Hamilton Magazine - Summer 2021 by Hamilton College

HAMILTON Magazine

Summer 2021

Inspiring memories two decades after 9/11 1

THINGS YOU’LL LEARN A Governor Comes Home A document signed by former New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, who was known as the father of the Erie Canal, is part of Hamilton’s archives thanks to the bidding skills of Marcus Gutierrez ’18. PAGE 5

He Hated Pizza Ron Kim ’02 still lives in the neighborhood where his family settled after emigrating when he was 7. Now, he’s a New York state assemblyman — the first Korean American elected to that governing body. PAGE 18

The Levitt Center Turns 40 Four decades ago, it was nothing more than an idea. See how the Levitt Public Affairs Center has grown into an incubator for student social engagement and a path to public service. PAGE 26

‘You Are Our Life’s Work’ Dan Chambliss, who retired this spring as the Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology, reflects on his 40 years at Hamilton, offers advice for students and new faculty, and reminds alumni why professors do what they do. PAGE 32

Retirement is Jubilación Catch up with a handful of Hamilton’s emeriti professors to see what they’re up to now. Not surprisingly, it’s a lot. PAGE 36

On the front and back covers

Details from “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on that September Morning,” art by Spencer Finch ’85 featured at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Read more on page 20. PHOTOS BY JORG MEYER

THIS PAGE: You’ve heard it; now see it — the massive bell inside Hamilton’s iconic Chapel. Work continues on a major renovation of the building’s steeple. To read more and see live webcam footage of the construction as it unfolds, visit hamilton.edu/chapel. PHOTO BY NANCY L. FORD

COMMENTS

HAMILTON MAGAZINE SUMMER 2021 VOLUME 86, NO. 2 EDITOR Stacey J. Himmelberger P’15,’22 (shimmelb@hamilton.edu) SENIOR WRITER Maureen A. Nolan (manolan@hamilton.edu) ART DIRECTOR & DESIGNER Mark M. Mullin DESIGN ASSISTANT Vanessa L. Colangelo PRODUCTION MANAGER Mona M. Dunn PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Phyllis L. Jackson WEB COORDINATORS David K. Herringshaw Esena J. Jackson STUDENT WRITER Elizabeth Militello ’22 STUDENT ILLUSTRATOR Chad Varney ’22

VICE PRESIDENT, COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING Melissa Farmer Richards ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT, COMMUNICATIONS Michael J. Debraggio P’07

CONGRATULATIONS ON an outstanding Hamilton magazine edition. Kudos to Edvige JeanFrançois [’90] not only for her superb guest editor’s letter, but for her organizing the placement of the articles to tell a compelling narrative of the difficulties Blacks face in our country. I am a second-generation American. My grandparents emigrated from Ireland, and when they arrived they faced discrimination in trying to find work with signs in office windows and on factory doors — “No Irish need apply” and “No Catholics.” They struggled but eventually found gainful employment from other Irish Catholic business people. My mother was the first in our family to graduate from col-

Everett Newton Kelsey ’57 SEVERAL READERS reported that the latest Hamilton magazine turned their thoughts to Everett Newton “Newt” Kelsey ’57, the first Black member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. DKE was established at Hamilton in 1856, 12 years after it was founded at Yale University.

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lege. In the ’50s and ’60s when Blacks were being beaten and lynched for fighting for voting rights and for desegregated schools, I said to my mother that the problems Blacks were facing were not dissimilar to the problems my grandparents faced. She shook her head and said, “It’s not the same because you do not wear your Irishness and Catholicism on your face.” What she said 60 years ago is still true today. We cannot stand in the shoes of our Black friends, but I remain hopeful that we can become a more tolerant society. Philip Sullivan Toohey ’65

IN RESPECT TO the recent issue detailing the stories of Blacks at Hamilton, I thought you might be interested in the color line at Hamilton in an earlier day. When I entered Hamilton in 1946, there were virtually no Blacks on campus, either as students, faculty, or administrators. When I questioned one dean about this he said, “Oh, no, we’d be happy to take as many as three Blacks; we can’t find any who are qualified.” However, over the next few years a small number of Blacks were admitted, one of whom [Don Thomas ’52] was pledged to a fraternity I was in called the Emerson Literary Society, generally known as ELS. I had hoped — indeed had expected — that when it became

