News

The momentum of the 4th annual Levitt Leadership Institute continued off-campus in Washington, D.C., the week of March 16. Led again by Former Ambassador Prudence Bushnell and Christine Powers, and later joined by Director of Hamilton’s Education Studies Program Susan Mason, the group applied leadership lessons learned in the first week in January, and viewed leadership-in-action in our nation’s capital.

Four Hamilton students who have created meaningful projects to address global problems through their work with the Levitt Public Affairs Center had the opportunity to share their ideas on a much larger stage when they were chosen to attend the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) in Miami on March 6-8. Ryan Ong ’16, Sharif Shrestha ’17, Tsion Tesfaye ’16 and Jose Vazquez ’15  - all of whom are Levitt Social Innovation Fellows or Public Service Interns – were among 1000 college and university students selected to take part in the prestigious conference.

Hamilton’s Levitt Center hosted two experts on March 4 for a lecture and discussion on the sexual abuse of minors. Ross Cheit, Brown University professor and author of the new book The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children, and Barry Anechiarico of the Counseling and Psychotherapy Center in Newton, Mass., discussed themes including the stigmatization of the survivors of sexual assault, the effects of punishment versus treatment of convicted sex offenders, and the psychological motivations behind sexual predators.

Ross Cheit, the author of  The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children, and  licensed clinical social worker Barry Anechiarico will present a lecture, “Politics, Psychology and the Sexual Abuse of Children: Dynamic Risk Factors Related to Sex Offending,” on Wednesday, March 4, at 4:15 p.m., in the Taylor Science Center’s Kennedy Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.

The start of the Spring 2015 semester at Hamilton marks the 10th anniversary of Students Helping in the Naturalization of Elders, or Project SHINE, operated through the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center.  The service-learning program helps students understand the needs and circumstances of others through work in the community.  Students act as English coaches to refugees and immigrants, and work one-on-one or in small groups with adult learners and young adults.

Janet Halley, the Royall Professor of Law at Harvard, discussed a realist analysis of rape law on Feb. 12. Halley has an extensive curriculum vitae and has also published several books and articles including: Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism, and Don't: A Reader's Guide to the Military Anti-Gay Policy. The lecture was sponsored by the Levitt Center.

Harvard Law School professor and author Janet Halley will give a lecture, “A Legal Realist Analysis of Rape Law: The Case of Rusk v. State,” on Thursday, Feb. 12, at 4:15 p.m., in the Kirner-Johnson Building’s Bradford Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public and sponsored by the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center.

With coffee cups in hand and notebooks out, 13 students met bright and early on Monday morning Jan. 12 – more than a week before classes started – to start the week-long Levitt Center Social Innovation Fellows program, led by Professor Anke Wessels, executive director of Cornell University’s Center for Transformative Action. With the help of Wessels, students were gathered to receive training and support for socially innovative projects and programs.

“There will never, ever, be another you. There never has been, and there never will be.” The bold statement from Prudence Bushnell, former Ambassador to Kenya and Guatemala as well as the former Sol M. Linowitz Visiting Professor of International Relations at Hamilton College, set the tone for the diverse group of Hamilton students participating in the 4th annual Levitt Leadership Institute, Jan. 12-16.

Hamilton research projects were featured in letters to the editor in both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal this week. On Jan. 13, a letter by Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies S. Brent Plate and Assistant Professor of Art Robert Knight about their research on the transition of sacred spaces was published by the Journal. A letter by Senior Director of Media Relations Vige Barrie about a Levitt Youth Poll was included in the Jan. 13 edition of the Times.