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While a student at Hamilton College in the '70s,  Tom Vilsack lost his bid for Hamilton College class president. He reportedly decided then that he would never run for any office again. Now as a two-term governor of Iowa, Vilsack is on the short list of possible running mates for John Kerry. 

Professor of Economics Derek Jones participated in the Annual Conference on Transition Economies in Hanoi, Vietnam. Jones discussed two papers, "Local Protectionism and Regional Specialization: Evidence from China 's Industries" by Chong-En Bai et al and "Revenue Sharing and Control Rights in Team Production: Theories and Evidence from Joint Ventures" by Zhigang Tao et al. The conference was sponsored by the William Davidson Institute, Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and the Ford Foundation.

Cheng Li, the William R. Kenan Professor of Government, was interviewed by the BBC World Service regarding the Chinese Communist Party's effort to use the Internet for propaganda. Li was also a commentator on the relationship between Jiang Zemin and military leaders in a BBC Chinese language feature program on June 25.

Heidi M. Ravven, professor of religious studies, has published an invited essay in  Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy, edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson (Arizona State University) and published by Indiana University Press.  In her paper, "Spinoza's Ethics of the Liberation of Desire," Ravven shows the ways in which Spinoza was inspired by and modernized the biblical model of Jewish liberal ethics and democratic politics.  Ravven concludes that Spinoza's ethics is a far better point of departure for a contemporary feminist ethics of liberation than the several standard versions of contemporary feminist philosophic ethics.

A study conducted by James S. Sherman Associate Professor of Government Philip Klinkner was featured in an opinion piece written for Yahoo! News. Klinkner's study, "Red and Blue Scare: The Continuing Diversity of the American Electoral Landscape," challenges the popular belief that Americans are segregated along political lines. According to the article, "Professor Klinkner suggests that commentators aren't attentive to the nuances of political choices in various parts of the country."

James S. Sherman Associate Professor of Government Philip Klinkner participated in the "New Democracy Forum: How Can the Democrats Win?" in the Boston Review. In the forum, 12 academics responded to an article written by Rick Perlstein in which he outlined a strategy he thinks the Democrats could use to win in 2004. Klinkner responded that elections are hard to influence because they "tend to turn on such unpredictable and uncontrollable events as wars, recessions and scandals." He added that party identification is even harder to influence because it is "a stable and long-lasting aspect of social identity."

The Hamilton College Alumni Office is pleased to introduce you to our Alumni Travel program. Hamilton College, in concert with Bates, Bowdoin and Colby colleges, will offer international Alumni Travel opportunities to Hamilton alumni, parents and friends of the College in 2005: Costa Rica: January / SOLD OUT Chianti in a Tuscan Villa: April Provence - Aix-en-Provence: June China, Tibet & the Yangtze River: October 20 - November 7 All travel events will have strong educational elements to complement the professionally managed tours. A fifth summer kayaking trip north of Boothbay, Maine is also planned. Costs and dates are subject to change. We invite you to complete our Travel Interest Survey to let us know what types of programs are of interest to you. We hope to see you and your family on one of our upcoming trips.

Last summer, while working as an assistant in the English department offices, Dan Walker ’05 (Marcellus, NY) was able to begin reading and researching with Hamilton College Professor Onno Oerlemans about an idea called “conspicuous concealment” and its role in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance. This summer, Walker will pick up where he left off on his research last summer with his Emerson summer collaborative grant.

Professor of History Maurice Isserman presented a paper titled "Cold War in a Cold Place: The 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition" at a conference held at Moscow State University in Moscow, Russia. The conference featured both American and Russian historians and was organized to mark the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Fulbright Program's Distinguished Chair in American History at Moscow State University. A dozen American historians who have held the chair over the past three decades, including Isserman who was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in 1997, were in attendance at the two-day conference.

A seriers of Reunions 2004 pictures will be published soon.