List of Antioch College people

This page lists notable alumni and former students, faculty, and administrators of Antioch College.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Alumni

Art, architecture, and engineering

• Emma Amos (B.A. 1968), postmodernist African-American painter and printmaker
• Kathan Brown (B.A. 1958), printmaker, writer, lecturer, entrepreneur and founder of Crown Point Press
• Wendyn Cadden (B.A. 1968), printmaker, activist, co-founder of Women's Press Collective, Oakland
• Peter Calthorpe (B.A. 1972), architect, urban designer, urban planner, and author; founding member of the Congress for the New Urbanism
• Jewell James Ebers (1946), electrical engineer
• Wendy Ewald (B.A. 1974), photographer, professor at Duke University
• Carole Harmel (B.A. 1969), photographer, artist, educator, co-founder of Artemisia Gallery women's cooperative in Chicago (1973)
• Peter Jacobs (B.A. 1961), landscape architect, Emeritus Professor of Landscape Architecture, Université de Montréal, awarded Order of Canada
• Brian Shure (B.A. 1974), has taught in the printmaking department at Rhode Island School of Design since 1996
• Leilah Weinraub (2003), filmmaker, conceptual artist

Activists

• John Bachtell (1978), chairman of the Communist Party USA
• Olympia Brown (1860), suffragist, women's rights activist, minister
• Mariana Wright Chapman (ca. 1857), social reformer, suffragist
• Lucy Salisbury Doolittle (1832–1908), philanthropist
• Leo Drey (1939), conservationist
• Philip Isely (1937), peace activist, writer and founder of WCPA and GREN/EFM
• Jeff Mackler (1963), national secretary of Socialist Action
• José Ramos-Horta (1984), co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, East Timor independence activist, Head of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Guinea-Bissau, former Prime Minister and President of East Timor
• Marty Rosenbluth (1999), immigration attorney and civil rights activist
• Coretta Scott King (1951), human rights activist and wife of Martin Luther King Jr.
• Frances Cress Welsing (1957), psychiatrist and author of The Isis Papers

Business

• Warren Bennis (1951), distinguished Professor of Business Administration at the University of Southern California; Chair of the Advisory Board of the Harvard University Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership; author of more than 30 books on leadership
• Margaret Isely, businesswomen, founder of the health food chain Natural Grocers
• Theodore Levitt (1949), economist, Harvard Professor
• Jay W. Lorsch (1955), Louis Kirstein Professor of Human Relations at the Harvard Business School

Education

• Edythe Scott Bagley (1947), Professor of Theater and Performing Arts, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania
• Drucilla Cornell (1978), philosopher, feminist theorist, and legal theorist
• Shelton H. Davis (1965), public-interest anthropologist
• Lisa Delpit (1974), author of Other People's Children; director of the Center for Urban Educational Excellence
• Frances Degen Horowitz (B.A. 1954), educator and psychologist, President Emerita of City University of New York Graduate School and University Center
• Deborah Meier (1954), educator, considered the founder of the modern small schools movement
• Tom Mooney (B.A. 1975), labor leader and teacher
• Brian Shure (B.A. 1974), teaching in the printmaking department at Rhode Island School of Design since 1996
• James A.F. Stoner (B.S. 1959 engineering), holder of James A.F. Stoner Chair in Global Quality Leadership at Fordham University, author
• Joan Straumanis (B.A. 1957 mathematics, political science), first female president of Antioch College, her alma mater; philosopher and women's studies pioneer at Denison University; dean at Kenyon College, Rollins College, Lehigh University, president also at Metropolitan College of New York.

Entertainment

• Idris Ackamoor (1973), musician, founder of jazz collective The Pyramids
• Peter Adair (1967), filmmaker
• Peggy Ahwesh (1978), filmmaker and video artist
• Ray Benson (1974), front man of Asleep at the Wheel, actor and voice actor
• Nick DeMartino, former Senior Vice President, Media and Technology for the American Film Institute
• Nathaniel Dorsky (1943), video artist and author
• Suzanne Fiol, founder of ISSUE Project Room
• John Flansburgh (1983), singer/songwriter, They Might Be Giants
• Herb Gardner (1958), playwright
• Miles Goodman (1972), film composer and record producer
• Theo Hakola (1977), singer/songwriter/musician and novelist
• John Hammond Jr., blues guitarist/vocalist
• Victoria Hochberg (1964), film/television writer/director
• Ken Jenkins (1963), actor on Scrubs
• Nick Katzman, blues musician
• Jorma Kaukonen (1962), guitarist/vocalist, Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna
• John Korty (1959), TV and screenwriter, Emmy for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Oscar for documentary of Japanese internment camps
• Peter Kurland, Academy Award-nominated sound mixer
• Arthur Lithgow (1938), actor, director, pioneer of regional theater
• Alan Lloyd, composer closely associated with the works of Robert Wilson
• Leonard Nimoy (MA 1977), actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer; played the role of Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek TV series
• Julia Reichert (BA 1970), documentary filmmaker, director, producer, Academy Award Winner- Documentary film
• Linda Reisman (BA 1980), film producer
• Cliff Robertson (1946), Academy Award-winning actor
• Rod Serling (1950), creator of The Twilight Zone TV series
• Louise Smith (BA 1977), playwright and actress; Obie Award recipient
• Jay Tuck (1968), television producer for ARD German television, author
• David Wilcox, folk musician and singer-songwriter
• Mia Zapata (1989), lead singer of The Gits

