List of Wesleyan University administration and faculty

This is a partial list of notable people affiliated with Wesleyan University. It includes alumni and faculty of the institution.

Academia, past and present

 * Debby Applegate – former faculty, American history, 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography
 * Hannah Arendt – fellow 1961–1963, Center for Advanced Studies (now the Center for the Humanities), political theorist
 * Wilbur Olin Atwater (1865 Wesleyan B.S.) – first professor of chemistry; first to quantify the calorie; pioneer, utilization of respiration calorimeter
 * Reginald Bartholomew – former professor of government; former U.S. Ambassador to Italy, to Spain, to Lebanon
 * Edgar S. Brightman – faculty 1915–19, philosopher, promulgated the philosophy known as Boston personalism
 * Nathan Brody – emeritus professor of psychology; known for his work on intelligence and personality
 * Norman O. Brown – faculty 1946–196?; professor of classics; wrote "Love's Body" and Life Against Death
 * Judith Butler – faculty 1984–86; philosopher and gender theorist
 * Walter Guyton Cady – faculty 1902–46; professor of physics; Duddell Medal and Prize
 * Erica Chenoweth – faculty 2008–12; political scientist, expert on civil resistance movements, Grawemeyer Award winner
 * Joanne V. Creighton – faculty 1990–94; professor of English; interim president, Wesleyan; 17th president, Mount Holyoke College; interim president, Haverford College
 * Raymond Dodge – former professor of psychology; experimental psychologist
 * Henry Duckworth – faculty 1946–51; professor of physics; president, Royal Society of Canada (1971–72)
 * Alex Dupuy – professor emeritus of sociology
 * John Price Durbin – professor of natural science; Chaplain of the Senate, president of Dickinson College
 * Luigi R. Einaudi – former faculty; professor of government; acting Secretary General of the Organization of American States (2004–05)
 * Max Farrand – former professor of history
 * Stephen O. Garrison – founder of the Vineland Training School
 * Leslie H. Gelb – faculty 1964–67, department of history; Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting; director of project that produced the Pentagon Papers
 * Richard N. Goodwin – fellow 1965–67, Center for Advanced Studies; advisor, speech writer to U.S. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Senator Robert F. Kennedy
 * Lori Gruen – current faculty, professor of philosophy, working at the intersections of ethical theory and ethical practice
 * Philip Hallie – faculty for 32 years, philosopher; developed the model of institutional cruelty
 * Gustav Hedlund – mathematician, one of the founders of symbolic and topological dynamics; visiting professor of mathematics
 * Masami Imai – current faculty, economist
 * Karl William Kapp – faculty 1945–50; professor of economics; one of the leading 20th-century institutional economists
 * Eugene Marion Klaaren – emeritus professor, historian and professor of religion
 * Stanley Lebergott – emeritus professor, American-government economist and professor of economics; noted for historical unemployment statistics
 * Charles Lemert – emeritus professor, social theorist and sociologist
 * Clarence D. Long – former professor of economics; former member, U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, under President Dwight Eisenhower (1953–54, 1956–57)
 * Andrei Markovits – professor of comparative politics and German studies (1977–83)
 * Elizabeth A. McAlister — Professor of Religion, American Studies, African American Studies, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