“The unconfirmed rumor on Fellow. He was a consultant for campus at the time was that a the Interracial Council for Businational officer threatened to ness Opportunities, president of appear at initiation and stop the the African-American Institute, proceedings,” recalled DKE alum- and an aide to the Council on nus Peter Meinke ’55 in a 2014 Foreign Relations. Having joined class notes post, “but the local Chase Manhattan Bank as assischapter stood strong with the tant manager of its Paris branch, backing of their alumni, a proud he was an assistant treasurer at moment in an otherwise dismal the time of his death in 1968 at chapter of our times on the Hill.” age 31. A native of Atlanta who grew up in Madison, N.J., Kelsey earned a master’s degree in international affairs at Columbia University before spending a year in Tanzania as a Ford Foundation Kelsey (center) with his DKE brothers

COMMENTS THE TRUSTEES David M. Solomon ’84, P’16, Chair Robert E. Delaney, Jr. ’79, Vice Chair Linda E. Johnson ’80, Vice Chair

clear that no problems came of admitting a Black student, other fraternities would open their doors to them. The reaction was the opposite: The other fraternities concluded that ELS would take care of the problem. In the end ELS was faced with a moral crisis over every Black student on campus. Of course, many readers will say that there shouldn’t have been any fraternities in the first place. But that was a different time; the College depended on the fraternities to feed and house as many as half of the students. This had come about because Hamilton had greatly increased its size to accommodate the soldiers, coming out of the Army at the end of World War II, who were going to college on the G.I. Bill. The College needed the fraternities, but at that time they could not force the frats to take Blacks. Among other things, many among the alumni would not have been happy to find Blacks in the fraternities they had joined and continued to support financially. It should be remembered that the United States of that time was a segregated nation. I grew up in a relatively liberal family in a relatively liberal community. Nonetheless, I never saw a Black student in any of the schools I went to before college, and even at Hamilton they were few and far between. James Lincoln Collier ’50

tion and commend you all for your initiative and awareness of the lack of justice and inclusivity for many in American society. Kudos for spreading these representative stories throughout the greater Hamilton community Don Thomas ’52

Editor’s Note: Mortimer R. Sams ’49, a contemporary of Collier and fellow member of the Emerson Literary Society, also wrote to share his memory of welcoming Don Thomas ’52, an African American, into the fraternity. Thomas hailed from Oberlin, Ohio, played football for the Continentals and served four years on the Honor Court, his senior year as chairman. He went on to earn his law degree at Harvard and served as a Chrysler executive, American Airlines attorney, and New Jersey Gaming Commission chairman. I WANTED TO PROVIDE some feedback on the Winter-Spring 2021 Hamilton magazine edition. In one word. Excellent. I found each of the Hamilton alumni contributions significant in providing profound perspective — especially the writing from John McKoy [’66] as I attended Germantown Academy similar to his Germantown Friends School just down the way in Philadelphia. Jay Talsania P’17,’19

Jonathan P. Tittler ’67 THANK YOU FOR this Special Edition edited so well by Edvige Jean-François [’90]. The testimonies by Black alums were very moving. But as one who has been a member of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago’s Antiracism Commission since 1999, I am aware of the danger of limiting racism discourse through a White-Black binary. Hamilton College’s predecessor, the Hamilton-Oneida Academy, was founded by Samuel Kirkland, missionary to the Oneida Indians. Might not this part of Hamilton’s history be the subject of a future issue? Newland F. Smith III ’60

Send your letters, story ideas, and feedback to editor@ hamilton.edu or Hamilton magazine, 198 College Hill Road, Clinton, NY 13323. We welcome comments on topics discussed in the magazine or on any subject of possible interest to the College community. Please include your name and class year, and whether you intend for your letter to be published. We reserved

I HAVE BEEN MOVED and impressed by the stories of the contributors to the Special Edi-

the right to judge whether a letter is appropriate for publication and to edit for accuracy and length.

