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.

Since its founding in 1864, Swarthmore has graduated 156 classes of students. As of 2022, the College enrolls 1,689 students and has roughly 21,300 living alumni.

As of spring 2022, Swarthmore employs nearly 200 faculty members.

Nobel laureates

Listed chronologically by year of the award.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate David Baltimore, class of 1960

Nobel laureates

Name	Degree/year	Award category/year	Reason	Nobel profile
Christian B. Anfinsen	B.S., 1937, chemistry	Chemistry, 1972	Ribonuclease/amino acid sequence research
David Baltimore	B.S., 1960, chemistry	Physiology or Medicine, 1975	Discovery of reverse transcriptase
Howard Martin Temin	B.S., 1955, biology	Medicine, 1975	Research on tumor viruses' effect on genetic cellular material
Edward C. Prescott	B.A., 1962, mathematics	Economics, 2004	Real business cycle theory
John C. Mather	B.S., 1968, physics	Physics, 2006	Discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation

MacArthur Fellows

Listed chronologically by year of the grant.

MacArthur Fellows

Name	Degree/year/major	Field	Year	Work
Philip Curtin	B.A., 1948, history	History	1983	Johns Hopkins University professor; researcher of Caribbean/African history and comparative history
John J. Hopfield	B.A., 1954, physics	Molecular biology	1983	Princeton University professor; computational neurobiology, computing network researcher
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot	B.A., 1966, psychology	Sociology/education	1984	Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education at Harvard University; researches education, socialization; developed portraiture approach
Jane S. Richardson	B.A., 1962, philosophy	Biochemistry	1985	Duke University biochemistry professor; proteins researcher, especially three-dimensional structure and means of formation
Michael Schudson	B.A., 1969	Journalism and Sociology	1990	Columbia University journalism professor
David Page	B.A., 1978, chemistry	Biology/medicine	1986	MIT biology professor; director of Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research; sequenced the Y-chromosome
Ellen Barry	B.A., 1975	Criminology/penology	1998	Prison reform advocate; founder of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and the National Network for Women in Prison
Rebecca J. Nelson	B.A./B.S., 1982	Plant pathology	1998	Researcher of molecular genetics, crop disease, and crop management; professor of plant pathology at Cornell University
Christopher F. Chyba	B.A., 1982, physics	Science/international security	2001	Princeton University professor; co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation; former science, technology, and national security adviser to the Clinton administration
Tara Zahra	B.A., 1998, history and economics	History	2014	University of Chicago professor; European history author; Harvard Society Fellow
Patrick Awuah	B.S. 1989, Engineering and B.A. Economics	Education	2015	Founder of Ashesi University, Ghana
Njideka Akunyili Crosby	B.A. 2004, Art and Biology	Art	2017	Visual artist
Elizabeth S. Anderson	B.A. 1981, philosophy	Philosophy	2019	University of Michigan professor; philosopher specializing in political philosophy, ethics, and feminist philosophy

List of alumni

Listed in alphabetical order by surname.

Architecture

• Frances Halsband (1965) - FAIA, former Dean of School of Architecture at Pratt Institute
• Margaret Helfand (1969)- FAIA (attended 1965–68)
• Steven Izenour (1962)
• Marianne McKenna (1972) - RIBA

Arts, film, theatre, and broadcasting

• Joseph Altuzarra (2005) – fashion designer, winner of the 2011 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award
• Lisa Albert (1981) – television producer and writer, Mad Men, Beautiful People, Living Single, Becker, Murphy Brown, Major Dad
• Mark Alburger (1979) – composer; founder / music director of San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra; music director of Goat Hall Productions; founder / editor-publisher of 21st-Century Music.
• Peter Bart (1954) – Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Variety
• Al Carmines (1958) – composer of Off-Broadway musicals; pastor
• Bruce Cratsley (1966) - American photographer specialized in still lifes, portraits of friends, and gay life in New York City
• Marshall Curry (1992) – documentary filmmaker of Street Fight, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, Racing Dreams, and Point and Shoot; 2006 Oscar nominee for Documentary Feature; 2006 News & Documentary Emmy Award nominee for Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story: Long Form; 2012 Oscar nominee for Documentary Feature, Academy Award-winning short film The Neighbors' Window (2019).
• David Dye (1972) – radio personality and host of the World Cafe
• Michael Forster Rothbart (1994) – photojournalist
• John Freeman (1996) – Writer, literary critic and former editor of the literary magazine Granta and executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf.
• Steven Gilborn (1969) – Actor
• Alexandra Grant (1994) – visual artist
• Evan Gregory (2001) – member of The Gregory Brothers (creators of Auto-tune the News)
• Steven Izenour (1962) – architect; co-author of Learning from Las Vegas
• Grant S. Johnson (2014) - filmmaker
• Nicholas Kazan (1969) – screenwriter
• H. C. Robbins Landon (1946) – musicologist

