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Hamilton College Professors Cheng Li, Ann Frechette, Thomas Wilson and Kyoko Omori have been awarded research grants from the Freeman Foundation for their proposals for Asian studies research projects. The grant program funds both long-term and short-term projects. Projects that receive funding from the Freeman Foundation are focused on professional development of the Hamilton Asian studies faculty.

Assistant Professor of Government Yael Aronoff participated in the Governing Council mid-winter meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology at the University of California-Irvine January 14 and 15. She also gave a talk titled "Waging Peace: War Termination Through Peace Negotiation" on January 13 at the Public Forum on International Politics at UC-Irvine, co-sponsored by the International Society of Political Psychology, UC-Irvine's Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality, and the UC-Irvine Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies.

Hamilton College will hold a community gathering to recall and reflect upon the recent southeast Asia tsunami tragedy on Friday, January 21, from 4 to 4:45 pm in the Chapel. Community members who would like to participate in the service by sharing a personal experience or reading something related to the tragedy, should contact Jeff McArn, College Chaplain at x4130 or email at jmcarn@hamilton.edu.

Cheng Li, the William R. Kenan Professor of Government, was interviewed for an article in the Los Angeles Times about China down-playing the death of Zhao Ziyang. According to the article, "Analysts believe that it's all part of an orchestrated effort to prevent Zhao from becoming a catalyst in a country with a history of turning the death of a public figure into a cause for mass protest." "They don't want to repeat what happened when Hu Yaobang died," said Li, referring to another deposed party leader whose death in April 1989 helped trigger pro-democracy demonstrations that were suppressed at the cost of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of lives. "They want to prevent it at an early stage," Li said. "This is the lesson they learned from Tiananmen." He said Chinese leaders probably discussed this strategy before Zhao's death, with the goal of presenting a united front. "They don't want to give any indication that there is a split in how to treat Zhao and the Tiananmen incident," Li said.

Assistant Professor of English Gillian Gane presented a paper, "Reconfiguring Wor(l)ds: Rushdie Redefines Linguistic Boundaries" at the annual convention of theSouth Asian Literary Association in Philadelphia on December 27.

Assistant Professor of English Steven Yao has been elected to the board of directors of the American Comparative Literature Association. His four-year term will begin at the 2005 annual meeting in April. Yao will be the only member of the board who teaches at a liberal arts college. Founded in 1960, the American Comparative Literature Association is the principal learned society in the United States for scholars whose work involves several literatures and cultures as well as the premises of cross-cultural literary study itself.

Hamilton College community members gathered on Monday, Jan. 17, to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. with a celebration dinner. The celebration, coordinated by Interim Assistant Dean of Multicultural Affairs Roxanne Bellamy-Campbell and her office included music, prayer, and a discussion about Martin Luther King, Jr. and what can be done to continue his "dream."

The recent work of Sylvia de Swaan, lecturer in art, will be exhibited in a one-person show titled "Subversion" at the Center for Exploratory Perceptual Arts (CEPA) Gallery located at 617 Main St. in Buffalo, from Feb. 4 through March 19. De Swaan's work is the culmination of her participation in a six-week regional artist-in-residency program granted to her last year by CEPA and funded by CEPA and Hamilton College.

Jonathan Rick '05 published an op-ed in the Utica Observer-Dispatch titled "Look to 'content of character.'" Rick said, "Self-identity is important, but objectivity is imperative." He also said, "let's just identify people, of all colors, by their individual traits, by what Martin Luther King, Jr. once called the 'content of their character.'"

Ken Herold, director of library information systems, attended the second annual Asia-Pacific Computing and Philosophy Conference in Bangkok shortly after the devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean.  Although Bangkok itself was not directly affected, the conference organizers had encouraged attendees to still come to Thailand in the fighting spirit of continuing life in the face of the international disaster. Herold's latest research in the philosophy of information examined traditional wisdom literatures for guiding principles in the construction of digital libraries and learning objects.