CHARTER TRUSTEES Aron J. Ain ’79, P’09,’11 Mason P. Ashe ’85 Manal Ataya ’01 Richard Bernstein ’80 Harold W. Bogle ’75, P’14 Peter B. Coffin ’81, P’14 Julia K. Cowles ’84 Carol T. Friscia K’77 Amy Owens Goodfriend ’82 Philip L. Hawkins ’78 David P. Hess ’77 Gregory T. Hoogkamp ’82 Lea Haber Kuck ’87, P’24 Sharon D. Madison ’84 Christopher P. Marshall ’90, P’23 Robert S. Morris ’76, P’16,’17 Daniel T.H. Nye ’88, P’24 Montgomery G. Pooley ’84, P’16,’19 Ronald R. Pressman ’80 Imad I. Qasim ’79 R. Christopher Regan ’77, P’08 Nancy Roob ’87 Alexander C. Sacerdote ’94 Jack R. Selby ’96 David Wippman Srilata Zaheer ALUMNI TRUSTEES Betsy G. Bacot ’84 Aditya Bhasin ’94 Phyllis A. Breland ’80 Johannes P. Burlin ’87 Mark T. Fedorcik ’95 Eric F. Grossman ’88 John Hadity ’83 Alison M. Hill ’87 Daniel I. Rifkin ’88, P’23 Lindsey L. Rotolo ’97 Greg M. Schwartz ’94 Sharon S. Walker ’90 LIFE TRUSTEES Henry W. Bedford II ’76 David W. Blood ’81, P’12 Brian T. Bristol P’11 Christina E. Carroll P’90 Gerald V. Dirvin ’59, P’84, GP’17 Sean K. Fitzpatrick ’63, P’87 Lee C. Garcia ’67 Eugenie A. Havemeyer GP’00 Joel W. Johnson ’65, P’93 Kevin W. Kennedy ’70 † A.G. Lafley ’69 † George F. Little II ’71, P’04 David E. Mason ’61, P’93,’96, GP’24 Arthur J. Massolo ’64, P’93 Donald R. Osborn P’86, GP’16 Mary Burke Partridge P’94 John G. Rice ’78 Stephen I. Sadove ’73, P’07,’10,’13 † Howard J. Schneider ’60, P’85,’87,’89, GP’17,’21 Thomas J. Schwarz ’66, P’01 A. Barrett Seaman ’67 Nancy Ferguson Seeley GP’17 Chester A. Siuda ’70, P’06 Susan E. Skerritt K’77, P’11 Charles O. Svenson ’61, P’00 Thomas J. Tull ’92, P’13 Susan Valentine K’73 Jack Withiam, Jr. ’71, P’16,’20 Jaime E. Yordán ’71 † Chairmen Emeriti PRESIDENT OF THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION Josie M. Collier ’97, P’14

SUMMER 2021

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STUDY DISPARITIES Sarah Damaske ’99

TALK TO ROBOTS Tom Williams ’11

PART COMPUTER SCIENTIST, part cognitive scientist, Tom Williams ’11 uses insights from cognitive psychology to design and enable language-based interaction between humans and robots. That’s interaction as in a productive conversation. Williams is assistant professor of computer science at the Colorado School of Mines, where he directs the Interactive Robotics Research Lab. His focus is cognitive systems, which incorporate artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology. He recently received a prestigious CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, the organization’s highest award for junior faculty. It comes with a $550,000 grant that Williams will use to develop working memory potential for robots that are capable of language.

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His goal is to create a system that can model the information it thinks will be important in achieving goals with its human partner. Picture a robot that remembers what it did and then relies on that information to communicate in a way that is easily understandable. Many scientists in artificial intelligence focus on developing statistical learning techniques that enable automatic decision-making for specific tasks. In cognitive systems, Williams focuses on a higher-level goal of creating intelligent robots that are able to think and act in a general, human-like way. “Philosophically, the argument would be that the best way to understand the human mind would be to take the theories we learned from psychological experiments and try to actually implement them into comprehensive software systems and see how well those theories actually work when you try to program them out,” Williams says. n

