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.

Name	Degree/year	Award category/year	Reason	Nobel profile
Christian B. Anfinsen	B.S., 1937	Chemistry, 1972	Ribonuclease/amino acid sequence research
David Baltimore	B.S., 1960	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.

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., 1968, 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 M. 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

List of alumni

Listed in alphabetical order by surname.

Architecture

• Kai Gutschow - PhD - Carnegie Mellon University, School of 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
• Lisa Albert – television producer and writer, Mad Men, Beautiful People, Living Single, Becker, Murphy Brown, Major Dad
• Mark Alburger - composer; founder / music director of San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra; music director of Goat Hall Productions; founder / editor-publisher of 21st-Century Music.
• Ed Ayres - environmentalist; writer; editor; publisher of Running Times magazine; author of God's Last Offer: Negotiating for a Sustainable Future and Crossing the Energy Divide: Moving from Fossil-Fuel Dependence to a Clean Energy Future
• Miyuki Baker – mixed-media artist and activist
• 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, 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
• David Dye – radio personality and host of the World Cafe
• Judith Edelman – musician
• Michael Forster Rothbart – photojournalist
• David Gelber – Executive Producer, 60 Minutes on CBS
• Evan Gregory - member of The Gregory Brothers (creators of Auto-tune the News)
• Steven Izenour – architect; co-author of Learning from Las Vegas
• Susan Jolles – harpist
• 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 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; former Curator-in-Chief of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Dawn Porter (1988) - documentary filmmaker, director of Gideon's Army, nominee for News & Documentary Emmy Award
• 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, Theater Breaking Through Barriers in New York City
• Peter Schickele – composer, often under the comic pseudonym P. D. Q. Bach
• Aaron Schwartz - actor, director and copyright lawyer in Toronto
• Tom Snyder - founder of Soup2Nuts (formerly Tom Snyder Productions) animation studio; co-creator and Executive Producer, Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist; Executive Producer, Home Movies
• Robert Storr – Dean of the Yale School of Art; curator; painter; critic; director of Venice Biennale 2007
• Darko Tresnjak (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
• 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, The Goldbergs
• Thomas Whitman - composer; Swarthore Associate Music Professor
• Paul Williams – founder and publisher of Crawdaddy!

Business

• Shola Abidoye (1997) – Co-Founding Manager, Africast.com
• Burt Alper (1991) – CEO, Catchword
• Neil R. Austrian (1961) – former President of NFL, Interim Chairman and CEO, Office Depot
• Sherry F. Bellamy (1974) – President and 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
• Frank Herbert Martin (1956) CEO of C F Martin & Company
• Nick Martin (2004) – founder and CEO of TechChange
• 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
• Arthur S. Obermayer, founder of the Moleculon Research Corporation; Jewish-American philanthropist.
• Thomas Rowe Price, Jr. (1919) – founder of T. Rowe Price
• Carl Russo (1979) – President and CEO, Calix Inc., former Vice President of Optical Strategy, Cisco Systems
• Kate Warne  - Principal, Investment Strategist, Edward Jones Investments
• Michael Wing (1970) – Vice President, Strategic Communications, IBM

Economics

• David Andrews (1982) - economics historian, professor at State University of New York at Oswego, author of Keynes and the British Humanist Tradition: The Moral Purpose of the Market
• Dean Baker (1981) – 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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

Education

• 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
• Kimberly Wright Cassidy – President, Bryn Mawr College
• Paul Courant – Provost, University of Michigan
• Sean M. Decatur – President, Kenyon College
• Christopher Edley, Jr. – Dean of University of California, Berkeley School of Law
• Neil R. Grabois – former Provost, Williams College; former President, Colgate University
• Tori Haring-Smith – President, Washington and Jefferson College
• Rachel Jacobs (1997)
• 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 (1982)- President-elect (19th), Brown University
• David H. Porter (1958) - former President, Skidmore College
• 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 – first woman in the US to earn a Ph.D.
• Phyllis Wise – Provost, University of Washington

