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In a Huffington Post essay titled “The New Washington Economics,” Government Professor P. Gary Wyckoff questioned the financial soundness of the sequester.  In the March 21 posting, he addressed the economic reasons why the sequester may be quite detrimental to the economy while not reducing the deficit significantly.

In response to an attack on CIA Director John Brennan for taking the oath of office with a hand on George Washington's copy of the Constitution rather than the Bible, Visiting Assistant Professor of History John Ragosta wrote a response in an essay published by The Huffington Post. In “Bravo for Brennan!,” which appeared on the publication’s website on March 14,  Ragosta explained that “The Constitution does not require that a Bible be used for the oath of office.

Despite a weekend full of committee meetings, members of the Hamilton Board of Trustees still found many opportunities to engage one-on-one and collectively with students, faculty and staff during the Board's quarterly meeting March 1-2 in Clinton. Here are a few occasions of those occasions.

The Associated Press quoted Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Nigel Westmaas in an article titled “Guyana Officials stay nearly twenty years in mandates.” Westmaas discussed the country’s failure to hold municipal elections for nearly 20 years. Published on March 1, the article appeared in many news outlets including The Washington Post.

USA Today quoted a study co-authored by Assistant Dean of Faculty for Institutional Research Gordon Hewitt in an article titled “Crossing party lines: Individual decision or university influence?” on the publication’s college website. The study, titled “Indoctrination U.? Faculty Ideology and Changes in Student Political Orientation” appeared in PS: Political Science & Politics in October 2008.

Associate Professor of Sociology Jenny Irons reacted quickly to a serious error made by The Daily Show's Jon Stewart last week when, in Iron’s words, he “lampooned Dick Molpus.” The white former Secretary of State and civil rights champion, Molpus was responsible for registering Mississippi’s 1995 decision to ratify the 13th amendment abolishing slavery. Irons, who had worked for Molpus in the 1990s, wrote an opinion piece in the Huffington Post titled “Civil Rights Champion Falsely Accused by Jon Stewart” in which she corrected Stewart's mischaracterization.

In a unique approach to soliciting college gifts, Hamilton’s Associate Director of Annual Giving Paul Ryan ’02 will host a 24-hour fund-raising radio broadcast marathon beginning at midnight on Friday, March 1.  The Power of Many will be broadcast on Hamilton FM station WHCL 88.7, as Ryan interviews alumni around the country with the goal of generating a minimum of 500 gifts for the college.

New Scientist magazine quoted Ernest Williams, the William R. Kenan Professor of Biology,  in “The chilly secret to monarch migration,” an article that examined possible trigger prompting these butterflies to leave the warmth of Mexico to travel to the United States in the spring. In the Feb. 17 article, Williams commented on how warming temperatures might change migration patterns.

In in the wake of an exam boycott recently at Johns Hopkins University, InsideHigherEd reported on a different boycott 25 years earlier on Hamilton's campus.  "Game of Theories," the story of Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology Dan Chambliss’ challenge to students in his introductory sociology courses and how first-year student John Werner '92 successfully  met it, was retold on Feb. 22.

Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies S. Brent Plate says, “This year's Oscar line-up is once again rife with religious references, and the entertainment industry may be overtaking religious institutions as the prime mythmakers and ritual producers in a society where the 'nones' are on the rise.”