank Singer – Biochemist, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington since 1988
• Charlotte Moore Sitterly – Astronomer. Identified chemical elements in the sun using spectroscopy.
• Frederick Snyder, M.D. (1948). Pioneer in the study of REM sleep.
• Richard Vallee – Pathologist, Columbia University Medical Center, discoverer of cytoplasmic dynein ^[8]
• Peter J. Weinberger – Computer Scientist. Former head of CS Research at Bell Labs, inventor of the AWK programming language.
• Joseph Takahashi – Neuroscientist, Northwestern University. Member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator; identified key genes involved in mammalian circadian rhythms.
• Rogers McVaugh- botanist. He is a research professor of botany and the UNC Herbarium's curator of Mexican plants. He is also Adjunct Research Scientist of the Hunt Institute in Carnegie Mellon University and a Professor Emeritus of botany in the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
• William J. Erdman II- physician. Dr. Erdman had a distinguished career as chairman of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine for 33 years.

Politics

• Samuel Assefa, Ethiopian Ambassador to the United States.
• William H. Brown, Jr., parliamentarian, the United States House of Representatives
• John S. Burns, Director for Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress author of ArgMax.com, declared one of the top five economics blogs by Forbes magazine
• Armond Budish, Democratic Minority Leader of Ohio House of Representatives
• Peter Deutsch, Democratic member of the House of Representatives from 1993–2005. Represented Florida's 20th congressional district.
• Michael Dukakis – Former Democratic governor of Massachusetts. Democratic nominee in the 1988 presidential election
• Christiana Figueres – Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
• Robert P. George – Member, President's Council on Bioethics. Professor, Princeton University
• Mark Hanis – Co-founder of the Genocide Intervention Network
• Leon Henderson (1895–1986), administrator of the Office of Price Administration from 1941 to 1942.^[9]
• James Hormel – Former ambassador to Luxembourg, first openly gay U.S. Ambassador
• Carl Levin – Democratic U.S. Senator from Michigan
• Eugene M. Lang – Philanthropist, founder of the I Have A Dream Foundation; 1996 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
• Alice Paul – Women's suffrage leader from 1913 onwards, author of first Equal Rights Amendment proposal
• Amos J. Peaslee – Former ambassador to Australia
• Robert D. Putnam – Social capital theorist, author of Bowling Alone, Harvard University professor
• Antoinette Sayeh – Minister of Finance, Liberia
• William C. Sproul – Former governor of Pennsylvania
• Chris Van Hollen – Democratic U.S. Representative
• Cathy Wilkerson – radical activist and former member of the Weather Underground best known for being present at the 1970 Greenwich Village townhouse explosion
• James Morrison Wilson, Jr. (1918–2009), career diplomat – Foreign Service officer; Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific; U.S. Deputy Representative for Micronesian Status Negotiations; Department of State Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (1975–1977). While serving in this last post, he started the State Department's annual publication of United States' Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
• Molly Yard – Former President of the National Organization for Women
• Robert Zoellick – President, World Bank

Psychology

• Dorwin P. Cartwright – Pioneer in topological psychology
• Adele Diamond – Pioneer in developmental cognitive neuroscience, Professor, The University of British Columbia
• Eugene Galanter – Pioneer in Cognitive psychology and Psychometrics, Professor Emeritus, Columbia University
• Carol Gilligan – Recipient, Grawemeyer Award. Professor, New York University.
• Isabel Myers – Co-creator of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• Robert Rescorla – Co-creator of the Rescorla-Wagner model Professor, University of Pennsylvania.

Sports

• Dick Hall – Former Major League Baseball Pitcher. Appeared in three World Series for the Baltimore Orioles 1969–71.
• Morgan Langley – Professional soccer player with the Philadelphia Union in Major League Soccer.
• Ladulé Lako LoSarah – Professional soccer player with FK Bregalnica Stip. First ever American to play in Macedonian Prva Liga.
• Tiny Maxwell - College Football Hall of Fame player and referee.

