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Professor of Anthropology Douglas Raybeck was quoted in the United Press International article "Networking: E-mail is the new telephone." Raybeck said, "We spent three million years in groups of 25-45 people, and our ability to react to nonverbal and paralinguistic communication of others is central to our ability to receive and send accurately. A phone is a poor substitute for another's presence, and with e-mail you lose even voice tone."

Barbara Tewksbury, the William R. Kenan Professor of Geosciences, is presenting a session at the 117th annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, on October 16-19 in Salt Lake City. Tewksbury’s topic will be “Using recent Mars data to give students practice in revisiting and testing older hypotheses in a variety of undergraduate geoscience courses.” The description of the talk states, “Providing practice in re-evaluating old hypotheses with new data is one way to help students on the path to learning how to set up a new mental frame about a problem and ultimately develop their own new questions and hypotheses.” Tewksbury will use planetary data as an example of old hypotheses that can be revisited when the next planetary mission delivers new information.

Mason Ashe ’85 was recently named adjunct professor in the DeVos Sport Business Management Graduate Program at the University of Central Florida in the College of Business Administration. He will teach sports law.

Professor of Religious Studies Heidi Ravven has been named an ally of naturalism by the Center for Naturalism. Her name and a reference to her work appear on the Web site Naturalism.org.

Cheng Li, the William R. Kenan Professor of Government, was quoted in articles in Newsday and The Los Angeles Times titled "Hu Firmly Takes Wheel in China." Chinese President Hu Jintao seems to be working to restrict and control the Internet, nongovernmental organizations and traditional media. Analysts believe this is a way to keep the uneducated workers from being exposed to other political perspectives. Li said, "Indications are that Hu has no interest in allowing freedom of the press, an important aspect of political reform."

Hamilton College marked its five-year partnership with the Posse Foundation by hosting a visit from Susan Dalelio, director of Posse Boston, on October 12. Dalelio updated luncheon attendees on the growth and success of the Posse Foundation, which identifies, recruits and trains student leaders from public high schools to form multicultural teams called “Posses.”

Students in Susan Mason's Principles of Instructional Communication class and other Education Studies classes have undertaken a unique project to help K-12 students in Mississippi and Louisiana displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The Katrina School Supplies Project collected school supplies and monetary donations which were given to Sacred Heart Elementary School in Hattiesburg, Miss., so the students will have the pens, pencils, notebooks, paper, glue and other materials they need when school resumes.

Mark Bailey, associate professor of computer science, has been named the editor for SIGPLAN Notices, a monthly publication of the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Programming Languages. As part of his editorship, Bailey will also be an ex-officio member of the SIGPLAN executive committee. This is the governing board for the special interest group that oversees the organization of conferences and scholarly publications in the field of programming languages.

Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, the Margaret Bundy Scott Professor of Comparative Literature, presented her paper "Tragedy and Rape Culture" for the Gender in the Humanities Research Group at The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, on Oct. 10. This paper places the recent interest in rape in Greek tragedy in the context of contemporary discussions of the topic. In particular, it addresses the feminist ways in which rape in tragedy centers round the ambiguity of consent. She will be presenting versions of this talk at Paris VII and Reading University.

Ronald Dworkin gave the Truax lecture in philosophy on October 10. Dworkin is the Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at NYU and Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College, London. Dworkin’s lecture was titled “The new religious wars” and discussed religion in American politics. His books include Life's Dominion, Freedom's Law and Sovereign Virtue. His forthcoming book is Justice in Robes (October 2005).