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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.

Economics lecturer Nesecan Balkan and Gwyn Kirk, a former Jane Watson Irwin Chair in Women’s Studies (1999 – 2001), traveled in El Salvador during spring break to observe sustainability projects. They are researching sustainable development in Central America with a focus on El Salvador, a country characterized by great inequality, legacies of colonization, militarism and war; environmental devastation; and the privatization of resources, especially water.

Sylvia de Swaan presented a slide talk about her work at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, N.Y., on Wednesday April 4, as the community service component of her 2006 photography fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her presentation, which was free and open to the public, included selections from her work of the last 15 years. She placed special emphasis on her ongoing project "Sub-version," which on a range of contemporary issues - terror, surveillance, mass media, post millennial anxiety, dual realities, shadowy threats and ominous rumors.

Phoebe Potter ’09 published a summary of the event “Moving Toward a Free Cuba” on the American Enterprise Institute’s web site with another intern from the University of Kansas, Gregory Trum Jr. The article summarized speeches regarding Cuba’s future after Fidel Castro dies.

Eric Kuhn ’09 presented a lecture in March in Washington, D.C. to students participating in “Year Up,” a program that provides urban young adults 18-24, with a combination of technical and professional skills, college credits, an educational stipend and corporate apprenticeship opportunities. Kuhn’s presentation was on new media and how the history of journalism has evolved with blogs, YouTube and citizen journalists playing a larger role than ever in effecting the 2008 political campaign. Kuhn integrated real life stories based on his experience working for WHCL 88.7 FM and the Spectator to talk about citizen journalism.

Randy Albelda, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, will speak about "Gender Inequality in the Labor Market" on March 29. This lecture is part of the Levitt Center Speaker Series titled “Inequality and Equity” and is free and open to the public.

Editor's Note: Many major news outlets have covered this announcement. Here are links to stories that appeared in USA Today, InsideHigherEd.com and Boston Globe. Hamilton College will no longer offer merit scholarships, beginning with the first-year class that enrolls in the fall of 2008. "We are discontinuing our merit scholarship program so that we can provide more need-based aid," said Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Monica Inzer. "We believe we are the first college or university in the U.S. to abandon its merit scholarship program."