List of Claremont McKenna College people

Here follows a list of notable people associated with Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, including notable graduates, dropouts, and past and present faculty.

Notable alumni

Politics

• Muhammad Al-Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah '78 - Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kuwait
• Steve Bullock '88 – Governor of Montana (2012–); Attorney General, state of Montana (2009–2013)
• Ken Cheuvront '83 - member, Arizona State Senate
• Patrick J. Conroy '72 - 60th Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives
• Chuck DeVore '85 - member, California State Assembly, candidate for U.S. Senate
• David Dreier '75 - California Congressman, U.S. House of Representatives and Chairman of the House Rules Committee
• Johnny Ellis '82 - Minority Leader, Alaska State Senate
• Sean Elsbernd '97 - member, San Francisco Board of Supervisors
• Rob Hurtt '66 - California State Senate Republican Leader, 1995–1998
• Adam Kokesh '06 - political activist, talk radio host
• Tom Leppert '77 - Mayor of Dallas, Texas (2007-2011)
• Tyler Olson '98 - house member for the 38th district of Iowa.^[1]
• Surin Pitsuwan '72 - Secretary-General, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, former Thai Minister of Foreign Affairs
• Simon Salinas '78 - Monterey County Supervisor, former member of the California State Assembly

Nonprofit

• Hugh Gallagher - disability advocate, drafted the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968
• Henry Olsen - Vice President of the American Enterprise Institute^[2]

Business

• Michael Arrington '92 - Internet entrepreneur, Founder of Techcrunch, Co-founder of CrunchFund
• Sloane Citron '78 - magazine publisher
• Alexander Crutchfield '80 - financier, real estate investor, Senior Managing Director of Oasis Partners
• Robert Addison Day - former chairman and chief executive officer of Trust Company of the West; Chairman and President of the W. M. Keck Foundation
• Michael S. Jeffries '66 - Chairman and CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch Co.
• Henry Kravis '67 - Founding partner, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
• Michael Larson '80 - Chief Investment Officer of Cascade Investment, the investment vehicle for The Gates Foundation and the Gates' personal wealth.
• Patrick Lencioni '87 - best-selling management book author, corporate speaker
• Ashwin Navin '99 - President and co-founder of BitTorrent, Inc., founder of The Claremont Independent
• Augie Nieto '80 - founder of Life Fitness and Augie's Quest
• Thomas Pritzker '72 - Executive Chairman, Hyatt Corporation ^[3]
• George R. Roberts '66 - founding partner, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
• Peter Thum '90 - founder of Ethos Water, and social entrepreneur
• Peter Weinberg '79 - founder of Perella Weinberg Partners

Academia

• Orley Ashenfelter '64 - Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics at Princeton University; former editor of the American Economic Review
• Tibor R. Machan '65 - former editor of Reason magazine, Stanford Hoover Institution fellow and professor at Chapman University
• Vincent Phillip Muñoz (BA 1993), Tocqueville Associate Professor of Religion & Public Life in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame^[4]
• Jack L. Stark '57 - former CMC president
• Francisco Vázquez '72 - Professor and director of the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies at Sonoma State University

Entertainment

• Paul Brickman '71 - screenwriter, producer, and filmmaker; directed and wrote the screenplay for Risky Business^[5]
• Mason Gordon '97 - inventor of SlamBall ^[6]
• John King '86 - half of the music-producing duo The Dust Brothers
• Douglas Day Stewart '62 - screenwriter of An Officer and a Gentleman^[7]
• Dean Taylor '72 - Vice President of Baseball Operations, Assistant General Manager of the Kansas City Royals^[8]
• Claire Thomas '07 – food blogger and presenter of Food for Thought on Food Network

Military

• William W. Crouch '63 - retired United States Army four-star general; former Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army
• Ron Ridenhour '72 - My Lai massacre whistleblower

Writing and journalism

• David Enrich '01 - reporter, Wall Street Journal^[9]
• Gregg Jarrett '77 - anchor, Fox News Channel
• Charles C. Johnson '11 - conservative journalist

Dropouts and transfers

• Michael Feuer '80 - Los Angeles City Attorney, former California Assemblyman and L.A. City Councilman (transferred to Harvard, where he got his BA and JD)
• Blake Gottesman - personal aide to President George W. Bush
• Wes Parker - baseball player, Los Angeles Dodgers
• Robin Williams - actor and comedian ^[10] (transferred to College of Marin and later Juilliard)

Notable faculty

• William Ascher - Donald C. McKenna Professor of Government and Economics; served as Dean of the Faculty from 2000–2005; prolific author and winner of the G. David Huntoon, Sr., Award for Superior Teaching
• Fred Balitzer - professor of government. He was director of the Republican National Committee under President Ronald Reagan, chairman of Scholars for Reagan-Bush in 1984, and special emissary to the Sultan of Brunei. He helped bring about diplomatic relations with China and Israel and played a leading role in preventing efforts to make the District of Columbia a state.
• Ross Eckert - professor of economics who dedicated his life to cleaning up the blood supply. The matter affected him personally as he was a hemophiliac who contracted HIV/AIDS from a bad transfusion. Eckert worked with Elliott on market-incentives to reduce congestion. He also worked to rescue the U.S. Laws of the Sea from degradation. (deceased)
• Ward Elliott - researched market solutions to Los Angeles smog problem. Elliott drafted the economic-incentives of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. Thanks to his efforts, the number of first-stage smog-alerts days declined from one day in three in the 1960s to only one day in 1997.
• Diane Halpern - former president of the American Psychological Association
• Eric Helland — Professor of Economics, Senior Staff Economist, President's Council of Economic Advisers (2003–2004)
• Harry V. Jaffa - professor of political philosophy, scholar of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Aristotelian virtue, and the American founding. The National Review once had a cover story that described Jaffa as "the foremost contemporary interpreter of the American political tradition."
• Charles Kesler - editor of the Claremont Review of Books and noted conservative scholar
• Jamaica Kincaid - novelist
• Jonathan Petropoulos - historian and scholar of Holocaust-era looted art^[11]
• Mort Sahl - speech writer for President John F. Kennedy; famed comedian
• Michael Uhlmann - former Assistant Attorney General to President Gerald Ford; special assistant to President Ronald Reagan; reportedly convinced Justice Clarence Thomas to join the federal judiciary

References