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Sean Zielenbach, senior consultant for the Chicago-based Woodstock Institute, will speak at Hamilton on “Evaluating Neighborhood Change” on Thursday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m. in the Science Center G041. This event is hosted by the Levitt Center and is free and open to the public. Zielenbach runs a Washington, DC-based private consulting firm specializing on issues related to community economic development. He has evaluated a number of public housing redevelopment endeavors, assessed neighborhood revitalization strategies in multiple cities, and was instrumental in the design of the federal New Markets Tax Credit program. Zielenbach publishes widely on topics related to affordable housing and community development.

According to the predictions of Benjamin Bowser, the African American middle class could completely disappear in as little as 20 years. Bowser, chair of the Department of Sociology and Social Services at California State University, East Bay, spoke on April 10 about his recent book “The Black Middle Class: Social Mobility – and Vulnerability,” in the Kirner-Johnson Red Pit at Hamilton. The former president of the Association of Black Sociologists has written extensively on race, ethnic relations and HIV/AIDS prevention.

In honor of the 6th annual Jazz Appreciation month, a national event sponsored mainly by the Herb Alpert Foundation, Hamilton is hosting a series of jazz performances.

Arch-enemies Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson will battle for the right to be called “master debater,” thanks to a bold trio of students from Hamilton College who have successfully goaded debaters from the University of Virginia to face off in the Hamilton-Jefferson Public Speaking Competition. The debate, initiated by seniors Michael Blasie, Scott Iseman and Joshua Agins, will take place on Saturday, April 14, at the University of Virginia’s campus in Charlottesville.

The Classics Department at Hamilton College is hosting a conference, "Alexander Hamilton and the Classics," on Wednesday, April 11, from 2:30-5:30 p.m. in the Kennedy Auditorium of the Science Center (G027). The event is free and the public is welcome to attend.

Robin Wong, a candidate for May graduation from Hamilton College, has been awarded a Fulbright Grant to China. She plans to study attitudes toward aging in China to investigate the relationship between age identity, life satisfaction and positive mental health. In her proposal Wong says, "Maintenance of an identity younger than one's actual age has been correlated to positive well-being in the U.S. but may bit hold true for adults in a collectivist culture such as China. Both explicit and implicit measures are necessary for a more complete view of age identity."

Evan Savage, '08, has been awarded an American Society of Pharmacognosy (ASP) Undergraduate Research Award for the summer of 2007. This highly competitive award will provide a stipend for Savage to pursue research on marine sponges with Robin Kinnel, the Silas D. Childs Professor of Chemistry, for 10 weeks.

Hamilton alumnus David Chanatry '80, a former NBC news producer, has been recognized by the Broadcast Education Association Media Arts Festival for two stories he reported from the Balkans last year. Chanatry, assistant professor of journalism at Utica College, won the audio short form category award for his coverage of an Albanian youth group. He also won the radio hard news category award for a story about lead poisoning affecting Roma refugees in Kosovo. Chanatry reported this year's award-winning stories for Public Radio International's "The World."

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.

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.