• 

  Actor and Playwright Stephen Lang, class of 1972

  Stephen Lang (1972) – Tony Award-nominated actor and playwright; star of Avatar, Gods and Generals, Gettysburg, Tombstone, and Terra Nova
• Cynthia Ling Lee - dancer, choreographer, and dance scholar
• Michael Lessac (1961) - theater, television, and film director and screenwriter.
• David Linde (1982) – Executive Producer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Y Tu Mamá También; co-founder of Focus Features; Co-Chair of Universal Studios
• Beth Littleford (3 yrs) – former Daily Show correspondent, Comedy Central personality, and actress, Dog With a Blog
• Dana Lyons (1982) – independent singer/songwriter
• Richard Martin (1967) – art and fashion historian; former Curator-in-Chief of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• François Picard (journalist) (1988) a dual national Franco-American journalist who hosts the English language France focused (a) current affairs talk show The Debate and (b) journalist roundtable discussion show The World This Week
• Dawn Porter (1988) – documentary filmmaker, director of Gideon's Army, nominee for News & Documentary Emmy Award
• Peter Schickele (1957) – composer, often under the comic pseudonym P. D. Q. Bach
• Aaron Schwartz (1970) – actor, director and copyright lawyer in Toronto
• Tom Snyder (1972) – founder of Soup2Nuts (formerly Tom Snyder Productions) animation studio; co-creator and Executive Producer, Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist; Executive Producer, Home Movies
• Robert Storr (1972) – Dean of the Yale School of Art; curator; painter; critic; director of Venice Biennale 2007
• Darko Tresnjak (1988) (1988) – Director, Artistic Director of the Old Globe Shakespeare Festival in San Diego; CA; 2014 Tony Award winner for Best Direction of a Musical, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder

• 

  film critic Kenneth Turan, class of 1967

  Kenneth Turan (1967) – movie reviewer, Los Angeles Times
• Robert C. Turner (1969) – ceramic artist
• Michael J. Weithorn (1978) – television producer and writer, The King of Queens, Family Ties, Ned & Stacey, The Goldbergs
• Paul Williams (1969) – founder and publisher of Crawdaddy!
• Jenny Yang – writer and comedian, majored in Political Science.
• Michał Zadara (1999) – Polish theatre director

Business

• Peter Cohan (1979) – President, Peter S. Cohan & Associates
• David L. Cohen (1977) – American businessman, attorney, lobbyist, and diplomat who is (as of March 2023) the United States ambassador to Canada who previously served as (a) senior executive vice president, chief lobbyist, and the senior advisor to the CEO of Comcast Corporation and (b) chairman of the board of trustees for the University of Pennsylvania and (c) chief of staff to former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell
• 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
• Jerome Kohlberg, Jr. (1946) – billionaire (Forbes 400 Richest in America); co-founder, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
• Eugene M. Lang (1938) – founder of REFAC Technology Development Corporation, philanthropist
• Nick Martin (2004) – founder and CEO of TechChange
• Thomas B. McCabe (1915) – Chairman, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, President, Scott Paper
• Arthur S. Obermayer (1952) – founder of the Moleculon Research Corporation; Jewish-American philanthropist.
• Thomas Rowe Price, Jr. (1919) – founder of T. Rowe Price
• Kate Warne (1976) – Principal, Investment Strategist, Edward Jones Investments
• Robert Zoellick (1976) – former president of the World Bank
• Danna Azrieli - Chairwoman of Azrieli Group

