Top 8 Most Famous Academic Leavers

Regular readers know Monday is the day I typically post a fresh new podcast. But SoundtrackPro and I were having some disputes this weekend, causing technical difficulties that damn near made me toss the machine out the window. I have regained my cool, and hopefully my software has, too, so that I can get the interview up later on this week.

In the meantime, I present eight figures of inspiration for all of you who thought if you left academia, you’d never amount to anything. Know any other famous post-academics? Let me know! One of these days, these well-rounded brainiacs will appear on the Leaving Academia podcast!

8. Angus Reid. Canada’s most famous pollster got his Ph.D. in sociology from Carleton in 1974.

7. Michael Ignatieff. He’s the leader of the federal Liberal party (Canada’s official opposition–that’s how we roll here in a multi-party electoral system). He got his history Ph.D. in 1974 from Harvard.

6. Jennifer Baichwal. She holds an M.A. in theology and philosophy from McGill, and as she says in interviews, was “poised to continue on [as an academic] and become a teacher.” Film-going audiences know her as the director of the new documentary Acts of God (which recently opened at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto) and Manufactured Landscapes.

5. Camilla Gibb. After finishing her Ph.D. in social anthropology from Oxford, and during her post-doc at the University of Toronto, Gibb got the gift of $6,000 from a friend and six months’ time, during which she wrote her first–and best-selling novel. She’s never looked back.

4. Debbie Stoller. Before she garnered a loyal following of feminists and crafters, the founder of Bust magazine and author of the Bitch n Stitch books did her Ph.D. in the psychology of women at Yale.

3. Jimmy Wales. This young punk started his Ph.D. in financial mathematics before quitting ABD to become the founder of Wikipedia. The rest is history.

2. Buffy Sainte-Marie. As if she wasn’t busy enough touring the world, winning Academy Awards (for “Up Where We Belong”), and appearing on Sesame Street, Dr. Sainte-Marie took her Ph.D. in Fine Arts in 1984 from the University of Massachusetts.

1. Miuccia Prada. This is the academic-leaver that can make us all proud. As the head of the Prada fashion house, Dr. Prada has a Ph.D. in political science.

Update: Eagle-eyed readers have brought in fresh info about other famous smarty-panted academic dropouts: David Duchovny, Terence Malick, Steve Wolfram (the math/software dude), Brian May and, of course, Dr. Martin Luther King. Oh, what was that about being a failure if you leave academia, again…?

Update #2: Thanks to Feminist Philosophers, some folks on the WRK4US listserv got wind of this list. As a result, a whole new wave of famous dropouts has come to my attention! If you’re not on that listserv, here are the names that have been dished up by several different people (and I’m now going to admit I’m too lazy to verify these, but they have been dug up by, you know, scholars, so I think we can be pretty confident!). Know any more? Keep ‘em coming!

• “Don’t forget Tom Magliozzi (from Car Talk [on NPR]) — earned an MBA, taught at Boston-area universities, commented hilariously on the academic lifestyle in his book, but ultimately left academia to fix cars and
  become a radio star. [Another reader adds:] Actually, he has a Ph.D., too (in chemical engineering, I think).”
  
• “May I add to the list Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq Barham Saleh, who has a PhD in Oceanography and was a guest on Stephen Colbert’s show on Wednesday, June 10? When asked the question along the lines of “A PhD in Oceanography, what the hell were you planning to do with that in nearly landlocked Iraq,” the prime minister politely replied that the analytical skills he had gained during his PhD training serve him well as negotiates the complicated political situation that is Iraq.  I’m paraphrasing here, but the conversation can be watched online at www.colbertnation.com”
• “Bill Cosby, EdD (his dissertation was about Fat Albert!)”
• “Mayim Bialik (sp?), star of the 90s show “Blossom,” has a PhD in neuroscience, I believe. I think she works in this field now at a private company.”
• “D:ream keyboardist Brian Cox is a highly respected particle physicist at the University of Manchester.”
  
• “Also in rock music:
  Greg Graffin, Bad Religion (Ph.D., zoology)
  Milo Aukerman, Descendents (Ph.D., biochemistry)
  Dexter Holland, Offspring (M.A., Ph.D. candidate in Molecular Biology)”
• “Of course former democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, on the liberal end, and potential Republican presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on the conservative end  both have Ph.D.s in history and taught prior to becoming politicians.”
• “And Dr. Woodrow Wilson (politics and history from Johns Hopkins) was professor and president of Princeton before entering politics”
• “Paul Wellstone – PhD Poli Sci”
• “Ted Strickland, governor of Ohio, has a doctorate in psychology.”
• “Here’s a very famous academic leaver: Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of Britain, has a history Ph.D. from Edinburgh University. I know this not from my deep knowledge of British politics , but from watching Stephen Frears’s 2003 movie The Deal, prequel to 2006’s The Queen.”
• “Mathew Crawford got his PhD from Chicago in political philosophy, and became…  a successful motorcycle mechanic. His new book, Shopcraft as Soulcraft, is just out and causing quite a stir (see ChronHierEd Review today, NYTimes a few days ago). As he correctly points out, a good mechanic doing diagnosis is engaged in a very sophisticated cognitive task. So…. don’t forget the pleasures you may get from manual skills; they may be translatable into a good career. As he says; you’re not in any danger of being outsourced–you can’t get YOUR car repaired in China. Or your dinner cooked there.  Or your dog vetted there. Etc.”
• “Christian Lander (Stuff White People Like) dropped out of a Media Studies and English PhD.”
• “Yet another I recently learned of — Tom Wolfe, author of “Bonfire of the Vanities” has a PhD from Yale in American Studies.”
• “Rachel Maddow, Ph.D. in political science. I’m just saying… from Rhodes Scholar to yard boy to “Morning Zoo” DJ… this too can be your life outside of academia! Come out, come out, the water’s fine!”
• “One more example: Jack Welch. PhD Chemical Engineering I believe…. Google founders ABD?”
• The Black on Campus archive listing about Toni Morrison says she has “an M.F.A. from Cornell University (1955). After completing her master’s, Morrison taught English at Texas Southern University and at Howard University. After leaving academia in the mid-1960s, Morrison took a job in the publishing industry.”

Related posts:

1. Would you rather sell your kidney than get a non-academic job?
2. Leveraging your assets in your post-PhD job search
3. Dos and don’ts of the post-academic job application process
4. Podcast #5: “There’s definitely a place for Ph.D.s in politics.”
5. If you ARE going to look for academic work…

Tagged as: famous people