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Jon Milgrom ‘08 spent his summer living amid reptiles. Milgrom and Visiting Professor of Biology Peter Zani engaged in a non-traditional summer project. Milgrom was awarded the Renwick Prize in Biology, which supports summer scholarship in biology and Zani was conducting research on behavioral responses of lizards to a snake predator.

Thirteen Hamilton students received college funding to pursue an unpaid internship over the summer. While pursuing internships is an increasingly popular move for students, the realities pose certain problems. Most available positions are unpaid, requiring students to fund their own housing and living expenses as well as working for free, all in pursuit of relevant work experience. Thanks to grants from alumni and parents, Hamilton students can apply for funding to support their unpaid summer internships. For many students, these grants allow them to pursue an internship they could not otherwise accept.

Government professor Stephen Orvis spoke at the Conference on Conflict in the Horn of Africa hosted by the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the United States Department of State on Sept. 29 in Washington D.C. Orvis, who served as an international election observer in Kenya's transitional elections to democratic rule and led 11 Hamilton students on the Kenya Field School in summer 2000 and 2004, spoke on Kenya. The State Department organizes these conferences to solicit the views of nongovernmental specialists and to facilitate the exchange of views between these specialists and government officials.

Edward S. Walker, Jr.’62, former U. S. Ambassador to Israel and the Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Global Political Theory, participated in a discussion hosted by The Woodrow Wilson Center on September 28, in Washington. Walker was joined by freelance journalist Mohammad Hakki and Nicholas Veliotes, former assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs, for the panel discussion titled "Collateral Damage: Is the Widening Middle East Crisis Damaging our Relations with Egypt and Other Regional Allies?"

Professor of French John O'Neal gave a talk for Colgate University's Humanities Colloquium Series on September 26. The talk was titled "Nature as Refuge: From Rousseau's Cascade to Central New York's Trenton Falls."

Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics and adjunct professor at Georgetown University, spoke on the role of wealthy oligarchs in the transition of post-communist economies on September 27. Aslund, who has served as an economic adviser to the governments of Russia and Ukraine, said that the proliferation of oligarchs in these nations is not only a natural outcome of their economic conditions, but is in fact an important step in their progress toward capitalism. The lecture was the first in the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center’s series on “Inequality and Equity.”

John Hewko '79, vice president of operations for the Millennium Challenge Corporation, addressed the United Nations on Sept. 18. He spoke at a meeting about social and economic development of least developed countries. Hewko said, "In Monterrey, President Bush announced a path-breaking program, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, or MCC. The MCC’s single focus is to provide support to those poor countries which are indeed taking steps to invest in their own people, to promote economic freedom and opportunity, and to encourage accountable and inclusive governance, where individual rights and free expression are respected. MCC’s mandate is to reduce poverty through sustainable growth. We work with partners whose own performance makes reaching that goal a real possibility. The MCC is already engaged with 23 countries whose policy performance, measured by independent, objective indicators, has made them eligible for MCC funds. Among them are 12 Least Developed Countries."

The Emerson Gallery will host several events in October related to the two current exhibitions, "Native Perspectives: George Longfish and Shelley Niro" and "WPA Arists: Prints from the Amity Arts Foundation." These shows and related events are free and open to the public. Both exhibitions will be open through Dec. 30.  

Elizabeth Economy, CV Starr Senior Fellow and director for Asian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and an award-winning author of "The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenges to China's Future" (2004), will speak on Monday, Oct. 16, at 4 p.m. in the Kirner-Johnson Auditorium. The title of her talk is “Environmental Challenges to China's Future.” This lecture is part of the Levitt Center Speaker Series titled “Inequality and Equity” and is free and open to the public.

Students and faculty from the Sophomore Seminar "Forever Wild: The Cultural and Natural Histories of the Adirondack Park" visited the Adirondacks on September 23-24. On Saturday they went to Whiteface Mountain, the farm and gravesite of John Brown, and Great Camp Wenonah, home of Hamilton alumnus Jim Schoff '68. The group also visited new Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks in Tupper Lake, had lunch on Long Lake with the family of a student in the class, and then toured the original iron mine in the middle of the Adirondacks, with the tour led by William Kelly, state geologist.