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The final Common Ground of the year examined a variety of hot topics that are top of mind for voters in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, including immigration, the economy, and abortion.

National and regional news organizations regularly interview Hamilton faculty, staff, alumni, and students for their expertise and perspectives on current events, and to feature programs and activities on campus. January’s news topics included DEI policies, prison writing, and book banning, among others.

During the fall semester, first-year students collected oral histories that brought to life issues such as immigration and slavery.

Differences in refugee policy under the Obama and Trump administrations was the topic of a discussion on Sept. 26 with Anne C. Richard, the Sol M. Linowitz Professor of International Affairs, and Shelly Callahan, the executive director of The Center, a Utica-based organization that supports refugees. Both lecturers have a deep background in refugee issues. Richard was the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration in the Obama administration from 2012 to 2017, and was a vice president of the International Rescue Committee. Through her work at The Center, Callahan has helped resettle hundreds of refugees and provide critical services.

“Don’t ever let anyone place limitations on your life,” said Martine Kalaw ’03 as she opened her discussion, Kindness: Community Through Inclusion, on Sept. 20.

Martine Kalaw ’03 recently completed her memoir titled Woman Without An Identity. The memoir is about her father, who she thought was dead, finding her through LinkedIn after Kalaw spent 13 years as an undocumented immigrant orphan and seven years in deportation.

The large numbers of migrants traveling into the European Union has left policymakers struggling to come up with a humanitarian and practical solution. Leila Simona Talani, professor of international political economy at King’s College London and scholar-in-residence at Hamilton’s Levitt Center, spoke recently on the migration crisis.

Hamilton College President David Wippman and Ben Casper, director of the Center for New Americans at the University of Minnesota Law School, discussed U.S. immigration policy during a Facebook Live event on Friday, April 28, at 11:30 a.m.

Matt Zeller ’04 published an op-ed on President Trump’s executive order and immigration ban in the Washington Post on Jan. 28. In “Trump shuts the door on men and women who have sacrificed for America,” Zeller wrote that the order “shut the door on thousands of foreign interpreters, our wartime allies, who have served alongside our military since 2001.