Oberlin College

collegePrivateLiberal Arts

Oberlin College  link () Website
File:Formal Seal of Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, USA.svg
Motto	Learning and Labor
Formation	1833
Headquarters	Ohio,USA
Type	PrivateLiberal Arts
Other names	Yeomen, Yeowomen
Prestigious Ohio college with many ruling class and deep state alumni

Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest coeducational liberal arts college in the United States and the second oldest continuously operating coeducational institute of higher learning in the world. The Oberlin Conservatory of Music is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States. In 1835 Oberlin became one of the first colleges in the United States to admit African Americans, and in 1837 the first to admit women (other than Franklin College's brief experiment in the 1780s). It has been known since its founding for progressive student activism.

The College of Arts & Sciences offers more than 50 majors, minors, and concentrations. Oberlin is a member of the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Five Colleges of Ohio consortium. Since its founding, Oberlin has graduated 16 Rhodes Scholars, 20 Truman Scholars, three Nobel laureates, seven Pulitzer Prize winners, 12 MacArthur fellows, and 4 Rome Prize winners.

Professor fired for mentioning deep politics

In 2016 Oberlin College dismissed Joy Karega, an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition, for posts she made on social media — including that ISIS was really U.S. and Israeli intelligence personnel, and that they — not "Islamic terrorists" — had planned the attacks on the Paris offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo. She posted that Israel had downed Malaysian Airlines flight No. 17 over Ukraine, and voiced support for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s declaration that Zionists and Israeli Jews were behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

Oberlin’s board said that the college’s commitment to academic freedom stands, and that the case against Karega came down to “professional integrity and fitness.”

Karega said: "Since the publication of the posts, I have been inundated with hundreds of hatemail filled with slurs (racial, misogynist, classist), harassment and threats," she said. "To add insult to injury, for the last eight months, Oberlin has campaigned to implicate my professional fitness using arbitrary, inequitable and discriminatory practices. Indeed, the college launched an assault on my substantive rights."

Noticable Alumni

Award winners

Nobel laureates

• Stanley Cohen (M.A. zoology, 1945), Nobel (Physiology and Medicine, 1986), for "discoveries of growth factors"
• Robert Millikan (B.A. 1891), Nobel laureate (Physics, 1923) "for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect"
• Roger Wolcott Sperry (B.A. English 1935, M.A. psychology 1937), neurobiologist who studied split-brain research, Nobel laureate (Medicine, 1981), "for his discoveries concerning the functional specialization of the cerebral hemispheres"

Pulitzer Prize

• Carl Dennis (transferred to University of Chicago, University of Minnesota), Pulitzer prize-winning poet of Practical Gods; Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
• Michael Dirda (BA 1970), Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reviewer, author
• Du Yun (BM 2001), composer, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music for opera "Angel's Bone".
• Emily Nussbaum (BA 1988), winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism
• Christopher Rouse (BM 1971), winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Music for Trombone Concerto
• Vijay Seshadri (BA 1974), winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for 3 Sections
• George Walker (1941, honorary degree 1983), composer, first African American to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music (1996, for Lilacs)
• Thornton Wilder (transferred to Yale), playwright and novelist; three Pulitzer Prizes—for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for two plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth; U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day
• Franz Wright (BA< 1977), recipient of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Walking to Martha's Vineyard

MacArthur Fellows

The following alumni are fellows of the MacArthur Fellows Program from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. As this is an interdisciplinary award, they are listed here in addition to their listing in their field of accomplishment.

• Jad Abumrad (1995), radio producer, known for the NPR-distributed Radiolab
• Alison Bechdel (1981), pioneering LGBT cartoonist, author of Dykes to Watch Out For and Fun Home
• Claire Chase (2001), flautist and arts entrepreneur
• Jeremy Denk (1990), pianist and writer
• Rhiannon Giddens (2000), musician, MacArthur Fellowship awarded 2017
• Ralf Hotchkiss (1969), engineer and businessmanTemplate:Cn
• Bill Irwin (1973), actor
• Richard Lenski (1977), biologist
• Diane E. Meier (1973), doctor, MacArthur Fellowship awarded 2008
• Thylias Moss (1981), poet and playwright
• Julie Taymor (1974), director, MacArthur Fellowship awarded 1991
• Paul Wennberg (1985), chemist