SARAH DAMASKE ’99 has long been interested in understanding and ameliorating class and race inequalities. In 2013, the associate professor of sociology and labor and employment relations at Pennsylvania State University began taking a hard look at the American unemployment system and how gender and class affect those looking for work. Her research culminated in the book The Tolls of Uncertainty: How Privilege and the Guilt Gap Shape Unemployment in America (see page 46). Damaske suggests that 60 to 70 percent of Americans will experience at least one instance of joblessness. However, when people lose a job, they enter a system far removed from the one imagined when it was created. “In the past few decades, our unemployment system has become increasingly ungenerous, covering fewer Americans, providing lower benefits, and doing so for shorter periods of time,” she says. While Damaske’s research focused on the aftermath of the Great Recession, the lessons she presents have timely implications as America recovers from the pandemic. “People, then and now, want to be able to put recessions behind us and start talking about good economic news,” she says, while cautioning about moving on without solving current problems. “However, we need to fix the unemployment system so that it works for everyone when they need it.” Damaske’s book not only tells stories of unemployed people as they cope with job loss and its aftermath; it offers a blueprint for political and societal changes necessary to reach economic recovery. “I hope the book will help to influence policy,” she says. n — Libby Militello ’22

Nancy L. Ford

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Marcus Gutierrez ’18 examines the DeWitt Clinton document (shown below) during a visit to Hamilton’s M.C. Lang Special Collections and Archives.

BID ON HISTORY Marcus Gutierrez ’18

TO MARCUS GUTIERREZ ’18, lover of history and his alma mater, the modestlooking piece of paper merited a day-long bidding war that ping-ponged 45 times and required an assist from a cadre of likeminded Hamiltonians. The determined former history major led a group of 11 young alumni in the successful effort to buy at auction a document signed on Feb. 25, 1822, by New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, known as “the father of the Erie Canal.” The purchasers then promptly turned the prize over to Hamilton’s M.C. Lang Special Collections and Archives.

The auction was a fundraiser for St. John’s University School of Law, where Gutierrez is a student. The Clinton document authorizes the appointment of one Lorenzo B. Jones, of the county of Rensselaer, as commissioner of deeds. “It’s a neat, preprinted form, completed in manuscript, by one of New York State’s most famous governors,” says Christian Goodwillie, director of Hamilton’s special collections and archives. Gutierrez, who spent hours as an undergraduate in the archives researching his theses, loved the Mohawk Valley threads shot through the document’s history. Clinton’s son was a member of Hamilton’s Class of 1825. His uncle was George Clinton, the first governor of New York, a U.S. vice president, and for whom the village of Clinton is named. As for Jones, Guiterrez found that his son was born and raised in Utica, served as a brigadier general in the Civil War and as

lieutenant governor, and became a prominent businessman. To Gutierrez, it was all irresistible. “I said to myself, wouldn’t it be cool if we were able to get this document? And then bring it back to Upstate New York where it belongs?” he recalls. His friend Michael Russo ’18, also a St. John’s law student, concurred and agreed to chip in. For backup, they enlisted support from alumni friends including Gutierrez’s brother, Joshua Gutierrez ’19. It wasn’t a hard sell. “We’ve always felt an obligation to give back to Hamilton,” Gutierrez says of the ad hoc group of graduates. The bidding began at about $90 at 7 a.m. and topped out at roughly $700 just before 10 p.m. Once they had the prize in hand, Guitierrez and Russo took a few minutes to admire the scrap of history before packaging it for delivery to College Hill. n

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ARE LIFELINES Chris Walsh ’80

to say he’d been on the brink of suicide and repeated his question: “So how does it feel to save a life?” “I hugged him, and I said, ‘You did the work. You’re the one who used me as a lifeline, but you did all the work,’” Walsh responded. He retired in June after 30 years with the Lemon Grove, Calif., school district and after receiving the Social Worker of the Year Award from the San Diego County Office of Education. The peer recognition meant a lot to Walsh. It was further validation that social work, his second career, was the right one. In his first years after Hamilton, Walsh, who majored in theatre and English, worked as an actor with the New York Shakespeare

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Festival, off Broadway, and in regional productions. To make money, he took jobs in soap operas and commercials, but grew tired of the amount of time it took to generate the work. “I like being useful every day,” he says. Social work let him do that, and now he’s figuring out how he’ll do it in retirement. “I’m going to continue to work; I have to decide exactly what that will be. But it will be the same sort of philosophy of ‘What else can I do to make the world better?’” Walsh says. n

