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The Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center recently announced the 2008 Levitt Research Fellows. Levitt Fellows spend 10 weeks during the summer working intensively in collaboration with a faculty member on an issue related to public affairs. Eighteen students and 17 faculty members will engage in research on a wide-ranging variety of topics.

Dr. Hugh A. Sampson '71 was elected president of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) during its 2008 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. He will serve as president through March 2009. Sampson is professor of pediatrics and chief of the Division of Allergy and Immunology in the Department of Pediatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, where he also serves as director of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute and Dean for Translational Biomedical Sciences. 

The one-hour documentary titled "Auspicious Vision: Edward Wales Root and American Modernism" produced locally by WCNY will be shown again on Sunday, March 23, at 3 p.m. Included in the documentary footage are shots of the recent Emerson Gallery exhibition "The Best Kind of Life: Edward W. Root as Teacher, Collector and Naturalist" as well as images of the Root Glen and the Root homestead.

On March 13 students in Hamilton's Program in Washington met with Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin (retired), president of the Middle East Institute. Chamberlin spoke to the students about the state of affairs in Pakistan and the United States' involvement with Musharraf and internal Pakistani politics over the past few years, and graciously answered a multitude of questions. This semester's program in Washington is headed by Edward S. Walker, Jr. '62, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, and the Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Global Political Theory. -- by Mariam Ballout '10

Associate Professor of Physics Seth Major published an article in Classical and Quantum Gravity (Class. Quantum Grav. 25 (2008) 065003). The article titled "On the q-quantum gravity loop algebra" shows that "that portrait is not me!" or more technically, the kinematic algebra of q-deformed loop quantum gravity (the person) is not represented by the Temperley-Lieb algebra (the portrait).

Silas D. Childs Professor of Chemistry Robin B. Kinnel visited the Boston College Chemistry Department at the invitation of Jason Kingsbury, '97, now an assistant professor there. At Kingsbury's suggestion Kinnel prepared a retrospective talk, which he titled "Adventures and Lessons from Three Decades of Natural Products Chemistry: Some Finished and Unfinished Business." In the audience were Hamilton graduates Kevin Brown, '02, and Ming Chan, '05, both graduate students in chemistry at B.C. Also in attendance were Danielle Massee, '07, now at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, and Elita Pastra-Landis, professor of chemistry at Wheaton College and mother of Tanya Pastra-Landis, '98.

Two Hamilton College seniors have been awarded prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowships for 2008-2009. Greg Hartt of Troy, N.Y., and Magda Wierzbicka of Warsaw, Poland, were notified that their project proposals were among 50 national winners of the Fellowships. This year, 175 finalists competed on the national level, after their institutions nominated them in the autumn. Each fellow receives $25,000 for a year of travel and exploration.

Hamilton College has responded to a Senate Finance Committee request for information about endowment spending and financial aid policies. Hamilton was one of 136 U.S. colleges and universities, each with endowments of at least $500 million, that received the request from Senators Max Baucus and Charles Grassley.

Associate Professor of Economics Ann Owen was quoted on Wednesday, March 19, in a National Public Radio Morning Edition segment and in a Christian Science Monitor article, both of which addressed this week's Federal Reserve interest rate cut.

Stephen Fuchs '68, rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in West Hartford, Conn., will present an Alumni College during Reunions '08 about his campaign against violence in media. Tragic events like the shootings at Columbine, Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University, are, Rabbi Fuchs believes, the direct result of the growing and ever more graphic depictions of violence that children grow up with in television programs, movies, and video games.