Academia

• Carol Blanche Cotton (1904), African-American psychologist who worked on spastic paralysis in children
• Louisa Lydia Alexander (1856), schoolteacher
• Joshua Angrist (1982), labour market economist
• Lauren Berlant (1979), feminist, queer cultural studies scholar
• Helen E. Blackwell (1994), organic chemist and chemical biologist, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
• Christopher Browning (1968), historian of the Holocaust
• Samuel Charache, hematologist, discoverer of the first effective treatment for sickle cell disease
• Dr. Francois S. Clemmons (1997-2013), Alexander Twilight Artist in Residence, now Emeritus Professor at Middlebury College
• Johnnetta B. Cole (1957), first female African-American president of Spelman College, president of Bennett College 2002–07
• John R. Commons (1888), institutional economist and labor historian
• Ethel McGhee Davis (1923), educator, social worker, and college administrator
• John Millott Ellis (1851), acting President of Oberlin College and abolitionist
• George Fairchild (1862), third President of Kansas State University
• Peter Tyrrell Flawn (1947), geologist and former President of the University of Texas at Austin
• Jeffrey I. Gordon (1969), biologist and Professor
• Daniel McBride Graham (1843), inventor, Free Will Baptist pastor, first president of Hillsdale College
• Joseph L. Graves, Jr. (1977), Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Biological Studies
• James Monroe Gregory (transferred to Howard University), Dean of Collegiate Department at Howard University
• Erwin Griswold (1925), lawyer, Solicitor General of the United States and dean of Harvard Law School
• Walter Heller (1935), economist and educator
• Robert Hutchins, educational philosopher, president (1929–1945) and chancellor (1945–1951) of the University of Chicago
• Lawrence R. Jacobs, American political scientist and founder and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota
• Dale Jacquette (1975), analytic philosopher.
• Charlene Drew Jarvis (1962), president of Southeastern University
• Robert Jervis (1962), International Relations professor
• Barbara Johnson (1969), literary critic, professor
• Anne Osborn Krueger (1953), economist, World Bank Chief Economist (1982-1986)
• Edward O. Laumann (1960), George Herbert Mead Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology and the College; editor of the American Journal of Sociology (1978-1984, 1995-1997); Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago; Dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago; Provost of the University of Chicago; director of the Ogburn Stouffer Center for Population and Social Organization at the University of Chicago
• Sarah Cowles Little (1838–1912), educator
• Susie Linfield, critic, editor, journalist, author and NYU professor
• Maud Mandel (1989), historian, Dean of the College of Brown University; 18th president, Williams College
• John Jay McKelvey, Sr. (1884), Attorney, Founder of Harvard Law Review
• Alan Wilfrid Cranbrook Menzies FRSE (1877–1966), Scottish-born professor, chemist who taught at Princeton University.
• Steven Mintz (1973) – Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin
• Peter Molnar (1965), Professor of Geophysics at University of Colorado Boulder
• Roger Montgomery (1949), Dean of Architecture, City Planning, and Landscape Architecture, University of California, Berkeley
• Edward F. Mooney (1962), Professor of Religion at Syracuse University
• Anne Eugenia Felicia Morgan (1845–1909), professor, philosopher, writer, and game inventor
• L. L. Nunn, founder of Telluride Association and Deep Springs College
• Tom Novak (1977), Denit Trust Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Marketing, The George Washington University
• David Novak (1977), Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Daniel Orr (1954), professor, writer and chair of economics at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
• Mary Jane Patterson (1862), educator and first African-American woman to receive a B.A (A.B.) degree
• Hugh V. Perkins (1941), author and former professor of Education, Institute for Child Study, Department of Human Development, University of Maryland, College Park
• Laurence Perrine, author and professor
• Paul Pierson (1981), professor of political science
• Willard V. O. Quine (1930), philosopher and logician
• Albert Rees, former University of Chicago and Princeton economics professor, former Provost at Princeton, advisor to President Gerald Ford
• Charles A. Reich (1949), legal and social scholar
• Thomas L. Riis (1950), musicologist, specialist in American music
• William Sanders Scarborough (1875), classical scholar
• John E. Schwarz (1961), political scientist and author
• Robert E. Scott, (1965), law professor
• Donald S. Strong (1912-1995), political scientist.
• Kenneth Waltz, (1948), political science professor
• Barbara Wertheimer, (1946), historian and labor organizer
• C. Martin Wilbur (1931), historian, Sinologist
• Garnet C. Wilkinson (1902), educator and administrator
• Warren Wilson, namesake of Warren Wilson College in North Carolina
• Sheldon S. Wolin (1944), political theorist

