This page lists prominent, famous, and notable alumni of Reed College, an American institution of liberal arts and sciences, located in Portland, Oregon, along with their past and present positions. In addition to famous Reed College graduates, it also includes some famous Reedies who did not graduate.
| Name | Year/degree | Notability |
|---|---|---|
| Julia Adams | 1980 | Margaret H. Marshall Professor of Sociology at Yale University |
| Jon Appleton | 1961 | Composer; Arthur R. Virgin Professor of Music at Dartmouth College, Visiting Professor of Music at Stanford University |
| Karl W. Aschenbrenner | 1934 | Philosopher; professor emeritus at University of California, Berkeley |
| Louis T. Benezet | M.A. 1939 | President of Allegheny College, Colorado College, the Claremont Graduate University, and the State University of New York at Albany |
| Sacvan Bercovitch | N/A | (Did not graduate) Writer and cultural critic; Professor of American Literature, Harvard University |
| Walter Berns | N/A | (Did not graduate) Professor of political philosophy and constitutional law at Yale University, and Cornell University; Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute; recipient of the National Humanities Medal in 2005 |
| Charles Bigelow | 1967 | American type designer and historian; Professor of Type Design and Writing, Rochester Institute of Technology |
| Jonathan Boyarin | 1977 | Anthropologist; Thomas and Diann Mann Professor of Modern Jewish Studies, Departments of Anthropology and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University |
| Robert Brenner | 1964 | Marxist economic historian; Professor of History, UCLA; director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History |
| Joan Bresnan | 1966 | Linguist; architect of lexical functional grammar; Sadie Dernham Patek Professor in Humanities Emerita at Stanford University |
| Robert A. Brightman | 1973 | Anthropologist; Greenberg Professor of Native American Studies, Reed College |
| Peter Child | 1975 | American composer, teacher, and musical analyst; Professor of Music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and composer in residence with the New England Philharmonic |
| Jessica Coon | 2004 | Linguistics Professor at McGill University, Canada Research Chair in syntax and indigenous languages |
| Galen Cranz | 1966 | Professor Emerita of Architecture at the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley |
| Ann Cvetkovich | 1980 | Professor in the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation at Carleton University; Ellen Clayton Garwood Centennial Professor of English and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin |
| Shannon Lee Dawdy | 1988 | Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences, University of Chicago |
| Kai T. Erikson | 1953 | President, American Sociological Association and Professor at Yale University |
| Elizabeth Warnock Fernea | 1950 | Anthropologist and filmmaker; chairwoman of the Woman's Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin[1] |
| Janet Fitch | 1978 | Writer and professor of writing at the University of Southern California and Pomona College |
| Neil Fligstein | 1973 | Sociologist; Class of 1939 Chancellor's Professor at the University of California, Berkeley |
| David H. French | 1939 | Anthropologist and linguist |
| Victor Friedman | 1970 | Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Balkan and Slavic Linguistics, University of Chicago |
| David Grusky | 1980 | Sociologist; Barbara Kimball Browning Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University |
| Peter Gordon | 1988 | Intellectual historian; Amabel B. James Professor of History at Harvard University |
| Ted Robert Gurr | 1957 | Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University and Distinguished University Professor emeritus at the University of Maryland |
| Loyd Haberly | 1919 | Poet; Dean, Fairleigh Dickinson University |
| Peter Dobkin Hall | 1968 | Professor of History and Theory in the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College, City University of New York, and Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations |
| Carol Heimer | 1973 | Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University |
| David Hoggan | 1945 | Historian; professor at the University of Munich, San Francisco State College, the University of California at Berkeley, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Carthage College; known for promotion of Holocaust denial |
| Dell Hymes | 1950 | Anthropologist and linguist; Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education; president of the American Folklore Society, the Linguistic Society of America, the American Anthropological Association |
| Maurice Isserman | 1973 | Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History, Hamilton College |
| Don Kates | 1962 | Criminologist and lawyer |
| Gail M. Kelly | 1955 | Anthropologist, professor emerita at Reed College |
| Wallace T. MacCaffrey | 1942 | Historian of Elizabethan England; chaired the Harvard University history department twice |
| Brendan McConville | 1987 | Historian of early America; Professor of History at Boston University |
| William D. McElroy | 1939 | Biochemist; Chancellor, University of California, San Diego; former Director, National Science Foundation; president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science |