Historians

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

Humanities and law

• T. Alexander Aleinikoff (1974) – Dean, Georgetown University Law Center (law school)
• Robert R. Ammerman (1952) - Emeritus Professor of Philosophy (Wittgenstein, analytic philosophy), University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Elizabeth Anderson – Professor of Philosophy (ethics, social and political philosophy), University of Michigan
• Adrienne Asch (1946-2013) – founding director of the Center for Ethics at Yeshiva University
• 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
• Cora Diamond – Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia
• Stephen Diamond – Professor of Law, University of Miami
• 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
• 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
• Randy Holland (1969) – Justice, Delaware Supreme Court
• 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)
• Richard D. Parker (1967) – professor, Harvard Law School
• 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
• 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
• Dorothy Kathryn Robinson (1972) – Vice President and General Counsel of Yale University
• Hillyer Rudisill III – Professor of Philosophy (philosophy, ethics), Trident Technical College
• 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
• Jerome Schiller – Emeritus Professor of Philosophy (ancient philosophy), Washington University
• 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
• Peter Unger – Professor of Philosophy (epistemology, metaphysics), New York University
• Melissa Zeiger - Professor of English Literature, Dartmouth College
• 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
• William J. Erdman II - physician; chairman of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
• 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 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)
• William H. Green – Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, leader of the Reaction Mechanism Generator project
• 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 mummified hadrosaur
• 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
• 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
• 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
• Richard Vallee – pathologist, Columbia University Medical Center, discoverer of cytoplasmic dynein
• Peter J. Weinberger – computer scientist; former head of CS Research at Bell Labs; inventor of the AWK programming language

Politics and government

• Samuel Assefa - Ethiopian Ambassador to the United States
• Erica Barks-Ruggles - U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda
• William H. Brown, Jr. - parliamentarian, the United States House of Representatives
• Armond Budish - Democratic Minority Leader of Ohio 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
• Dennis Cheng - national finance director of the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton
• 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 (UNFCCC)
• Robert P. George – member, President's Council on Bioethics; professor, Princeton University
• Mark Hanis – co-founder of the Genocide Intervention Network
• Leon Henderson - administrator of the Office of Price Administration, 1941-1942
• James Hormel – former ambassador to Luxembourg, first openly gay U.S. Ambassador
• Eugene M. Lang – philanthropist, founder of the I Have A Dream Foundation; 1996 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
• Carl Levin – Democratic U.S. Senator from Michigan
• 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, 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

Psychology

• Dorwin P. Cartwright – pioneer in topological psychology
• Adele Diamond – pioneer in developmental cognitive neuroscience; professor at The University of British Columbia
• Eugene Galanter – pioneer in cognitive psychology and psychometrics; Professor Emeritus, Columbia University
• Carol Gilligan – recipient of Grawemeyer Award; professor at New York University
• 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
• Dick Hall – former Major League Baseball pitcher; appeared in three World Series for the Baltimore Orioles, 1969–71
• Morgan Langley – player with the Philadelphia Union in Major League Soccer
• Ladulé Lako LoSarah – professional soccer player with FK Bregalnica Stip; first American to play in Macedonian Prva Liga
• Tiny Maxwell - College Football Hall of Fame player and referee

Technology

• Nick Martin (2004) – founder and CEO of TechChange

Writers, journalists, and publishers

• Rasheed Abou-Alsamh – Saudi writer and journalist
• Peter Bart – Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Variety
• 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 - professor of classics; author of Eleusis and Athens: Documents in Finance, Religion, and Politics in the Fifth Century B.C.
• Amy Fine Collins - special correspondent on fashion, culture, style, and design for Vanity Fair
• Samuel H. Day  – former 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)
• Julie Falk (1998) - Executive Director of Bitch Media
• 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
• 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 winner); stories in The New Yorker, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Zoetrope All-Story, and National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts
• Marni Hodgkin, children's book editor
• Josef Joffe – Editor in Chief, Die Zeit
• Christopher Lehmann-Haupt – journalist, book review and obit editor for New York Times
• Cynthia Leive – Editor in Chief, Glamour
• Mark Lotto – Senior Editor, GQ
• 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
• Martha Shirk – reporter, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1975-1996; co-author of On Their Own; Kitchen Table Entrepreneurs; Lives on the Line; and Super Family Vacations
• 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
• Jason Zengerle – Senior Editor, The New Republic

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

• K. David Harrison, linguistics
• Gerald Levinson, music
• Donna Jo Napoli, linguistics
• Barry Schwartz, psychology

Former faculty

• Solomon Asch, psychology
• W. H. Auden (poet), literature
• Frank Aydelotte, Swarthmore President
• Bird T. Baldwin, experimental psychology
• Monroe Beardsley, philosophy
• Brand Blanshard, philosophy
• Daniel J. Boorstin, history
• Richard Brandt, philosophy
• Ralph Bunche, political science
• Malcolm Clendenin, art history
• Bruce Cumings, international relations
• J. William Frost, religion
• Robert Gallucci
• Kenneth Gergen, psychology
• 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
• James Kurth, political science, editor of Orbis
• Joseph Leidy, natural history
• George W. Lewis, engineering
• Kenneth Lieberthal, political science
• Louis Massiah, black studies, film and media studies
• Judith Moffett, English
• Jonathan D. Moreno
• Scott Nearing, economics
• Frederic Pryor, economics
• Bernard Saffran, economics
• Maria L. Sanford, history
• Wolfgang F. Stolper, economics
• Judith G. Voet, chemistry and biochemistry
• Hans Wallach, psychology
• 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
• 2 Ashoka Fellowships