Business

• Joani Blank (1959), founder of Good Vibrations
• Marc Canter (1980), co-founder of MacroMind (predecessor company of Macromedia)
• Jerry Greenfield (1973), co-founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream
• John Gutfreund (1951), executive, former CEO of Salomon Brothers Inc.; Business Week named him "King of Wall Street" in the 1980s
• Charles Martin Hall (1885), co-discoverer of the electrolytic process for producing aluminium; founder of Alcoa, Inc. (and contributor to the American spelling of "aluminum")
• Ralf Hotchkiss (1969), co-founder of Whirlwind Wheelchair International; 1989 MacArthur Foundation Fellow
• Kamal Quadir (1996), founder and CEO of bKash, which provides financial services to over 40 million customers
• David Shapira (1963), Executive Chairman Giant Eagle
• Nova Spivack (1991), entrepreneur

Politics, government

Premiers

• H. H. Kung (1906), banker and Premier of the Republic of China (1938–39)

Legislators

• Blanche Bruce, second African-American Senator from Mississippi, serving 1874–1881
• Yvette Clarke (transferred from Medgar Evers College), Democratic representative for New York's 11th congressional district, 2007–present
• Jacob Dolson Cox, politician and author, governor of Ohio (1866–1888), US Secretary of the Interior (1869–1870)
• Paul Drennan Cravath (1882), lawyer, partner of Cravath, Swaine & Moore; creator of the "Cravath System"; founding Vice President of the Council on Foreign Relations
• Richard A. Dawson, lawyer and state legislator in Arkansas
• Heather Deal (BA, 1983) City Councillor 2005–present, Vancouver City Council
• Ruth Hardy (BA, 1992) member, Vermont Senate
• John Langalibalele Dube, first (founding) President of the African National Congress
• Myron T. Herrick, 42nd Governor of Ohio
• Richard Hodges (1986), member of the Ohio House of Representatives, 1993–1999
• Hsiao Bi-khim (1993), member of the Legislative Yuan (Parliament) of Taiwan, representing the Democratic Progressive Party and the 1st Electoral District of Taipei City; Vice President of Liberal International
• Alfred A. Laun Jr., Wisconsin State Senator
• Jen Metzger (1987), New York State Senator, 2019-present
• Eduardo Mondlane (1953), Mozambican political leader
• Edward Schwartz (BA, 1965), at-large City Councilman 1984–87, Philadelphia City Council; first Councilman with a Pd.D (doctorate in political theory, Rutgers University); first Philadelphia Councilman to computerize his constituent services
• Delazon Smith, senator from Oregon. Smirh was expelled from Oberlin.
• Harrison A. Williams (1941), U.S. senator and congressman from New Jersey

Mayors

• Stephanie Rawlings Blake (1992), former Mayor of Baltimore
• Adrian Fenty (1992), former Mayor of Washington, D.C.

Executive council

• Bruce Cole (1964), chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities under George W. Bush
• Erwin Griswold (1925), solicitor general under presidents Johnson and Nixon
• Richard N. Haass (1973), president of the Council on Foreign Relations and former Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. Department of State
• Cynthia Hogan (1979), Counsel to the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, under President Obama
• Martha N. Johnson (1974), former official in the Clinton administration; Administrator of the United States General Services Administration
• Anne O. Krueger (1953), award-winning economist; Deputy Director of the International Monetary Fund; Oberlin trustee (1987–95)
• Robert Kuttner (1965), co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect; one of five co-founders of the Economic Policy Institute
• Charles Sawyer (1908), Secretary of Commerce to Harry S. Truman