Government

• Chester G. Atkins (1970), former United States Representative
• Joseph H. Ball (1929), journalist, politician and businessman, United States Senator
• Bill Bradbury (1960), Oregon Secretary of State
• Lynn J. Bush (1948), Senior Judge for the United States Court of Federal Claims
• LaDoris Cordell (BA 1971), retired judge of the Superior Court of California
• John de Jongh (1981), United States Virgin Islands Governor
• LaShann Moutique DeArcy Hall (1992), District Judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
• Hattie N. Harrison, member of the Maryland House of Delegates
• Joanne Head, member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives
• A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. (1949), civil rights advocate; author; Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (1977–1993), and of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (1964–1977); Chief Judge of the Third Circuit from 1990 to 1991; received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995
• J. Warren Keifer, prominent U.S. politician during the 1880s, 30th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
• Gail D. Mathieu (1973), B.A., current United States Ambassador to Namibia and former United States Ambassador to Niger
• Eleanor Holmes Norton (1960), Congressional Delegate, representing the District of Columbia; Chair, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1977–1981 (first female Chair is USEEOC); Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center (1982–2019)
• Americus V. Rice, Civil War general, U.S. Representative
• E. Denise Simmons, mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the first openly lesbian African-American mayor of an American city
• Richard Socarides (BA 1976), political strategist, commentator
• Webster Street, Arizona Territorial Judge

Literature and journalism

• Lawrence Block (1960), author
• Peg Bracken (1940), humorist
• Eliza Archard Conner (1838–1912), journalist, lecturer, and feminist
• James Galvin (1974), poet and author
• Michael Goldfarb (1972), author and journalist
• Jaimy Gordon (1966), author of Lord of Misrule, winner of the National Book Award
• Karl Grossman (1964), journalist and author
• Virginia Hamilton (1957), children's books author and MacArthur Fellow
• Peter Irons (1966), legal historian and author
• Laurence Leamer (1964), author and journalist
• Franz Lidz (1973), journalist and author whose memoir, Unstrung Heroes, became a 1995 feature film directed by Diane Keaton
• Sylvia Nasar (1970), author, A Beautiful Mind
• Cary Nelson (1967), higher education activist, author
• Gregory Orr, poet and author
• Tito Perdue, novelist, attended Antioch (1956–57) but was sent down before graduation for cohabiting with a fellow student who was not yet his wife
• Marc Anthony Richardson (1995), novelist and artist, American Book Award winner for Year of the Rat
• John Robbins (1976), author of Diet for a New America; pioneer environmentalist; veganism advocate
• Bianca Stone (2006), poet and visual artist
• Mark Strand (1957), poet
• Nova Ren Suma (1997), author of young adult novels
• Ed Ward, journalist, writer, historian of rock
• Terri Windling (1979), influential mythic fiction and speculative fiction editor, author and artist

MacArthur Fellows

• Tim Barrett (B.A. 1973), papermaker
• Lisa Delpit (B.A. 1974), education reform leader
• Wendy Ewald (B.A. 1974), photographer
• Stephen Jay Gould (B.S. 1963), paleontologist; professor at Harvard University
• Virginia Hamilton (attended 1952–55), writer
• Sylvia A. Law (B.A. 1964), human rights lawyer
• Deborah Meier (attended 1949–1951), education reform leader
• Mark Strand (B.A. 1957), poet and writer

Science and medicine

• Barbara Almond (B.S. 1959), psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
• Joseph Young Bergen (1872), botanist
• Mario Capecchi (B.S. 1961), PhD Harvard University, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2007
• Don Clark (1953), clinical psychologist, author
• Leland C. Clark Jr. (B.S. 1941), PhD, biochemist and inventor
• George W. Comstock (1937), physician, public health expert, lead researcher in seminal studies demonstrating the effectiveness of isoniazid for treating latent tuberculosis infection
• William A. Gamson (1946), sociologist, president of American Sociological Association
• Clifford Geertz (1950), PhD. Harvard, Professor of Social Science, Univ. of Chicago and Princeton Univ.
• Stephen Jay Gould (1963), Harvard professor, geologist, evolutionary biologist, author
• Robert Manry (1949), nautical explorer
• Richard Pillard (1955), professor of psychiatry at Boston University; first openly gay psychiatrist in the U.S.
• Allan Pred (1957), geographer
• Sonya Rose (1958), sociologist and historian
• Joan Steitz (1963), molecular biologist and Sterling Professor at Yale University; 2018 Lasker Award recipient, Harvard PhD
• Judith G. Voet (B.S. 1963), professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Swarthmore College; author of several widely used biochemistry textbooks, PhD, University of Pennsylvania

Technology

• Brian Aker (B.S. 1994), open-source hacker

Faculty

• Irwin Abrams, professor of history, pioneer in the field of peace research
• Tony Conrad, video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician, composer, sound artist, teacher, and writer
• Louis C. Fraina, professor of economics, founding member of the Communisty Party in the United States
• G. Stanley Hall, professor of English and philosophy; first president of the American Psychological Association and Clark University
• Horace Mann, founding president of Antioch College and "father of American education"
• Arthur Ernest Morgan, president of Antioch and chairman of Tennessee Valley Authority
• Edward Orton, Sr., first president of the Ohio State University
• Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, author and educator
• Cecil Taylor, pianist and poet, pioneer of free jazz
• Hendrik Willem van Loon, historian, geographer, journalist, author