Writers, journalists, and publishers

• Amy Fine Collins, Special Correspondent on fashion, culture, style, and design for Vanity Fair (magazine)
• Rasheed Abou-Alsamh – Saudi Writer and Journalist
• Peter Bart – Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Variety (magazine)
• David G. Bradley – chair of The Atlantic Monthly and National Journal Group, Inc.
• Ben Brantley – Chief Theater Critic of The New York Times
• Heywood Hale Broun – Sportswriter and CBS Sports Commentator
• Maureen B. Cavanaugh Eleusis and Athens: Documents in Finance, Religion, and Politics in the Fifth Century B.C. (Scholars Press 1996) (American Classical Studies, no. 35) Professor of Classics
• Samuel H. Day (d. 2001) – formerly Managing Editor of The Progressive
• Diane Di Prima – Beat generation Poet
• Kurt Eichenwald – New York Times reporter and author of books on white-collar crime (Serpent on the Rock, The Informant, Conspiracy of Fools)
• Jonathan Franzen – Author of The Corrections. Winner of the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction ^[10]
• Daisy Fried (1989) – Poet, Author of My Brother is Getting Arrested Again and She Didn't Mean to Do It
• Robyn Geary – Managing Editor, The Washingtonian
• Gregory Gibson – author of Gone Boy, Demon of the Waters, and Hubert’s Freaks
• Justin Hall – pioneer blogger
• Adam Haslett (1992) – Author of You Are Not a Stranger Here (Pulitzer Prize finalist, National Book Award finalist, and 2002 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award^{[dead link]} winner); stories in The New Yorker, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Zoetrope All-Story, and National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts
• Josef Joffe – Editor in Chief, Die Zeit
• Christopher Lehmann-Haupt – journalist, long-time book review and obit editor for New York Times
• Cynthia Leive – Editor in Chief, Glamour magazine
• Helen Reimensnyder Martin (1868–1939) – Novelist
• James A. Michener – Novelist
• Victor Navasky, Publisher and Editorial Director of The Nation (1995–2005), Chair of Columbia Journalism Review
• Drew Pearson – Journalist
• Jon Raymond, novelist, short story writer, and co-writer of the films Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy
• Rishi Reddi – short story writer
• Rudy Rucker – Cyberpunk Novelist. Winner of two Philip K. Dick Awards.
• Norman Rush – novelist, winner of the 1991 National Book Award for Mating
• William Saletan – Chief National Correspondent for Slate.com, author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War
• Micah White – Editor of Adbusters
• Mary Wiltenburg – Journalist
• Valerie Worth (d. 1994) – Poet and writer; especially known for her children's poems
• Jason Zengerle – Senior Editor, The New Republic

College leadership

Presidents

• Rebecca Chopp, 2009–present
• Alfred H. Bloom,1991–2009
• David W. Fraser, 1982–1991
• Theodore W. Friend, 1973–1982
• Robert D. Cross, 1969–1971
• Courtney C. Smith, 1953–1969
• John W. Nason, 1940–1953
• Frank Aydelotte, 1921–1940
• Joseph Swain, 1902–1921
• William W. Birdsall, 1898–1902
• Charles De Garmo, 1891–1898
• William Hyde Appleton, 1889–1891
• Edward Hicks Magill, 1871–1889
• Edward Parrish, 1865–1871

Notable professors

Current faculty

• James Kurth, political science, Editor of Orbis
• K. David Harrison, linguistics
• Donna Jo Napoli, linguistics
• Kenneth Gergen, psychology
• Barry Schwartz, psychology
• Gerald Levinson, music
• Philip Jefferson, economics
• Louis Massiah, black studies and film and media studies

Former faculty

• Solomon Asch, Psychology
• W. H. Auden (poet), Literature
• Frank Aydelotte (Swarthmore President)
• Brand Blanshard, Philosophy
• Monroe Beardsley, Philosophy
• Daniel J. Boorstin, History
• Richard Brandt, Philosophy
• Ralph Bunche
• Malcolm Clendenin, Art History
• Bruce Cumings, International Relations
• J. William Frost, Religion
• Robert Gallucci
• Lila R. Gleitman, Linguistics
• Harold Clarke Goddard, English, Shakespeare Studies
• Rush D. Holt, Jr., Physics
• Raymond F. Hopkins, political science
• Robert Jancewicz, Physics
• Nannerl O. Keohane, Political Science
• Robert Keohane, Political Science
• Wolfgang Köhler, Psychology
• Joseph Leidy, Natural History
• George W. Lewis, Engineering
• Kenneth Lieberthal, Political Science
• Judith Moffett, English
• Jonathan D. Moreno
• Scott Nearing, Economics
• Bernard Saffran, Economics
• Maria L. Sanford, History
• Wolfgang F. Stopler, Economics
• Judith G. Voet, Chemistry and Biochemistry
• Kenneth Waltz, Political Science
• Eugene Weber, German Literature
• Clair Wilcox, Economics

National awards and honors (since the 1970s)

• 135 Fulbright Scholarships
• 30 Rhodes Scholarships
• 8 Marshall Scholarships
• 13 Luce Scholarships
• 2 Mitchell Scholarships
• 1 Insight Fellowship
• 68 Watson Fellowships
• 21 Truman Scholarships
• 2 National Book Awards

References