 * David McClelland (1938 Wesleyan B.S.) – professor of psychology in the early 1950s
 * David McCullough – scholar-in-residence 1982, 1983; two National Book Awards (1978, 1982); two Pulitzer Prizes for Biography or Autobiography (1993, 2002); Presidential Medal of Freedom
 * Louis Mink – faculty 1952–1983; philosopher of history; responsible for what would later be called the linguistic turn in philosophy of history
 * Daniel Patrick Moynihan – fellow 1964–67, Center for Advanced Studies; later U.S. Senator, New York
 * Lawrence Olson – faculty 1966–1988; historian specializing in Japan; developed the Asian-studies program at Wesleyan
 * Satoshi Omura – visiting faculty in the early 1970s, honorary Max Tishler Professor of Chemistry, 2005; awarded honorary Doctor of Science, 1994; 2015 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
 * Scott Plous – current faculty, professor of psychology
 * Nelson W. Polsby – former faculty, political scientist; known for study of U.S. presidency and U.S. Congress
 * Nathan Pusey – former faculty, department of classics; later president of Lawrence University and 24th President of Harvard University
 * William North Rice (1865 Wesleyan graduate) – professor of geology
 * Francisco Rodríguez – former professor of economics and Latin American studies
 * Dana Royer – current faculty, professor of earth & environmental sciences
 * Walter Warwick Sawyer – faculty 1958–65, professor of mathematics
 * Hon. Barry R. Schaller – current faculty, teaches bioethics and public-health law, ethics and policy; associate justice, Connecticut Supreme Court
 * Elmer Eric Schattschneider – faculty, 1930–60, political scientist, namesake for award for best dissertation in U. S. in field of American politics
 * Carl E. Schorske – professor of history in the 1950s; Pulitzer Prize for History and MacArthur Fellowship
 * Frederick Slocum – first professor of astronomy, director of the Van Vleck Observatory (1915–44)
 * Richard Slotkin (MAAE Wesleyan graduate) – Olin Professor of English and American Studies, emeritus; American Academy of Arts and Sciences
 * William L. Storrs – faculty 1841–46, professor of law; also Congressman from Connecticut; Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court
 * Max Tishler – faculty 1970–89, professor, chemistry; National Medal of Science, Priestley Medal, National Inventors Hall of Fame
 * Hing Tong – former chairman, mathematics department; known for providing the original proof of the Katětov–Tong insertion theorem
 * Charles Kittredge True – faculty 1849–60, professor of intellectual and moral science
 * Jennifer Tucker – historian and biologist
 * John Monroe Van Vleck (1850 Wesleyan graduate) – faculty 1853–1904, emeritus 1904–12, professor of mathematics and astronomy
 * Clarence E. Walker – associate professor of history
 * Jan Willis – emeritus professor of religion and East Asian Studies
 * Woodrow Wilson – faculty 1888–90; professor, chair, history and political economy; 13th president, Princeton University; 28th President, United States; Nobel Peace Prize
 * Robert Coldwell Wood – former faculty, political scientist; former 1st Undersecretary and 2nd United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (1963–69)
 * John Wrench – former professor of mathematics, pioneer in using computers for mathematical calculations; National Academy of Sciences
 * Gary Yohe – current faculty, professor of economics; senior member, coordinating lead author, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; co-recipient, 2007 Nobel Peace Prize
 * Elisabeth Young-Bruehl – faculty 1974–c. 1995; biographer and psychotherapist

