Despite the hope that President Obama’s clear victory last November might lead to a reduction in partisan polarization, the results of new survey conducted by the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center at Hamilton College indicate that American are as divided as ever. Full poll results will be released on Tuesday, May 21, at 10:30 a.m. at www.hamilton.edu/PostElectionPoll.

New York Assemblyman Ken Blankenbush (R-122nd District) visited Hamilton College on May 16. He responded to an invitation made during New York Student Aid Alliance Advocacy Day in February in Albany, N.Y., when a group of Hamilton students visited the state capital.  Director of Opportunity Programs Phyllis Breland ’80 said, “He took the time to show that he cared about the experiences and opinions of our Opportunity Program students.”

Professor of Religious Studies Heidi M. Ravven published a book titled The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will (The New Press, 2013).

Jim Helmer, Oral Communications Center coordinator, recently published a chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Horseracing and was interviewed for a Baltimore Sun article about commencement speakers

Four students were announced as winners of the 6th Worldview Photo Contest. Leah Berryhill ’13 won first place for the photo she took in Rome, Italy, on the day it snowed there for the first time in 36 years. “Just as we came out of the Metro and entered the Piazza del Popolo, the twin churches capped with snow were a sign of the unexpected beauty of winter,” she wrote in her accompanying essay.

Athina Chartelain ’13 has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) to Costa Rica. A communication major at Hamilton, she studied abroad in Madrid, Spain, in 2012.

Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies Brent Plate recently made presentations at Ithaca College and at the University of Toronto during the American Academy of Religion (AAR) Eastern International Regional Meeting.

Professor of French Joseph Mwantuali was interviewed with Coco Ramazani, the subject of his book Tell This to My Mother, on New Hampshire Public Radio on Friday May 10.

Recently, as part of the curriculum for the Chinese 495 Practicum of Chinese Language and Culture five Chinese concentrators ventured down to the bottom of the Hill to teach class at Clinton Elementary School.  The program, which collaborates with the Oneida-Herkimer-Madison Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), is funded through a U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant with Professor of Chinese De Bao Xu.

Hamilton’s annual Class & Charter Day celebration concluded the 2012-13 academic year on Monday, May 13, with a convocation in the Chapel. Students received prizes for academic achievement and teaching awards were given to faculty members.