Around 40% of U.S. presidents were brothers of college fraternities in some way. Post-graduate memberships and honorary memberships, however, serve to slightly bolster this field (and give some jealous hater fraternities who couldn’t foster their own president the ability to “claim” a president as theirs who, in reality, had little to nothing to do with the fraternity).
We’re here to present you with a definitive list of presidents who were actually in fraternities while in college; not just on paper now. Therefore, I will be recognizing neither honorary memberships nor post-graduate memberships on this list (though I will be recognizing dual fraternity memberships, a once common practice that no longer exists).
1. George Washington – N/A
2. John Adams – N/A
3. Thomas Jefferson – N/A
4. James Madison – N/A
5. James Monroe – N/A
6. John Quincy Adams – N/A
7. Andrew Jackson – N/A
8. Martin Van Buren – N/A
9. William Henry Harrison – N/A
10. John Tyler – N/A
11. James K. Polk – N/A
12. Zachary Taylor – N/A
13. Millard Fillmore – N/A
14. Franklin Pierce – N/A
15. James Buchanan – N/A
16. Abraham Lincoln – N/A
17. Andrew Johnson – N/A
18. Ulysses S. Grant – N/A
19. Rutherford B. Hayes – N/A
20. James Garfield – Delta Upsilon (Williams College)
21. Chester A. Arthur – Psi Upsilon (Union College)
22. Grover Cleveland – N/A
23. Benjamin Harrison – Phi Delta Theta (Miami (OH)), Delta Chi (Miami (OH))
24. Grover Cleveland – N/A
25. William McKinley – Sigma Alpha Epsilon (Mount Union College)
26. Teddy Roosevelt – Delta Kappa Epsilon (Harvard), Alpha Delta Phi (Harvard)
27. William Howard Taft – Psi Upsilon (Yale)
28. Woodrow Wilson – Phi Kappa Psi (Princeton)
29. Warren Harding – N/A
30. Calvin Coolidge – Phi Gamma Delta (Amherst College)
31. Herbert Hoover – N/A
32. Franklin D. Roosevelt – Delta Kappa Epsilon (Harvard)*, Alpha Delta Phi (Harvard)
33. Harry S. Truman – N/A
34. Dwight D. Eisenhower – N/A
35. John F. Kennedy – N/A
36. Lyndon B. Johnson – N/A
37. Richard Nixon – N/A
38. Gerald Ford – Delta Kappa Epsilon (Michigan)
39. Jimmy Carter – N/A
40. Ronald Reagan – Tau Kappa Epsilon (Eureka College)
41. George H.W. Bush – Delta Kappa Epsilon (Yale)
42. Bill Clinton – N/A
43. George W. Bush – Delta Kappa Epsilon (Yale)
44. Barack Obama – N/A
45. Donald Trump – N/A
46. Joe Biden – ???