Arts and letters, past and present

 * Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – visiting writer 2008; MacArthur Fellowship (2008)
 * John Ashbery – Millet Writing Fellow 2010; MacArthur Fellowship; 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award
 * Jeanine Basinger – current faculty, c. 1970–present, film scholar
 * Anselm Berrigan – current faculty, poet, Best American Poetry of 2002, 2004
 * Ed Blackwell – artist in residence, late 1970s; recorded extensively with Ornette Coleman
 * Anthony Braxton – John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, retired 2013; MacArthur Fellowship; 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master
 * Robert E. Brown – faculty 1962–1979, professor of music, founded ethnomusicology program at Wesleyan
 * Neely Bruce – current faculty, professor of music; composer, conductor, pianist, scholar of American music
 * John Cage – faculty 1961, 1968, composer; affiliated with Wesleyan and collaborated with members of its Music Department from 1950s until his death in 1992
 * Tony Connor – current faculty, British poet and playwright, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
 * Junot Díaz – Millet Writing Fellow 2009; 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, National Book Critics Circle Award; MacArthur Fellowship (2012)
 * Annie Dillard – English faculty for 21 years; 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
 * Eiko & Koma – MacArthur Fellowship; Japanese performance duo; Eiko is current faculty
 * T. S. Eliot – Nobel Prize in Literature (1948), Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964); in the 1960s, special editorial consultant to Wesleyan University Press
 * Jimmy Garrison – artist in residence, ?–1976, bassist; long association with John Coltrane
 * Angel Gil-Ordoñez – former professor of music and Director of Orchestra Studies; Spanish conductor
 * Dana Gioia – visiting writer 1986–1989, American Book Award; chairman, National Endowment for the Arts (2003–2009)
 * Roger Mathew Grant – current faculty, expert in music theory
 * Donald Hall – 14th United States Poet Laureate, 2006–07; National Book Critics Circle Award, 1955; member, editorial board for poetry, Wesleyan University Press (1958–64)
 * Jon B. Higgins (Wesleyan B.A., M.A., PhD) – faculty 1978–84, scholar and performer of Carnatic Music, Fulbright Scholar
 * Ana Paula Höfling – professor of dance
 * Jay Hoggard (Wesleyan B.A. 1976) – current faculty, vibraphonist
 * Paul Horgan – adjunct professor of English, 1961–71; professor emeritus and permanent author-in-residence, 1971–95; twice winner, Pulitzer Prize for History (1955 and 1976); Bancroft Prize for History
 * Susan Howe – distinguished visiting writer and faculty 2010–11, 2011 Bollingen Prize
 * Quiara Alegría Hudes – Shapiro Distinguished Professor of Writing and Theater 2014–2016, visiting writer 2011–12; 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
 * Paul LaFarge – writer, English faculty as of 2010; taught writing at the university on and off since 2002
 * Alvin Lucier – John Spencer Camp Professor of Music 1970–2010; pioneering experimental composer
 * William Manchester – faculty 1955–2004; former emeritus professor of history; 2001 National Humanities Medal; The Death of a President, American Caesar
 * David P. McAllester – faculty 1947–86; professor, anthropology and music; co-founded Society for Ethnomusicology
 * Makanda Ken McIntyre – former professor of music
 * Lisa Moore – current faculty, international classical and jazz pianist
 * V. S. Naipaul – former visiting professor; Nobel Prize in Literature in fiction (2001); Man Booker Prize (1971)
 * Palghat Kollengode Viswanatha Narayanaswamy – artist in residence; considered to be among the finest Carnatic vocalists of the 20th century
 * Ramnad Raghavan – faculty for many years, South Indian virtuoso of the mridangam
 * S. Ramanathan (Wesleyan PhD, ethnomusicology) – faculty, singer (Carnatic music), and musicologist
 * T. Ranganathan – first artist in residence, beginning in 1963; Carnatic virtuoso of the mridangam
 * Jean Redpath – artist in residence, 1972–76
 * Kit Reed – science- and speculative-fiction writer, resident writer and creative writing faculty, 2008–2017
 * F.D. Reeve – faculty 1962–2002 (English and Russian literature), emeritus professor of letters (2002–2013); poet, translator
 * Phyllis Rose – faculty 1969–2005, professor of English; literary critic, essayist, biographer
 * George Saunders – visiting writer, MacArthur Fellowship (2006)
 * Jonathan Schell – journalist, author, visiting professor in writing 2000–02
 * Dani Shapiro – current faculty, professor of creative writing
 * Paula Sharp – former writer in residence in the College of Letters (2003–12)
 * Joseph Siry – current faculty, leading architectural historian, professor of art and art history
 * Mark Slobin – current faculty, professor of music
 * Charles Wilbert Snow – faculty 1921–1952; poet, professor of English; coach, debate team; founder, The Cardinal (literary magazine); Lieutenant Governor and Governor of Connecticut
 * Anuradha Sriram – India playback singer
 * Mark Strand – former visiting professor; fourth United States Poet Laureate, 1990–91; MacArthur Fellowship; 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
 * Sumarsam (Wesleyan M.A. 1976) – current faculty, former artist in residence; Javanese virtuoso, scholar of the gamelan
 * Marcus Thompson – former faculty, violist and viola d'amore player, recording artist and educator
 * Clifford Thornton – faculty 1969–75, jazz composer and musician, UNESCO counsellor on African-American education 1976–87, Black Panther Minister of Art
 * Deb Olin Unferth – former professor of English and creative writing; nominee, 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award; Pushcart Prizes 2005, 2011
 * T. Viswanathan (Wesleyan PhD, ethnomusicology 1975) – former professor of music, Carnatic flute virtuoso, 1992 National Heritage Fellowship recipient
 * Richard Wilbur – faculty c. 1950–80; professor of English; second United States Poet Laureate; twice winner, Pulitzer Prize (1957, 1989); Bollingen Prize
 * Elizabeth Willis – current faculty, poet; teaches creative writing and literature
 * Michiyo Yagi – visiting professor in late 1980s; Japanese musician, koto virtuoso
 * Gorō Yamaguchi – artist in residence, Japanese shakuhachi (vertical bamboo flute) virtuoso