Hamilton in the News

Professor of Anthropology Emeritus Douglas Raybeck was interviewed for a Philadelphia Inquirer article,"Puncturing pols online," that appeared in the Sunday, April 13, issue of the paper. The piece addressed how members of the "proletariat," via Internet submissions, are helping define how a wide range of voters see the presidential candidates, in contrast to past campaigns during which opinions were formed via the quips and jokes of professional television pundits.

Cheng Li, William R. Kenan Professor of Government and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, will be a guest on the nationally syndicated Diane Rehm Show on Thursday, April 10, at 10 a.m. The topic of the program will be the Beijing Olympics. Li is the editor of the recently published book, China's Changing Political Landscape: Prospects for Democracy.

A national study that examined faculty influence on the political views of college students and that found no evidence of faculty indoctrination was the subject of an Associated Press article and another in InsideHigherEd.com. Hamilton Assistant Dean of Faculty for Institutional Research Gordon Hewitt and Mack Mariani, a government professor at Xavier University, were the study's authors.

Kevin Rowe '10 was featured in an article in his local newspaper, Cadence (Grand Rapids, Mich.), about his recent Alternative Spring Break trip to Biloxi, Miss. Rowe was part of a group of 150 students from a number of colleges who worked with hands on Gulf Coast, a program of the Points of Light Foundation and Hands On Network – a network of nonprofit organizations around the world that inspire volunteers, create leaders and change lives and communities through effective volunteer action. 

Hamilton's Jazz Archive is featured in the April issue of JazzTimes in an article titled "Swinging Spoken Words." The writer, Nat Hentoff, visited Hamilton and spoke with Monk Rowe, the Joe Williams Director of the Jazz Archive. Hentoff noted that when he saw the video interviews with 280 jazz musicians "it was for me like hearing the voices of participants in the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, where our swinging liberties were being improvised by James Madison and other sidemen and set down for posterity."

Associate Professor of Economics Ann Owen was quoted on Wednesday, March 19, in a National Public Radio Morning Edition segment and in a Christian Science Monitor article, both of which addressed this week's Federal Reserve interest rate cut.

"In the past five years, we have filled the equivalent of 40 percent of the graves in the American cemetery at Omaha Beach. Some of our political leaders say they would be willing to have us fight on in Iraq 100 years … To what end?" wrote Maurice Isserman, James L. Ferguson Professor of History, in an opinion piece in the Observer-Dispatch on March 16.

Both Mt. Holyoke and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs hosted presentations by Cheng Li, William R. Kenan Professor of Government and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, during the week of March 3. "The Emerging Leadership in China: Policy Priorities" was Li's topic at the March 6 presentation in Chicago at which he discussed the 11th National People's Congress and subsequent senior leadership changes. Li shared his thoughts on the policy priorities of the China's new leadership and how the country's economic policy might unfold as well as possible eventual successors of President Hu Jintao.

A CBSNews.com article, "Primary Collars Updated," examined examples of presidential candidates successfully using attack ads against opponents that incorporated barbs originally launched during primary races. Several of these were from a blog written by Philip Klinkner, James S. Sherman Associate Professor of Government and Associate Dean of Students. 

Associate Professor of Economics Ann Owen commented on the most recent Federal Reserve decision in an interview titled "New plan could risk confidence in Fed" on American Public Radio's Marketplace. The broadcast  addressed the Fed's plan to fix the credit crunch. Owen observed that if the Fed's plan fails, there is a risk that the public will lose confidence in the Fed precipitating serious long-term consequences.