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Rama Alhabian joined the faculty in August as assistant professor of Arabic studies. See what she has to say about her research interests and her first semester at Hamilton.

Hamilton welcomed 51 new faculty members including eight new tenure-track in addition to visiting professors, lecturers, and teaching fellows for the 2021-22 academic year. The College is in the midst of a 10-year period, begun in 2015, during which nearly half of its faculty will reach average retirement age.

That moment you realize you can take any course that sounds interesting: When it happened to first-year student Elliot Plaut ’19, he opted for Arabic.

Brenda Narvaez '17 and Rachel Williams ’17 have been awarded the U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship (CLS). Narvaez will study Arabic will study in Oman and Williams will study Arabic in Morocco.

With aspirations and passions inspired in part by his Hamilton professors and undergraduate experience abroad, Redwan Saleh ’13 entered law school interested in civil rights law and complex litigation.

With extensive media coverage of gruesome acts committed by ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Jihadists, the Taliban and the Boko Haram, to name a few, many Americans wonder why Islam lends itself so readily to violent extremism. The same question has been recently raised on-campus by the Enquiry, a weekly opinion editorial sponsored by the Alexander Hamilton Institute, prompting the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and the Arabic and Middle East Club (AMEC) to invite a panel of experts to campus in an effort to deepen the community’s understanding of the connection, or lack thereof, between Islam and extremism.

Hamilton College will host a panel titled “Islam: A Religion of Extremism?” with a panel of experts, including former U.S. ambassadors and faculty with expertise in the Middle East, on Wednesday, Feb. 11, at 4:15 p.m., in the Chapel. The discussion is free and open to the public.

Richard Karrat ’12, a candidate for May graduation, has been awarded a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship to Jordan. A Dean’s List student, Karrat is a French and world politics major at Hamilton.

Mireille Koukjian, visiting instructor of critical languages, presented a lecture titled “Including Story Boards in Arabic Instruction” at the 2010 Arabic LEARN Conference held at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point

Students from first and second year Arabic classes in the Critical Languages Program (CLP) visited the Mosque located on Court Street in Utica on Dec. 4. They were accompanied by Mireille Koukjian, instructor of Arabic; Ahmad Alshorman, Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant; Mary Beth Barth, director of the CLP; and Aaron Spevack, visiting professor of religious studies.