Economics

• Dean Baker (1981) – macroeconomist; co-founder and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
• Bridget Boakye – Ghanaian entrepreneur
• Robert Cooter (1967) – scholar in law and economics, Professor at UC Berkeley School of Law
• Andre Gunder Frank (1950) – German-American economic historian and sociologist; developer of dependency theory
• Diana Furchtgott-Roth (1979) – former Chief Economist of the United States Department of Labor, former chief of staff of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute
• Michael Greenstone (1991) – 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at MIT, director of the Hamilton Project
• Kevin Hassett (1984) - economic adviser to four Republican presidential candidates; chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, 2017-2019
• Pinar Karaca-Mandic (1998) – Health economist and Professor of Management at Carlson School of Management
• 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; Founding Director of the Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics; leading author, lecturer, and expert 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) – founder and co-editor of EconLog, a popular economics blog
• Linda Datcher Loury (1973) – noted Social Economist and professor at Tufts University
• Thomas Bayard McCabe (1893-1982) – Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board (1948-1951)
• Jeffrey Miron (1979) – chairman of the Department of Economics at Boston University, 1992-1998; director of undergraduate studies in the Harvard University Department of Economics, director of economic studies at the Cato Institute
• Karen Pence (1992) - Deputy Associate Director of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors
• 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; founder and Director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT
• Sam Schulhofer-Wohl (1998)  – Senior Vice President and Director of Financial Policy of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
• 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; former president of American Finance Association
• Peter Temin (1959) – economic historian, Elisha Gray II Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Christopher Udry (1981) – King Professor of Economics at Northwestern University; co-founder and co-director of the Global Poverty Research Lab at the Kellogg School of Management
• E. Roy Weintraub (1964) – Professor of Economics at Duke University focusing on 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
• Gavin Wright (1965) – Economic historian and Professor of Economics at Stanford University

Education

President of Brown University Christina Paxson, class of 1982

• Patrick Awuah, Jr. (1988) – founder, Ashesi University, Ghana's first liberal arts college
• David Baltimore (1960) – President of Caltech; Nobel Prize winner
• Nancy Y. Bekavac – first female president of Scripps College
• Detlev W. Bronk – former president, Johns Hopkins University
• William Boulding (born 1955), dean of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University
• Kimberly Wright Cassidy – President, Bryn Mawr College
• David L. Cohen (1977) – served as chairman of the board of trustees for the University of Pennsylvania
• Paul Courant – Provost, University of Michigan
• Sean M. Decatur – President, Kenyon College
• Christopher Edley, Jr. – Dean of University of California, Berkeley School of Law
• Lara Estroff – materials scientist and professor at Cornell University
• Neil R. Grabois – former Provost, Williams College; former president, Colgate University
• Tori Haring-Smith – President, Washington and Jefferson College
• Rachel Jacobs (1997) CEO of ApprenNet and social activist
• 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 (1982)- President-elect (19th), Brown University
• David H. Porter (1958) – former president, Skidmore College
• Robert Prichard – former president (13th), University of Toronto
• Lawrence Schall (1975) – President, Oglethorpe University
• Daniel L. Schwartz (1979) – Dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Education
• Alan Valentine – former president, University of Rochester
• Helen Magill White – first woman in the US to earn a Ph.D.
• Phyllis Wise – Provost, University of Washington
• Mary Schmidt Campbell – President, Spelman College

Historians

• Margaret Lavinia Anderson – University of California, Berkeley
• Pamela Kyle Crossley – Dartmouth College
• Philip Curtin – Distinguished professor of African history, Johns Hopkins University
• Jonathan Dewald – SUNY Distinguished Professor of History, State University of New York at Buffalo
• Linda Gordon – New York University (NYU)
• Linda Grant DePauw  – George Washington University
• Daniel Headrick - Roosevelt University
• Pieter M. Judson – Swarthmore College
• Thomas Laqueur – University of California, Berkeley
• David Montgomery – Yale (emeritus)
• John H. Morrow Jr. – University of Georgia at Athens
• Albert Cook Myers – secretary, Pennsylvania State Historical Commission
• William Rubinstein - Deakin University, University of Wales
• Nayan Shah – University of California at San Diego
• Gavin Wright – Stanford University
• Tara Zahra – University of Chicago

