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On April 15 the Hamilton students currently participating in the college’s Washington D.C. program attended a small group lecture with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsberg and students from Cornell and American University. The meeting took place in the Supreme Court’s Lawyers Lounge. Justice Ginsberg spoke for a short time about Belva Lockwood, one of her heroes. Lockwood became the first woman admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court in 1879. Ginsberg wrote a forward for the recently published book Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would be President by Jill Norgren.

Richard Wasserstrom, professor emeritus of philosophy at University of California, Santa Cruz, and a member of the California State Bar, is the final speaker in the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center 2006-2007 lecture series. Wasserstrom will speak on Monday, April 23, at 7:30 p.m. in the Fillius Events Barn. Titled “Inequality and Equity,” the series has focused on an examination of the causes and consequences of inequality both in the U.S. and at the global level, with an emphasis on policy aimed at achieving equitable outcomes.

“Crying Sun,” a documentary that focuses on the life stories of people from the high mountainous village of Zumsoy in the separatist region of Chechnya, Russia, will be screened on Thursday, April 19, at 7:30 p.m. in the Red Pit in the Kirner Johnson Building. The event, which is free and open to the public, will include a panel discussion on human rights violations in Chechnya following the screening of the film.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Government Peter Cannavo's forthcoming book The Working Landscape: Founding, Preservation, and the Politics of Place (MIT Press, 2007) was one of the featured titles in a "New Books in Environmental Political Theory" panel at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association. Cannavo presented the book, and it was reviewed - quite favorably - by the panel discussant. The meeting was held in March in Las Vegas.

Hamilton will host several film experts and directors in April, participants in the Forum for Images and Languages in Motion (F.I.L.M.). All events are scheduled in the Kirner-Johnson Auditorium and are free and open to the public. Series programs will be introduced and contextualized by program organizer and Visiting Professor of Art History Scott MacDonald.

Alan Cafruny, Henry Platt Bristol Professor of International Affairs, presented a paper on the transatlantic dimensions of European integration at the University of Bath at the British Political Science Association on Friday, April 13. The paper was co-authored with Magnus Ryner.

The Hamilton chapter of Democracy Matters will host a program featuring Joan Mandle, the organization's national executive director, on Wednesday, April 18, at 7 p.m. Mandle will present "Dirty Air & Clean Elections: Challenging Corporate Control of Environmental Policy." The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Red Pit in the Kirner Johnson Building.

On Tuesday, April 10, the Hamilton students currently participating in the college’s Washington D.C. program attended a debate between Senator John Kerry and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on “Global Climate Change and the Environment.” The New York University Brademas Center for the Study of Congress sponsored the event. After the debate, which was covered live by C-Span, Hamilton students were able to speak with Gingrich and Kerry, asking questions and taking pictures.

Professor of History Maurice Isserman was a panel member at a symposium noting the 25th anniversary of the publication of Cornell historian Nick Salvatore's prize-winning biography Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist. The symposium was held on Friday, March 30, at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians (OAH), held this year in Minneapolis. Isserman argued that Salvatore's interpretation of Debs was shaped by a "Sixties prism," emphasizing Debs' radical individualism rather than his role as a proponent of the class struggle.

On Wednesday, April 4, Visiting Professor of Film History Scott MacDonald lectured at Colgate University as part of Colgate's Art and Art History Lecture Series. In his talk, "Aspects of a Critical Cinema," MacDonald explored some of the ways in which the varied experiences provided by avant-garde films offer critiques of the conventions of mass culture as these conventions are embodied in commercial media; create revealing avenues into essential elements of the cinematic apparatus (the set of machines and practices that make motion-picture media possible); and retrain perception, instigating new forms of engagement with the spaces and times of everyday experience.