| Dennis B. McGilvray | 1965 | Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado at Boulder |
| Lisa Nakamura | 1987 | Coordinator of Digital Studies and the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of American Cultures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor |
| Christopher Newfield | 1980 | Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara |
| Kaori O'Connor | 1968 | Anthropologist |
| Christopher Phelps | 1988 | Political and intellectual historian; professor of History, University of Nottingham |
| Ray Raphael | 1965 | Historian |
| Diane Silvers Ravitch | N/A | (Did not graduate) Historian and U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education; Professor of History, New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development; Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution |
| Barbara Reskin | N/A | (Did not graduate) S. Frank Miyamoto Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington |
| Lawrence Rinder | 1983 | Dean of Graduate Studies at the California College of the Arts; former Curator of Contemporary Art at the Whitney Museum |
| Stephen Shapin | 1966 | Franklin L. Ford Research Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University; winner of the 2014 George Sarton Medal of the History of Science Society |
| Robert E. Slavin | 1972 | Psychologist; Director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education, Johns Hopkins University; cooperative learning, project Success for All |
| George Steinmetz | 1980 | Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Sociology and Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan |
| Robert K. Thomas | N/A | (Did not graduate) Literary critic; professor of English and academic Vice President, Brigham Young University |
| Katherine Verdery | 1970 | Julien J. Studley Faculty Scholar and Distinguished Professor, Anthropology Program, City University of New York Graduate Center[2] |
| Jon Westling | 1964 | President Emeritus and Professor of History at Boston University |
| Richard Wolin | 1974 | Intellectual historian; Distinguished Professor of History and Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center |
| Name | Year/degree | Notability |
|---|---|---|
| Yoram Bauman | 1995 | Economist and stand-up comedian |
| Dorothy Brady | 1925 | Economist and mathematician; Professor of Economics, University of Pennsylvania |
| Robert A. Brady | 1923 | Chief of the Standards Division, Consumers Advisory Board, National Recovery Administration, and member of the National Resources Planning Board during the New Deal; a founder of the Consumers Union; Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley |
| Kalman J. Cohen | 1951 | Professor of Economics, Duke University |
| Rose Friedman | N/A | (Did not graduate, left in 1930 after her sophomore year[3]) Economist and author; wife of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman |
| Mason Gaffney | 1948 | Economist; critic of neoclassical economics; director of the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation; professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles and Riverside |
| John V. Krutilla | 1949 | Economist; known for developing the concept of existence value; winner of the 1990 Volvo Environment Prize in 1990. |
| Dale W. Jorgenson | 1955 | Economist; professor at Harvard University; past president of the American Economic Association and the Econometric Society; chairman of Section 54, Economic Sciences, of the National Academy of Sciences; winner of the AEA's John Bates Clark Medal in 1971 |
| Michael Rothschild | 1963 | William Stuart Tod Professor of Economics and Public Affairs and Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University; known for introducing the concept of the mean-preserving spread with co-author Joseph Stiglitz |
| Ross Starr | N/A | (Did not graduate) Professor of Economics, University of California, San Diego |
| Nicolaus Tideman | 1965 | Senior Staff Economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisors; professor of economics at Virginia Tech, Harvard Kennedy School, University of Buckingham, and the American Institute for Economic Research; developed the ranked-pairs voting system |
| Lewis Webster Jones | 1921 | Economist for the League of Nations; President of Bennington College, the University of Arkansas, and of Rutgers University |
| Name | Year/degree | Notability |
|---|---|---|
| Sally Haslanger | 1977 | Ford Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; 2015 Spinoza Chair of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam; recipient of the American Philosophical Association's 2014 Joseph B. Gittler Award |
| Lisa Kemmerer | 1988 | Author and professor of philosophy and religion at Montana State University Billings |
| Eric T. Olson | 1986 | Professor of Philosophy, University of Sheffield; taught at Cambridge University |
| Jay Rosenberg | 1963 | Taylor Grandy Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| Sydney Shoemaker | 1953 | Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University |
| Guy Sircello | 1953 | Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Irvine and scholar of aesthetics |