Humanities and law

• T. Alexander Aleinikoff (1974) – Dean, Georgetown University Law Center (law school)
• Elizabeth S. Anderson (1981) – John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, University of Michigan
• Adrienne Asch (1946-2013) – founding director of the Center for Ethics at Yeshiva University
• Ellen Ash Peters (1951) – Chief Justice, Connecticut Supreme Court
• Leo Braudy (1963)  – University and Leo S. Bing Professor of English and American Literature, University of Southern California
• Peter Berkowitz – The Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution
• Anne Pippin Burnett (class of 1946) - American classical scholar best known for her work on Greek literature, especially tragedy and the lyric poetry of the archaic and early classical periods
• Cora Diamond – Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia
• Frank H. Easterbrook (1970) – Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
• Christopher Edley, Jr. (1973) – Dean, University of California, Berkeley School of Law
• Arianna Freeman (2001) – Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
• Marjorie Garber – Director, the Humanities Center at Harvard University; Shakespeare scholar; cultural critic
• Allan Gibbard – Professor of Philosophy (ethics), University of Michigan
• Ruth Wilson Gilmore  – abolitionist and prison scholar
• 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
• Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., law professor
• James C. Hormel (1955) – former dean, University of Chicago Law School
• Ray Jackendoff – Professor of Linguistics – Tufts University
• David Lewis – Professor of Philosophy (philosophical logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics), Princeton University
• 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 Nehamas – Professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature (Greek philosophy, philosophy of art), Princeton University
• Alexander Mitchell Palmer (1891) – United States Attorney General (1919–1921)
• Barbara Partee – Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Jed S. Rakoff (1964) – legal scholar, judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
• 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
• Mary M. Schroeder (1962) – Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Stewart J. Schwab (1975) – Dean and Professor of Law, Cornell Law School
• Mark D. Schwartz (1975) – attorney in private practice; former first vice president of Prudential-Bache Securities's public-finance department
• Herbert W. Smyth (1876) – Professor of Classics whose comprehensive grammar of Ancient Greek has become a standard reference
• Peter Unger – Professor of Philosophy (epistemology, metaphysics), New York University
• Christina Crosby – Professor of English Literature, Professor of English, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Wesleyan University

Natural science, medicine, and engineering

• Ted Abel – Professor of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania.
• Margaret Allen  – first female heart transplant surgeon
• Dave Bayer – math consultant, A Beautiful Mind
• Christopher F. Chyba – Professor at Princeton University
• Paul Crowell – Professor of Physics, University of Minnesota
• Bruce T. Draine – astrophysicist; author of "Physics of the Interstellar and Intergalactic Medium"; Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton
• 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
• Sorelle Friedler (2004) – professor of computer science at Haverford College, former Assistant Director for Data and Democracy in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
• Neil Gershenfeld – Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms
• William H. Green - Hoyt C. Hottel Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT.
• Frank Hastings Griffin (1910), chemist who invented Rayon.
• Rush Holt Jr. - CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
• 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
• Alexander Huk – Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Center for Perceptual Systems at the University of Texas at Austin.
• Tyler Lyson (2006) – curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science
• 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)
• 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
• John C. Mather – Senior Astrophysicist, Infrared Astrophysics Branch at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center; 2006 Nobel laureate in physics for his work on the cosmic microwave background
• Rogers McVaugh – professor of botany; UNC herbarium's curator of Mexican plants; Adjunct Research Scientist of the Hunt Institute in Carnegie Mellon University; Professor Emeritus of botany in the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
• Newton Morton – population geneticist, one of the founders of the field of genetic epidemiology
• Ted Nelson – computer visionary; coined the term "hypertext"
• Marcella Nunez-Smith – physician, co-chair of president Joe Biden's COVID-19 Advisory Board and leader of task force on health equity
• Frank Oski – Director of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
• G. Raymond Rettew – chemist; pioneered mass production of penicillin during World War II
• Sally Ride – astronaut and physicist, first American woman in space, attended for three semesters
• 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
• Karen Strier – professor of biological anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
• Daniel F. Styer (Ph.D. 1983) - professor of physics at Oberlin College
• Joseph Takahashi – neuroscientist at Northwestern University; member of the National Academy of Sciences; Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator; identified key genes involved in mammalian circadian rhythms
• Emma Vyssotsky - astronomer at the University of Virginia
• Peter J. Weinberger – computer scientist; former head of CS Research at Bell Labs; inventor of the AWK programming language

Politics and government

• 

  Suffragist and feminist Alice Paul, class of 1905

  Kyle Anderson – Executive Director at Congressional Black Caucus
• Samuel Assefa – Ethiopian Ambassador to the United States
• Erica Barks-Ruggles – U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda
• Paul Booth – Labor leader, executive assistant to the president of AFSCME
• William H. Brown, Jr. – parliamentarian, the United States House of Representatives
• Armond Budish – Democratic Minority Leader of Ohio House of Representatives

• 

  Development executive and finance director of Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign Dennis Cheng, class of 2001

