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Professor of History Maurice Isserman was interviewed for a <I>Houston Chronicle</I> <A class="" href="http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3093070" target=_new>article</A> (3/20/05) about countercultural entrepreneurs in the 1970s.

Two Hamilton College seniors have been awarded prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowships for 2005-2006. Hilary King of Ashland, Ore., and Kristofer Rios of New York, N.Y., were notified that their project proposals were among 50 national winners of the Fellowships. Nearly 1,000 students from up to 50 selective private liberal arts colleges and universities apply for these awards each year. This year 184 students competed on the national level after their institutions nominated them in the autumn.

The Utica Observer-Dispatch published an editorial (3/21/05) praising a group of Hamilton College students who participated in an Urban Service Experience" during the college's spring break. The editorial noted: "There aren't too many college students who would choose Cornhill over Cancun as the place to spend spring break. But five students from Hamilton College did just that, not only raising their own social consciousness, but reinforcing a valuable bond between college and community." Urban Service Experience (USE) trips are also offered to incoming first-year students at Hamilton as a way to learn about the nearby city of Utica, and as a day-long volunteer activity in January after students return to Hamilton from winter break.

Life Trustee Sol M. Linowitz '35 died on March 18 in Washington at the age of 91. He had been in failing health. Sol Linowitz was Hamilton's most distinguished living public servant, following in the tradition of Elihu Root. He was a trusted advisor for a half dozen U.S. presidents, including Jimmy Carter for whom he served as co-negotiator of the Panama Canal treaties and representative for Middle East negotiations from 1979 to 1981. It was largely at Sol's urging that President Carter came to Hamilton as a Great Names speaker in April 2001, just three years after President Clinton awarded Sol the Presidential Medal of Freedom, this country's highest civilian honor.

Professor of Philosophy Robert Simon published an op-ed on steroid use by pro athletes in the Philadelphia Inquirer (3/20/05). In "Drug-free sport is an ideal worth preserving," Simon wrote, "When I raise the issue of performance-enhancing drugs in sports to my classes on ethics, students almost unanimously condemn their use. Recent allegations of steroid use in major league baseball are especially troublesome to many students. I suspect the unwillingness of players such as Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro and Frank Thomas (and initially Commissioner Bud Selig) to testify before a congressional committee will exacerbate their concerns."

While tropical beaches beckon many Hamilton College students during the March 13-27 Spring Break, 57 others are packing up their work clothes and taking road trips to southern states where they will work Alternative Spring Break projects in communities.  

Assistant Professor of English Steven Yao has been awarded an American Council on Learned Societies (ACLS) fellowship. It was awarded for Yao's project, Foreign Accents: From the Language of Race to the Poetics of Ethnicity in Chinese American Verse, 1910-Present.  Yao says, "This study analyzes the range of rhetorical and formal strategies by which various Chinese American writers have sought to incorporate Chinese culture and especially language in constructing a cultural or ethnic subjectivity. Combining such analysis with extensive social contextualization, Foreign Accents thus delineates an historical poetics of Chinese American verse from its beginnings in the early 20th century to our contemporary moment."

Seventeen Hamilton students and Biology Professor Bill Pfitsch are traveling to Belize for a 12-day field study program during spring break, March 12-24. The democratic English speaking country of Belize is bounded on the north by Mexico, south and west by Guatemala, and the Caribbean Sea washes its 174 mile coastline to the East.  The group will explore tropical ecosystems and how humans interact with them. They will be staying at the Monkey Bay Wildlife Sanctuary then camping at various parks and campgrounds throughout Belize.  

Professor of History Maurice Isserman is the author and an editor of a new textbook, Exploring North America, 1800-1900 (Facts on File, 3/05). According to the publisher, the book traces the history of the exploration of western North America during the 19th century, an immensely complicated story involving thousands of individuals over a territory of millions of square miles, and the impact of that exploration on the national histories of both the United States and Canada.

Hamilton’s Mock Trial Team competed in the American Mock Trial Association (AMTA) National Championships held at Stetson University Law School in St. Petersburg, Fla., March 11-13.  Benjamin Johnston ’07 received an outstanding Witness Award, thereby earning the title of AMTA Mock Trial Intercollegiate All-American Witness. Other members of the team who competed were Alex Kaufman ’06, Michael Blasie ’07, Scott Iseman ‘07, Stacy Sadove ‘07 and Tanya Shpiniova ‘08.