| Allen W. Wood | 1964 | Professor of philosophy at Cornell University, Yale University, and Stanford University; Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor emeritus, Indiana University |
| Tom Wasow | 1967 | Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of Philosophy, emeritus, at Stanford University; co-founder of the Center for the Study of Language and Information |
| Name | Year/degree | Notability |
|---|---|---|
| Athena Aktipis | 2002 | American psychologist, director of the Human Generosity Project at Arizona State University |
| Daryl Bem | 1960 | Social psychologist and professor emeritus at Cornell University. |
| Allen Bergin | N/A | (Did not graduate) clinical psychologist known for his research on psychotherapy outcomes and the integration of psychotherapy and religion. |
| Jeanne Block | 1947 | Developmental psychologist, professor at Stanford University. |
| Robert Frager | 1961 | Social psychologist, founder of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology |
| M. Brewster Smith | 1939 | (Did not graduate) Professor of psychology, University of Chicago, past president of the American Psychological Association who testified against segregation in schools as an expert witness in the Brown v. Board of Education case. |
| Harry Harlow | N/A | (Did not graduate) Professor of psychology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, president of the American Psychological Association. |
| Herbert Jasper | 1928 | Professor of psychology, McGill University. |
| Eleanor Maccoby | N/A | (Did not graduate) Professor of psychology, Stanford University, member of the National Academy of Sciences, most recognized for scholarly contributions to the fields of gender studies and developmental psychology. |
| Roberto Malinow | 1979 | Shiley Chair in Alzheimer's Disease Research at the University of California, San Diego |
| Eleanor Rosch | 1960 | Professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley; primarily known for her work on categorization, and influence on the field of cognitive psychology. |
| Mary K. Rothbart | 1962 | Educational and developmental psychologist, professor at University of Oregon |
| Paul H. Taghert | 1975 | American chronobiologist, and professor of neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis. |
| Richard F. Thompson | 1953 | American behavioral neuroscientist, William M. Keck Professor of Psychology and Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California. |
| Gina G. Turrigiano | 1984 | American neuroscientist, and is the Levitan Chair of Vision Science at Brandeis University. |
| Cyma Van Petten | 1981 | American cognitive neuroscientist, known for electrophysiological studies on language, memory, and cognition. Professor of Psychology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. |
| Name | Year/date | Notability |
|---|---|---|
| John Alroy | 1989 | paleobiologist |
| Michael Balls | 1966 | British zoologist and professor, University of Nottingham |
| Alison Butler | 1977 | Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara |
| Arlene Blum | 1966 | Chemist and mountaineer |
| James Emory Eckenwalder | 1971 | Canadian botanist. |
| Donald Engelman | 1962 | Biochemist, Higgins Professor of Biochemistry at Yale University |
| R. Kip Guy | 1990 | American pharmaceutical chemist, dean of the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy. |
| Anne Hiltner | 1963 | American polymer scientist at Case Western Reserve University. |
| Daniel S. Kemp | 1958 | American organic chemist, emeritus professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. |
| Rachel E. Klevit | 1978 | Edmond H. Fischer-Washington Research Foundation Endowed Chair in Biochemistry at the University of Washington |
| Paul Knoepfler | 1989 | American biologist, writer, and blogger. He is a professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Human Anatomy, the Genome Center, and the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine. |
| Arthur H. Livermore | 1940 | American science educator. |
| Patricia Quinn | 1982 | Atmospheric Scientist, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Fellow of the American Geophysical Union; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences |
| Victor Nizet | 1984 | Professor of Pediatrics and Pharmacy at the University of California, San Diego |
| Mary Jo Ondrechen | 1974 | Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Northeastern University |
| Roger Perlmutter | 1973 | Biotechnologist; head of Research and Development at Amgen, Inc., former executive vice president of Merck & Co. |
| Mark Ptashne | 1961 | Molecular Biologist, Ludwig Chair of Molecular Biology at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center |
| Kenneth Raymond | 1964 | Professor of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley |
| Kevan Shokat | 1986 | Professor and Chair of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at University of California, San Francisco; Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator |
| Stephen C. Sillett | 1989 | Kenneth L. Fisher Chair in Redwood Forest Ecology for the Department of Biological Sciences at Humboldt State University. |
| Allah Verdi Mirza Farman Farmaian | 1951 | Son of nobleman Abdol Hossein Mirza Farmanfarma, biologist at Rutgers University and Princeton University |
| Bruce Voeller | 1956 | Biologist, AIDS researcher, gay-rights activist; coined the term AIDS |