  Dennis Cheng – national finance director of the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton
• David L. Cohen (1977) – American businessman, attorney, lobbyist, and diplomat who is (as of March 2023) the United States ambassador to Canada
• Scott Cowger – Democratic state legislator from Maine
• Peter Deutsch – Democratic member of the House of Representatives, 1993–2005; represented Florida's 20th congressional district
• Michael Dukakis – Governor of Massachusetts; Democratic nominee in the 1988 presidential election
• Christiana Figueres – Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (2010–2016)
• Robert P. George – member, President's Council on Bioethics; professor, Princeton University
• Josh Green – Governor of Hawaii (2022–present); 15th Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii
• Rush Holt Jr. – Congressman from New Jersey, 1999 - 2015
• Kevin Hassett – chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, 2017-2019
• Leon Henderson – administrator of the Office of Price Administration, 1941-1942
• James Hormel – former ambassador to Luxembourg, first openly gay U.S. Ambassador
• M. Evelyn Killen (1871–1951), President, Delaware State Woman's Christian Temperance Union
• Eugene M. Lang – philanthropist, founder of the I Have A Dream Foundation; 1996 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
• Thomas B. McCabe – Chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, 1948-1951, and recipient of the Medal of Merit for his government work during World War II.
• Carl Levin – Democratic U.S. Senator from Michigan
• Mary B. Newman – Republican member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, 1953–1954 and 1957–1970
• Alice Paul – women's suffrage leader from 1913 onwards, author of first Equal Rights Amendment proposal
• Amos J. Peaslee – politician, author, and United States Ambassador to Australia, 1953-1956
• Robert D. Putnam – social capital theorist, author of Bowling Alone, Harvard University professor
• Antoinette Sayeh – Minister of Finance, Liberia
• William C. Sproul – 27th governor of Pennsylvania
• Chris Van Hollen – Democratic United States Senator from Maryland
• Phil Weiser – 39th Colorado Attorney General,
• Cathy Wilkerson – radical activist and former member of the Weather Underground, known for being present at the 1970 Greenwich Village townhouse explosion
• James Morrison Wilson, Jr. – 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)
• Carl Wittman – writer, LGBT rights activist and member of the national council of Students for a Democratic Society
• Molly Yard – former president of the National Organization for Women
• Miles Yu, historian, strategist, foreign policy adviser.

Psychology

• Adele Diamond – pioneer in developmental cognitive neuroscience; professor at The University of British Columbia
• Bird Thomas Baldwin – pioneer in child development
• Eugene Galanter – pioneer in cognitive psychology and psychometrics; Professor Emeritus, Columbia University
• Carol Gilligan – recipient of Grawemeyer Award; professor at New York University
• Rachel Hare-Mustin – feminist psychologist; Parliamentarian of the American Psychological Association

• 

  Isabel Briggs Myers, co-creater of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator.

  Isabel Myers – co-creator of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• Robert Rescorla – co-creator of the Rescorla-Wagner model; professor at University of Pennsylvania

Sports

• Ed Ayres (1963) – ultramarathon runner; winner of JFK 50 Mile; editor and publisher of Running Times magazine
• Robin Carpenter (2014) – professional road cyclist
• Ben Clime – NFL player
• Eran Ganot - college basketball head coach (University of Hawaii)
• Dick Hall – former Major League Baseball pitcher; appeared in three World Series for the Baltimore Orioles, 1969–71
• Ladule Lako LoSarah – international footballer for the Republic of South Sudan
• Morgan Langley – player with the Philadelphia Union in Major League Soccer
• Lee MacPhail - President of the American League (MLB), 1973-1984
• Tiny Maxwell – College Football Hall of Fame player and referee
• Curly Ogden - Major League Baseball pitcher
• Jack Ogden - Major League Baseball pitcher

Writers, journalists, and publishers

• Eliot Asinof –writer, especially about baseball
• Peter Bart – Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Variety
• Lauren Belfer – author of novel City of Light
• Peter Biskind – author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
• David G. Bradley – chair of The Atlantic Monthly and National Journal Group, Inc.
• Ben Brantley – chief theater critic of The New York Times
• Amy Fine Collins – author and contributor at Vanity Fair
• Heywood Hale Broun – sportswriter and CBS Sports commentator
• Arthur Chu – columnist and former contestant on Jeopardy!
• 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)
• Julie Falk (1998) – Executive Director of Bitch Media
• Jessica Fisher – poet, translator, critic; winner of the Rome Prize and Yale Series of Younger Poets

  

