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At the annual December meeting of alumni leaders in New York City, Hamilton College's board of trustees announced that the institution has received more than $100 million in gifts toward its $175 million capital campaign goal. Publicly announced at last December's alumni meeting, the Excelsior Campaign is focused on raising funds for several major initiatives. Campaign priorities include support for new and expanded campus facilities, scholarships and faculty development.

First Lt. Michael Cleary, a graduate of the class of 2003, was killed Tuesday, Dec. 20, in Samarra, Iraq. On Tuesday, he had led his unit to a bomb factory which his unit destroyed and was returning from the mission when the unit was ambushed by insurgent forces. Cleary served with E Company, 1st Battalion and 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division and had graduated from Airborne School, Ranger School and Anti-Terrorist School.

At the annual December meeting of alumni leaders in New York City, Hamilton College’s board of trustees announced that the institution has received more than $100 million in gifts toward its $175 million capital campaign goal. Publicly announced at last December’s alumni meeting, the Excelsior Campaign is focused on raising funds for several major initiatives. Campaign priorities include support for new and expanded campus facilities, scholarships and faculty development.

In the last week, Cheng Li, William R. Kenan Professor of Government, has been interviewed on several radio shows recently and has been quoted in a newspaper article, all focused on the police shooting of farmers in Dongzhou, a seaside village near Hong Kong, who were protesting the loss of their farmland and access to fishing grounds without compensation.

Cheng Li, William R. Kenan Professor of Government, was quoted in an article in the South China Morning Post on December 8. The article, titled "Shanghai faces battle to retain growth record," discussed Shanghai's dilemma with how to maintain economic growth despite increased competition from other centers and central government moves to dampen property speculation. Li summarized the situation, "The top leaders in Shanghai were still obsessed with high-speed property development, without paying much attention to the potential property bubble and other socio-economic problems resulting from the single-minded construction mania."

Sharon Werning Rivera's article, "Interviewing Political Elites: Lessons from Russia," has been reprinted with an afterword in Quantitative Methods in Practice: Readings from PS (CQ Press). Co-authored with Polina Kozyreva and Eduard Sarovskii of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Sociology, the article discusses sampling, interviewing techniques and questionnaire design for surveys of political elites in post-communist societies. Quantitative Methods in Practice is a reader for introductory methods courses that uses practical cases to illustrate theories and methods.

Cheng Li, the William R. Kenan Professor of Government, was recently interviewed on current U.S.-China relations by the Beijing Review, China's only English weekly news magazine. The interview was conducted prior to President Bush's trip to China and meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao. Interviewed with Li were Stephen Roach, Chief Economist and Director of global economic analysis at Morgan Stanley, and James Dorn, China specialist and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Cato Institute.

Diane Fox, Freeman Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian Studies, will participate in a conference titled “New Approaches to Vietnam and the West” at West Connecticut State University from Dec. 2-4. Fox will participate in the “Vietnam and the West Today” panel and speak on “Agent Orange, Vietnam and the U.S.: Stories of Trauma and Survival.”

Elihu Root, Jr. (class of 1903), son of Nobel Peace Prize winner Elihu Root (class of 1864), often painted on the porch of his summer home at the top of College Hill Road in Clinton. An attorney by profession, Root, Jr., was publicly recognized as an accomplished artist who also served on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The same home in which he taught his grandchildren to paint and to appreciate art is now being transformed into a center for the study of art history and made an integral part of Hamilton's campus.

William A. Klemperer, the Erving Research Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, will visit Hamilton College as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar in Chemistry on Dec. 1-2. In addition to visiting informally with faculty and students, discussing research careers with chemistry and physics students and participating in regular classes in the chemistry and physics departments, Klemperer will present two seminars, a general seminar titled “The Chemistry of the Universe” on Thursday, Dec. 1 at 4 p.m. and a chemical physics seminar titled “Making and Breaking Weak Bonds” on Friday, Dec. 2 at 3 p.m. These events are jointly sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa and the Department of Chemistry and are free and open to the public.