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Joan Hinde Stewart, the 19th President of Hamilton College, was welcomed by the Hamilton community in a gathering at the College's Chapel on May 13. After meeting with various groups on campus, Dr. Stewart greeted the local media in a press conference announcing her appointment to the public. After a brief statement in which she shared her enthusiasm for her upcoming position and excitement at joining the Hamilton community, Dr. Stewart fielded questions.

Hamilton Professors Shelley Haley, Tracy Sharpley-Whiting and Todd Franklin and the members of Sophomore Seminar “Race Matters” 215 welcomed Robert Bernasconi, professor of philosophy at the University of Memphis, Dwight McBride, associate professor of African American studies at Northwestern University, and Tiffany Patterson, associate professor of history at Binghamton University to the hill to debate the three major texts they have been studying this semester. Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, and Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God were debated, with each speaker supporting a text and engaging in a debate with the other speakers and answering questions from the audience. After the final ballot, The Wretched of the Earth was voted the most influential book on race of the twentieth century. This event was sponsored by the Office of the Vice President, the Dean of Faculty, and the Department of Africana Studies.

Theodore Lowi, a professor at Cornell University and one of the leading political scientists in American History, visited the Hamilton College Government Department, speaking at the faculty and majors dinner. His talk, “Cold War II, reflections on Ideology” addressed the selection process for a model of foreign policy conduct, first pinpointing past presidential selections, and then explaining the inevitability of George W. Bush’s choice of what Lowi referred to as Napoleonic foreign policy. “The nature of a cold war,” Lowi claimed, “is that it is theory driven.” He went on to explain George W. Bush’s foreign policy as a “policy of no policy,” criticizing governors who become presidents for their narrow focus on domestic policy and specifically Bush for his faith based approach to foreign policy decisions, especially foreign aid.

Hamilton’s community service program encourages students to help out the surrounding community in a variety of ways, but some students have taken community volunteering to a new level. Three Hamilton students are currently volunteering with the Central Oneida County Volunteer Ambulance Corp (COCVAC), while eight volunteer with the Clinton Fire Department (CFD).

Michael Eric Dyson, the Avalon Foundation Professor in Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, an ordained Baptist minister and the author of several books gave a lecture, “George Bush, Clarence Thomas and 50 Cent,” at Hamilton College on April 14. Dyson, author of Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X and Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur, was the second speaker in The C. Christine Johnson Voices of Color Lecture Series. It was sponsored by the Office of the President, The Dean of Students, The Dean of Faculty and The Brothers Organization. Dyson’s talk addressed the Iraqi conflict, affirmative action, and Hip Hop as an outlet for social commentary.

The Career Center and the Pre-Law advising committee brought three Hamilton alumni back to the hill to meet and advise current students on the field of law, law school, and career options. The panalists had dinner with students, followed by a panal talk and discussion.

Margo Okazawa-Rey, an activist fighting for the security of women world wide, visited the Hamilton College campus on March 3 to discuss why women, in particular, should be against the war with Iraq. She began by citing some statistics on a war’s impact on women. According to Okazawa-Rey, the percentage of war victims who are civilians is now around 90%, most of whom are women, children and the elderly. She also said that the increase in the U.S. national budget for the war on terrorism is three times the size of the budgets of all of the “rogue nations” combined. Okazawa-Rey lamented that “after 9/11 I saw the use of women as a justification for war.”

Hamilton Faculty and Students came together on March 3 for a dramatic reading of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, a world wide theatrical protest of the War in Iraq. The play, about a planned conjugal strike by the women of Greece in order to create peace between the warring Athenians and Spartans, was retranslated for the event by Drue Robinson Hagan. The reading was sponsored by the Department of Classics, Theatre and Dance, Women’s Studies (Irwin Chair), the Kirkland Endowment, and Hamilton’s Peace and Justice Action Group, and benefited the Mohawk Valley Peace Coalition.

Thadious Davis, G.C. Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University spoke to a crowded chapel Thursday as guest in a lecture series to commemorate Black History Month. The series celebrates the centennial of W.E.B. DuBois’s work, The Souls of Black Folk and Black History Month. Davis said of the book, “it is primarily a book deeply engaged in feeling.” She went on to say that it “changed forever the methodology of racial research and the language of racial discourse.” The lecture was sponsored by the President’s office, with assistance from the Black Student Union.

Alejandro Portes, director of the Princeton Center of Immigration and Development and former president of the American Sociological Society, spoke of his ongoing study of second-generation immigrants in the Chapel on Wednesday. Portes’ study showed that “the settlement process of second generation immigrants sets the course of adaptation, setting the character of immigrant’s ethnic communities.” Portes was the latest speaker in the Levitt Center’s year long lecture series on immigration and global citizenship.