Diplomats

• John Mercer Langston (1849), U.S. Congressman representing Virginia's 4th Congressional District; US minister to Haiti under president Rutherford B. Hayes
• Edwin O. Reischauer (1931), U.S. Ambassador to Japan, 1961–1966
• Marcie Berman Ries (1972), U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria (October 1, 2012–present)
• Carl Rowan (1947), U.S. ambassador to Finland (1963); deputy assistant Secretary of State under President Kennedy; director of U.S. Information Agency under President Johnson
• John S. Service (1931), foreign service officer, China Hand
• Durham Stevens (1871), assassinated diplomat to Japan
• Tsiang Tingfu (1918), ambassador from Republic of China to Russia (1936–1938), United Nations (1947–1962), and USA (1962–1965)

Other

• Tom Balmer (1974), Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court
• Lee Fisher (1973), former Lieutenant Governor and former Attorney General of Ohio
• Erwin Griswold (1925), lawyer, Solicitor General of the United States and dean of Harvard Law School
• Kan En Vong (1922), Chinese educator
• Ruth A. Parmelee (1907), Christian missionary
• Todd Portune (1980), former member of Cincinnati City Council (1993–2000); Hamilton County Commissioner (2001–2019)
• Albert Rees (1943), advisor to President Gerald Ford, former University of Chicago and Princeton economics professor, former Provost at Princeton
• Moses Fleetwood Walker, first African American major league baseball player
• Sylvia Williams (1957), former museum director for National Museum of African Art at Smithsonian Institution; pioneer in African art history

Activists

• Nan Aron (1970), founder and president of Alliance for Justice
• Kathleen Neal Cleaver (transferred to Barnard College), Senior Research Associate at Yale Law School known for her involvement in the Black Panther Party
• Henry Roe Cloud, Native American political leader
• Rennie Davis, anti-Vietnam war activist and one of the Chicago Seven
• Matilda Evans (1891), first African American woman to practice medicine in South Carolina; community health advocate
• Ida Gibbs (1884), educator, civil rights and women’s suffrage advocate
• John Mercer Langston (1849), early civil rights activist
• James Lawson (Graduate School of Theology, 1950s), theoretician and tactician of nonviolence in US civil rights movement
• Caroline F. Putnam (1848), abolitionist and educator
• Jerry Rubin, anti-Vietnam war activist and one of the Chicago Seven
• William F. Schulz (1971), former Executive Director of Amnesty International USA
• Barbara Seaman (1956), principal member of the women’s health feminism movement
• Peter Staley (1983), AIDS activist, founding director of the Treatment Action Group
• Lucy Stone (1847), feminist and abolitionist
• Anna Louise Strong (1905), activist and author
• Mary Church Terrell (1884/1888), author, activist
• John Todd (1841), abolitionist, conspirator with John Brown, founder of Tabor College
• Wayne Bidwell Wheeler (1894), attorney, prohibitionist
• Mary Evans Wilson (ca. 1897), civil rights activist

Journalism

Broadcast media

• Jad Abumrad, radio journalist, host and producer of Radiolab
• Alex Blumberg (1989), producer, This American Life
• Chris Broussard (1990), Fox Sports sports analyst
• Ben Calhoun (2001), radio journalist, producer for This American Life
• Jon Hamilton (1983), NPR science correspondent
• Aleks Krotoski, television and radio presenter ("Digital Human" on BBC Radio 4)
• Robert Krulwich (1969), television and radio journalist (RadioLab on WNYC)
• Roman Mars, radio producer and host, 99% Invisible on 91.7 KALW in San Francisco
• Seth Rudetsky (1988), radio host, Broadway actor, pianist, writer
• Alix Spiegel (1994), co-host of NPR's Invisibilia; producer for This American Life

Print and online

• Peter Baker (1988), New York Times senior White House correspondent and author
• Wendell Dabney
• Michael Duffy (1980), writer, Washington Bureau Chief and editor of Time magazine
• Kim France (1987), founding editor of Lucky magazine
• Lisa Jervis (1993), creator and editor of Bitch magazine
• Fred Kaplan (1976), journalist and Slate columnist
• James Kim (1992), senior CNET editor and technology analyst
• Michelle Malkin (1992), writer (Los Angeles Daily News, The Seattle Times), author (In Defense of Internment), political commentator
• James McBride (1979), journalist (Boston Globe, The Washington Post), author (The Color of Water), musician
• Adam Moss (1979), editor of New York magazine
• Emily Nussbaum (1988), television critic for The New Yorker magazine
• Jane Pratt (1984), creator of Sassy and Jane magazines
• Tim Riley (1983), NPR critic; author (Tell Me Why, Lennon: Man, Myth, Music); Emerson College journalism professor (aka Tim Mikesell)
• Carl T. Rowan (1947), journalist
• David Schlesinger (1982) Editor-in-Chief, Reuters news, Thomson Reuters
• Steve Silberman (1982), science writer for Wired
• Sonia Shah (1990), investigative journalist
• Sophia Yan (2009), reporter for Bloomberg News

