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Professor of French and Africana Studies Tracy Sharpley-Whiting presided over a panel at the annual Modern Language Association (MLA) convention, held Dec. 27-30 in San Diego.  The panel, "The End of Affirmative Action? Preferences, Reverse Discrimination and the New University," explored issues of race and preferences pre- and post- the Supreme Court challenges to the Michigan case. Professor of Women's Studies Chandra Talpade Mohanty was a panel participant. Sharpley-Whiting also presented a paper on the panel, Multidisciplinary Approaches to Literature. Her paper was titled "Intersectionality or the Romancing of Diaspora Studies."

Jay Williams, the Walcott-Bartlett Professor of Religious Studies, was quoted in a Westchester, N.Y. Journal News article about how Mount Nebo, home of the Rockland Cemetery, was named.  Originally owned by Eleazar Lord, a prominent Rockland resident and the first president of the New York and Erie Railroad, donated the land in 1847 for the cemetery.  Williams said, "With Lord's knowledge of Moses and his decision to designate a beautiful mountaintop site as a cemetery, the name Mount Nebo would have been highly symbolic for him.  Being buried on Mount Nebo would be 'like dying where Moses died.'"

Professor of Religious Studies Heidi Ravven gave an invited paper at the Association for Jewish Studies annual meeting in Boston on December 23. The session was 'Jewish Virtue Ethics,' and her paper was titled "Spinoza on the Virtue of Therapy."

Carlos Yordan, visiting assistant professor of government, was interviewed for an Associated Press article about the Serbian parliamentary elections. Slobodan Milosevic is among the four indicted war criminals running for parliament. Yordan said, "Many Serbs will vote for the radicals for the same reason that kept Milosevic in power for 10 years -- a sense of 'victimization,' the belief that the outside world does not understand Serbia, and a strong sense of national pride."

Peter Cannavo, assistant professor of government, published a letter-to-the-editor in The New York Times in response to the article, "Lost? Hiding? Your Cellphone Is Keeping Tabs."

After attending author Karl Zinsmeister's November lecture on the month he spent embedded with the 82nd Airborne in Iraq, Meghan Stringer '07 was inspired to put together care packages for American soldiers. She then organized a drive for gifts and monetary donations from the Hamilton community. Stringer said that some 30 people donated items, ranging from tic-tacs, gum and beef jerky to books, magazines and CDs. She also received more than $160 to help cover the cost of packaging and mailing the gifts and letters to Iraq.

Hamilton College President Joan Hinde Stewart has been elected to a three-year term on the National Merit Scholarship Corporation's board of directors.

Professor of Classics Barbara Gold has been elected vice president for outreach of the American Philological Association (APA). Founded in 1869, the APA is the principal learned society for Classical Studies in North America. The Division of Outreach prepares materials of interest to an audience beyond the APA's core membership in order to promote a wider public understanding and appreciation of Classics.

Emily Backman '04 presented a poster at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting held in San Francisco in December. Backman's poster "Depositional Architecture and Seafloor Mapping of the Vega Drift, Erebus and Terror Gulf, Antarctic Penninsula" is based on the research she conducted during her trips to the Antarctic under the supervision of Geology Professor Eugene Domack. The AGU meeting attracts more than 10,000 international scientists.

Philip Klinkner, the James S. Sherman Associate Professor of Government, was interviewed for the Christian Science Monitor article "Swearing swearers and FCC's new rulebook. " Klinkner said, "There was a time when the airwaves were seen as a public trust, when stations were given bandwidth in exchange for a public service.  Now is the FCC going to yank Clear Channel's licenses? Absolutely not."