SWIM WITH SHARKS Val Jones K’79

AFTER DECADES AS a successful philanthropic fundraiser and strategic advisor, Val Jones K’79 can face a shark or a dinosaur with aplomb. She and her husband, “Dino” Don Lessem, won over billionaire Mark Cuban when they appeared in May on ABC’s Shark Tank season finale to pitch an investment in Lessem’s company. Dino Don, Inc. creates and exhibits life-size, accurate robotic dinosaurs. It’s a passion for Lessem, who was dinosaur advisor for Steven Spielberg’s first Jurassic Park movie, has written more than 40 books about the prehistoric beasts, and led excavations in Mongolia and elsewhere. Besides running her own consulting firm, Jones is an advisor for Dino Don. When Lessem was invited to audition for

Chad Varney ’22

AS SOMEONE WHO ASSESSES his work by the good it achieves, school social worker Chris Walsh ’80 had more successes than he will ever know; he’s also had plenty of affirmation. During a trip with students to an amusement park, a 20-something man approached him to ask, “How does it feel to save a life?” It wasn’t until he heard the man’s name that Walsh recognized the student with whom he’d worked in the late 1990s. “And he said to me, ‘I came to you when I was in eighth grade and told you I was gay, and you helped me accept myself. You contacted my mother that day, and you brought her in and helped her accept me and who I am,’” Walsh recalls. The man went on

the wildly popular show and made the cut, Jones was there as his numbers person. As reinforcements, the couple brought along two large, occasionally mouthy, dinosaurs. Cuban was the only investor who wanted in on the business, agreeing to contribute $500,000 and a team of marketing advisors in return for 25 percent of the company. Jones, a Kirkland art and archaeology major who also studied theatre, didn’t suffer from nerves when the show was taped and appeared completely at ease. “I’m hard to intimidate. This was not the biggest ask I’ve pitched. I’ve secured multi-million-dollar gifts for nonprofits, so it’s all a matter of zeros. The question is, does it make sense?” she says. n

Nina Goodheart

STRUM TUNES John Brisotti ’73

TAKE RISKS

Michael Breslin ’13 WHEN PRODUCER, ACTOR, and writer Michael Breslin ’13 and co-writer Patrick Foley finished their play Circle Jerk last summer, the pandemic had extinguished live theatre. The Brooklyn-based theatre and media company Fake Friends had planned to perform the play for a live audience. To salvage the project, the writers made a leap — backed by fearless producers, they rejiggered the play for livestreaming. That proved to be a smart move. In June, the play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. “I’m incredibly honored and honestly shocked by this gesture from the Pulitzer Prize committee to support young, queer, experimental theatrical work that engages with technology,” Breslin says. The play is about the internet and how disinformation has, in many ways, corrupted society. The Circle Jerk website describes it

as “a queer comedy about white gay supremacy, a homopessimist hybrid of yesterday’s live theater and today’s livestream (set in tomorrow’s news cycle).” When Breslin was weighing whether to produce the show online, he says he heard the voices of his professors – the late Carole Bellini-Sharp, Nancy Rabinowitz, and Craig Latrell – telling him to take the risk. When he learned of the nomination he immediately called Rabinowitz and texted Latrell. “The nomination definitely opens up more possibilities for Circle Jerk,” Breslin says. “We are excited about working toward a New York City in-person production that merges live performance and livestreaming technology.” Breslin has a lot more to juggle: his doctoral dissertation at Yale School of Drama, two new shows in development, and two television projects with Foley. n

JOHN BRISOTTI ’73 PLAYED guitar at Hamilton and had a mandolin that he picked up on occasion. After College he kept learning, mostly by ear, before taking lessons with Mike Compton, perhaps the foremost Bill Monroe-style mandolinist today. Brisotti didn’t realize how much playing with others meant to him until the early 1980s, when his fledgling insurance business and family responsibilities began overwhelming his music. “There was a time where I didn’t play music with people. I was unhappy and didn’t know why,” he recalls. “My wife and I had a conversation one night, and realized that I really needed to play.” From then on, he did, at least once a week, even as the couple raised three children, and Brisotti ran his company. He retired about five years ago. “I would play for at least two hours every morning. And, you know, it was just wonderful. I probably did that for at least six or eight months,” he says. For decades, he’s been in the band Eastbound Freight, which is starting to get in the post-pandemic swing of things. The band played a party in May. Comfortable shoes were in order for guests. “Every bluegrass player knows you always want to start a show with a quick tune to get people’s attention and make their feet start to move, so we started with ‘Big Country’ by Jimmy Martin,” Brisotti says. n

