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A group of four Hamilton faculty members has been awarded a grant of $177,950 through the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program to fund a shared-use state of the art computing cluster. The project, titled "MRI-R2: Acquisition of a High Performance Computing cluster with a fast interconnect to enable shared-use, college-wide computational investigations at Hamilton College” is led by Assistant Professor of Chemistry Adam Van Wynsberghe as principal investigator with Assistant Professor of Biology Wei-Jen Chang, Assistant Professor of Physics Natalia Connolly, and Assistant Professor of Anthropology Nathan Goodale contributing as co-principal investigators.

Hamilton College will host both a lecture presented by a cadet from the Air Force Academy and a panel discussion with professors from West Point, CUNY and NYU on the topic of “Outsourcing National Security: The Law and Politics of Military Contracting” on Thursday, Jan. 28, in Dwight Lounge. The event has been organized by Maynard-Knox Professor of Government and Law Frank Anechiarico and is free and open to the public.

Eleven Hamilton students and alumni convened in Manchester, Vt., on a backcountry Gnar Club trip over the winter break, Dec. 31 to Jan. 7. For those unfamiliar with the Hamilton Gnar Club, its club description explains that it is a “Grouping of sessioning and carousing fun makers often to be found in the hills, the forest, the park, or over the steps."

The exhibition “Private (dis) play” featuring the sketchbooks of contemporary artists Julie Hefferman, Vincent Desidirio, Kurt Kauper, Mira Schor, Tom Knechtel, Catherine Hower and Hamilton professors Ella Gant and Katharine Kuharic opens at the New York Academy of Art on Tuesday, Jan. 26, in New York City.

Dorothy Allison, author of the best-selling book Bastard Out of Carolina, will give a lecture titled “What we talk about when we talk about civil rights," at Hamilton on Wednesday, Jan. 27, at 7:30 p.m., in the Science Center’s Kennedy Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Cultural Education Center.

Andrew C. McCarthy, co-chair of the Center for Law and Counterterrorism, will discuss "A New Legal Framework For National Security" on Tuesday, Jan. 26, at 7:30 p.m., in the Fillius Events Barn at Hamilton. The lecture is part of The Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center 2009-10 series, “Crisis: Danger and Opportunity,” and is free and open to the public.

Assistant Professor of English Tina May Hall has published a story titled "By the Gleam of Her Teeth, She Will Light the Path Before Her" in the January issue of the online literary journal The Collagist.

Assistant Professor of Art Rebecca Murtaugh is exhibiting "Cyclical Perspective" at the Frist Center for Visual Arts in Nashville, Tenn. Her work is shown in the Martin Art Quest Gallery, which is an interactive space sponsoring art education for the public. The work will be on view until August 1.

Jay G. Williams '54, the Walcott-Bartlett Professor of Religious Studies, published an article, "Who Were the Magi?," on the Bible and Interpretation Web site. It is an attempt to connect the gospel of Matthew and the precession of the equinoxes.

When he traveled to Berlin in 1987, President Ronald Reagan said famously, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” And while the United States certainly played an important role in the end of the Cold War, there were other (arguably more significant) factors at work. In his book The Year that Changed the World: The Untold Story of the Fall of the Berlin Wall (Simon & Schuster, 9/09), author Michael Meyer ’74 contends that domestic resistance movements and certain key figures within the USSR at the time – in particular Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Németh – were the true impetuses behind the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. In so doing, Meyer rejects the “common knowledge” interpretation of Cold War history and uncovers hitherto-undervalued people, events, and perspectives.