  Author Jonathan Franzen, class of 1981

• Jonathan Franzen – author of The Corrections; winner of the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction
• Daisy Fried (1989) – poet, author of My Brother is Getting Arrested Again and She Didn't Mean to Do It
• 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 winner); stories in The New Yorker, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Zoetrope All-Story, and National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts
• Arlie Russell Hochschild, sociologist and author
• Marni Hodgkin, children's book editor tech
• Anick Jesdanun (1991), technology reporter, editor, and the first "internet writer" in the history of the Associated Press history
• Josef Joffe – Editor in Chief, Die Zeit
• John Brady Kiesling – writer, former U.S. diplomat
• Christopher Lehmann-Haupt – journalist, book review and obit editor for New York Times
• Cynthia Leive – Editor in Chief, Glamour
• Helen Reimensnyder Martin (1868–1939) – novelist
• Daniel Menaker – fiction editor, The New Yorker, and Executive Editor-in-Chief, Random House
• James A. Michener – novelist
• Lulu Miller – writer, artist, and science reporter for National Public Radio
• Victor Navasky – publisher and Editorial Director of The Nation (1995–2005); Chair of Columbia Journalism Review
• Yongsoo Park (1994) - novelist; author of the novels Boy Genius, Las Cucarachas, the essay collection The Art of Eating Bitter : a Hausfrau Dad's Journey with Kids, and the memoir Rated R Boy: Growing Up Korean in 1980s Queens
• Drew Pearson – journalist
• Julie Phillips - journalist, writer, biographer
• 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
• Jonathan Shainin (2000) – head of opinion at The Guardian
• Anna Shechtman – journalist and crossword compiler
• Kenneth Turan – film critic of The Los Angeles Times
• Mark Vonnegut – physician and author, son of Kurt Vonnegut; his memoir of schizophrenia The Eden Express opens with his Swarthmore graduation
• Nora Waln – journalist and memoirist on China and Nazi Germany
• Micah White – creator of Occupy Wall Street
• Mary Wiltenburg – journalist
• Valerie Worth (d. 1994) – poet and writer; especially known for her children's poems
• Rowan Ricardo Phillips – poet and writer; author of Living Weapon: Poems and The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey

College leadership

Presidents

• Valerie Smith, 2015–
• Rebecca Chopp, 2009–2014
• 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

• Alan Baker, philosophy
• Amanda Bayer, economics
• Theodore B. Fernald, linguistics
• K. David Harrison, linguistics
• Gerald Levinson, music
• Donna Jo Napoli, linguistics
• Ron Tarver, art and art history
• Chinelo Okparanta, English literature
• Theodore B. Fernald, linguistics
• K. David Harrison, linguistics and cognitive science
• Rodney Evans, film and media studies
• Mark I. Wallace, religion, environmental studies
• Aimee Johnson, mathematics and statistics

Former faculty

• Solomon Asch, psychology
• Nathalie Anderson, English literature

• 

  Poet W. H. Auden, Swarthmore professor from 1942 to 1945

  W. H. Auden (poet), literature
• Monroe Beardsley, philosophy
• Brand Blanshard, philosophy
• Daniel J. Boorstin, history
• Richard Brandt, philosophy

• 

  Political scientist, diplomat, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ralph Bunche

  Ralph Bunche, political science
• Joseph Church, music
• Bruce Cumings, international relations
• James Freeman, music
• Robert Gallucci
• Kenneth Gergen, psychology
• Scott F. Gilbert, biology
• Lila R. Gleitman, linguistics
• Harold Clarke Goddard, English, Shakespeare studies
• Frank Hastings Griffin, chemistry
• Rush D. Holt, Jr., physics
• Raymond F. Hopkins, political science
• Philip Jefferson, economics
• Jennie Keith, anthropology
• Nannerl O. Keohane, political science
• Robert Keohane, political science
• Wolfgang Köhler, psychology
• James Kurth, political science, editor of Orbis
• Andrea Lee, English literature
• Joseph Leidy, natural history
• George W. Lewis, engineering
• Kenneth Lieberthal, political science
• James Magruder, theatre
• Michael Marissen, music
• Louis Massiah, black studies, film and media studies
• Ann McNamee, music
• Judith Moffett, English
• Jonathan D. Moreno
• Scott Nearing, economics
• Harold E. Pagliaro, English
• Frederic Pryor, economics

• 

  Barry Schwartz, Professor of Psychology from 1971 to 2016

  Maria L. Sanford, history
• Barry Schwartz, psychology
• Wolfgang F. Stolper, economics
• Judith G. Voet, chemistry and biochemistry
• Hans Wallach, psychology
• Kenneth Waltz, political science
• Clair Wilcox, economics