Hamilton in the News

In an  essay in Inside Higher Ed titled “Change,” President Joan Hinde Stewart began with a reference to the recent leadership upheaval at the University of Virginia.  Published on August 16, the article  addressed how college presidents might consider their decision-making processes in making institutional changes.  Stewart included advice she offered in an invited presentation at the Mellon Foundation to new college presidents. She suggested to her new colleagues that they should first “identify those things that they would not alter.”

In a Huffington Post article titled “Why the Ryan Pick Fizzled,” Philip Klinkner, the James S. Sherman Professor of Government, discussed why assumed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s selection of U.S. Representative Paul Ryan as his vice president nominee didn't generate an overwhelmingly positive response among voters.

Opening with a discussion of Mr. Rogers' metaphor of the mind as a garden and lyrics from one of his songs on the importance of curiosity, President Joan Hinde Stewart addressed the purpose of education in her most recent Huffington Post blog. In “Minds and Gardens,” posted on Aug. 8, Stewart wrote, “Those who see the value of college in the amount of money a graduate earns miss a fundamental point: The purpose of an education is not simply to make a better living but, by enlivening the mind, to make a life worth living.

Daniel O’Kelly’s article titled “4 study abroad hurdles” appeared on the USA Today College site on Aug. 6. O’Kelly ’14 is interning this summer with the Study Abroad Team at Go Overseas and plans to study abroad in Paris this fall. In his article, O’Kelly addressed the fears and concerns that sometimes stop students from considering studying in another country.

Tyler Roberts ’12 was interviewed for a Wall Street Journal article “More Law Schools Haggle on Scholarships” (7/29/12). The piece describes how as the number of law school applicants has declined, some schools are negotiating scholarships and bargaining with prospective students while other schools don’t need to.

In an essay titled “What Would Jean Valjean Do?” and published on the Huffington Post, President Joan Hinde Stewart discussed “the transforming potential of individual example and community action” and “the redeeming value of great models, whether literary or historical.” Stewart employed Victor Hugo's Les Misérables and the author’s protagonist, Jean Valjean, as examples to illustrate these themes and to demonstrate how literary works from centuries past have relevance in today’s society.

Ann Owen, the Henry Platt Bristol Professor of Economics, was interviewed for a Wall Street Journal MarketWatch article titled “One Fed tool that gives Wall Street heartburn.” The piece addressed a desire by some to reduce the interest rates paid to banks for reserves they leave at the Federal Reserve.

The College conducted a large-scale emergency drill on campus on Friday, July 20, the third in a series of yearly exercises to ensure that the Hamilton Emergency Response Team (HERT) is proficient in handling emergencies utilizing the Incident Command System (ICS). “Hamilton considers these mock drills to be an important and essential part of the college’s emergency preparedness efforts,” said Director of Campus Safety Francis Manfredo.

The  Associated Press, in an article titled “SPIN METER: ‘Middle Class’ turns fuzzy in politics,” quoted Professor of Sociology Dennis Gilbert, author of The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality. Appearing in hundreds of news outlets in print and online on July 18 and 19, the article addressed how politicians use the term “middle class” and how their definitions vary.

On the eve of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s meeting with Egypt’s first freely-elected president this weekend, Edward “Ned” Walker ’62, the Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Global Political Theory and former ambassador to Egypt and Israel, spoke with a reporter from The Christian Science Monitor. The resulting article, “Hillary Clinton to meet Egypt’s new president: what is at stake” published on July 14, quoted Walker extensively.