Hamilton in the News

Associate Professor of Government Peter Cannavò published "Individualism or Independence?," on Huffington Post on Sept. 10. His piece addressed the Republican Party's embrace of both economic individualism and personal independence as fundamental American values and suggested that the two ideals may be incompatible. Cannavò also argued that the American Founders supported personal independence but were not necessarily economic individualists.

An American Public Media’s Marketplace segment focused on a recent Pew Research Center study of what people think it takes to be middle class included quotes from an interview with Professor of Sociology Dennis Gilbert. During the Aug. 31 segment titled “Working your way into the middle class,” Gilbert said  that people’s priorities have changed. Gilbert is the author of The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality (Sage, 2011) and recently discussed the topic on Connecticut Public Radio.

USA Today published a front-page article titled “Student businesses market to lazy college classmates” featuring  HillFresh Laundry, the Hamilton-based service founded by Jeremy Young ’13 and run by a small team of Hamilton students.   The Aug. 28 piece focused on student entrepreneurial ventures that cater to student needs, from grocery shopping to laundry to shipping.

Peter Maher ’13 was featured on local television station YNN on Aug. 28 related to his research on the Rome, N.Y., police department. Maher, who served as an intern with the Rome Police department for two years, conducted a study on how policing is done in that city. It resulted in his recommendation that Rome form a Community Impact Unit (CIU), a group of four officers who will patrol by foot, by bicycle and only when necessary by car.

Professor of Sociology Dennis Gilbert was a guest on the Connecticut Public Radio (WNPR) morning call-in show “Where We Live” on Aug. 28.  He was part of a conversation on the middle class. Participants discussed political candidates’ views on the middle class as well as how it’s defined and how politicians use the term. Gilbert is the author of The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality.

National Public Radio science reporter Richard Harris interviewed Eugene Domack, the Joel W. Johnson Family Professor of Geosciences, for a segment on All Things Considered on Aug. 22 titled “Humans’ Role In Antarctic Ice Melt Is Unclear.”  Domack’s research, published in the journal Nature in 2005, provided evidence that the break-up of Antarctica’s Larsen B ice shelf was caused by a combination of long-term thinning over thousands of years and short term cumulative increases in surface air temperature that have exceeded the natural variation of regional climate during the Holocene period.

An article on The Washington Post website titled “Atheists find a new venue for the godless: on film,” and released by the Religion News Service, quoted Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies S. Brent Plate.  “An independent faith film festival will create film fests for similar reasons — to be with other, like-minded people, to laugh together and cry together and think together,” Plate said in the article that focused on the San Francisco-based, annual Atheist Film Festival. Published on Aug. 17, the article also appeared on the The Times-Picayune site.

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.