Religion

• William Ament, controversial missionary to China
• Juanita Breckenridge Bates, Congregationalist minister, her application being the test case to determine the policy of the denomination; also first woman to be awarded a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Oberlin (1891)
• Hobart Baumann Amstutz, bishop in The Methodist Church
• Thanissaro Bhikkhu, abbot of a Buddhist monastery in California
• Antoinette Brown (1847), first ordained female minister in the U.S.
• John M. Brown Bishop of the AME Church
• Lewis Sperry Chafer (1891), theologian; one of the prominent proponents of Christian Dispensationalism; founder and first president of Dallas Theological Seminary
• Fanny Jackson Coppin (1865), influential educator and missionary
• Marcus Dale, Early African-American preacher in New Orleans
• Vernon Johns (1919), African-American preacher, widely hailed as the father of the civil rights movement
• William Weston Patton, African-American pastor, president of Howard University
• Martha Root (1890s), Hand of the Cause in the Bahá'í Faith
• Lorenzo Snow, fifth president and a prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• Henry Benjamin Whipple, Episcopal Bishop and advocate for the Native Americans, First Bishop of the Diocese of Minnesota

Science

See also: Nobel laureates

• Arthur L. Benton (1931), neuropsychologist
• Helen E. Blackwell (1994), organic chemist and chemical biologist, explorer of chemical signaling in bacteria
• Mary Ann Bickerdyke, Civil War nurse and hospital administrator, post-war veteran advocate
• Thaddeus Cahill (1889), physicist; inventor of the teleharmonium, the first electromechanical musical instrument
• Patricia Charache, Microbiologist and infectious disease specialist
• Kenneth Stewart Cole (1922), biophysicist, best known for creating the concept of the voltage clamp
• Joan Feynman (1948), solar astrophysicist at JPL in Pasadena, California Sister of Richard Feynman
• Thomas Ebbesen (1966), physical chemist, pioneer in the field of nanoscience for which he received the Kavli Prize
• Jim Fixx (1957), author of The Complete Book of Running
• Thomas Frieden (1982), Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Robert Galambos (1914–2010), researcher on bat echolocation<
• John Gofman (1939), scientist in the Manhattan Project; activist on issues with nuclear power and radiation danger
• Elisha Gray, inventor of the telephone beaten to the patent office by Alexander Graham Bell; credited with invention of the electromechanical oscillator
• Philip Hanawalt (1954), scientist, co-discoverer of DNA excision repair
• Robert Aimer Harper (1886), botanist, president of the Botanical Society of America
• Edward Haskell (1929), scientist and educator
• Ellen Hayes (1878) astronomer and mathematician
• Donald Henderson (1928-2016), epidemiologist<
• Ralph F. Hirschmann (1922–2009), biochemist who led synthesis of the first enzyme.
• Ernest Ingersoll, naturalist
• Richard Lenski (1977), biologist and 1996 MacArthur Fellow
• John E. Mack (1951), psychologist, author (A Prince of Our Disorder)
• Rollo May (1930), psychologist, author
• Catherine McBride-Chang (1989), psychologist, researcher in cross-cultural development of early literacy skills
• George Herbert Mead (1883), philosopher, leading figure of American pragmatism
• Ira Mellman (1973), cell biologist, discoverer of endosomes
• John Wesley Powell (1858), geologist and explorer<
• Anita Roberts (1964), molecular biologist who made pioneering observations of TGF beta
• Larry Squire (1963), Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at University of California, San Diego
• Lynne Talley (1976), Professor of Physical Oceanography, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
• Lauren V. Wood, allergist, immunologist, and Captain in the US Public Health Service
• Paul Wennberg (1985), chemist and 2002 MacArthur Fellow
• Felisa Wolfe-Simon, geomicrobiologist at the U.S. Geological Survey; Fellow of the NASA Astrobiology Institute