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PUSH FOR EQUITY Shammara Wright ’04

THROUGH COLLEGE, JOBS, and graduate school in health policy and management, Shammara Wright ’04 has moved in one direction — toward supporting racial equity. She’s committed to improving the lives of Black and brown people. “I think that’s the narrative of my entire career working on anti-poverty issues, working on public health issues,” she says. She’s been director of Health Education Projects for the New York City Department of Education; senior advisor with the New York City Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity; senior manager of after-school programs with the Points of Light Foun-

dation; and program coordinator of The After-School Corp.’s Building Healthy Communities Program. She earned her master’s degree at the New York University Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Until recently, she was senior associate at Living Cities, a collaborative of foundations and financial institutions. Part of its focus is to help cities institute anti-racism policies and practices that foster accountability in their communities. “A lot of the most important work I’ve done is helping people realize, no matter the position they’re in, that they can utilize the power they have to leverage change,” she says. Wright just took a new position as a senior program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where she’ll continue

SHOP SMARTER Stacey Boyd ’91

IN 2016, STACEY BOYD ’91 was visiting a refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya, when she reached into her bag for her phone to snap a picture. Around her was a group of refugee girls, all of whom had received an education through a program sponsored by the British telecommunications company Vodafone. They had gathered to meet Nobel Peace Prize winner and education activist Malala Yousafzai. “In that moment, two things immediately came to mind,” Boyd recalls. “First, talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not. Second, a fraction of the cost of my bag could have sent one of those girls to school for a year.” These insights led Boyd to create Olivela, an online designer fashion and beauty retailer that combines the power of business with philanthropy. Twenty percent of its proceeds goes to one of many partner children’s charities, including the Malala Fund, CARE, No Kid Hungry, and St. Jude’s Children’s

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to use her “racial equity lens” and continue public health work. With all that’s happened recently in the U.S. — the Black Lives Matter movement, the murder of George Floyd, racial disparities exposed during the pandemic — Wright has seen a rise in the number and depth of conversations about race. ”I think everybody recognizes that as a country, we’re in a place where people are having to reckon with race and racism,” she says. “I am optimistic that conversations will turn into actions that better people’s lives.” n

Research Hospital. To date, Olivela has “purchased” the equivalent of 700,000 days of school for underprivileged children. Boyd credits her past business and education ventures for Olivela’s success. After spending time as an educator, graduate student, and founder of a software management company, she created Schoola, an online retailer similar in concept to Olivela: parents could send in gently used clothing where it would be put up for sale, with a significant portion of the proceeds going to a school of the donor’s choice. “I think the most powerful part of Olivela is its conscious capitalism,” she explains. “If you are going to buy a beautiful bag or pair of shoes, and you can buy it online at a handful of places, why wouldn’t you buy it on a platform for the very same price that allows you to change the life of a girl or support another cause important to you like climate change or kids’ health? “Turning everyday actions into a force for good can be powerful,” she says. n — Libby Militello ’22

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SAVE LIVES

Joseph Forand ’77

“It’s a beautiful anesthetic, except you quit breathing.”

Brea Photography

HAVING WITNESSED THE POWER of fentanyl, anesthesiologist Joseph Forand ’77 knew many people were likely to die when nonprescription use of the drug began to climb in the mid 2010s. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, has deadly appeal: It is 100 times stronger than morphine and cheaper to make than heroin. In the 1980s and ’90s, anesthesiologists routinely used fentanyl for cardiac surgeries. “It’s a beautiful anesthetic,” Forand says, “except you quit breathing.” That’s fine when an anesthesiologist is there to breathe for the patient, but it can be lethal for abusers. Forand, who lives in St. Louis, grew increasingly alarmed about prescription drug overdoses while he served on the Missouri State Board of Health. By 2007, the annual number of prescription drug overdoses had tripled nationally since 1999, and roughly 80% of heroin users started with prescription drugs. Scouting out data to learn more, he absorbed relevant public health literature, including a 2009 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the Centers for Disease Control that indicated heroin was being cut with fentanyl. As heroin/fentanyl overdoses and deaths continued to climb, overwhelmed police officials and experts took to town hall meetings to educate the public about the opioid epidemic. In 2010, Forand’s wife was mayor of a small town in St. Louis County, and he routinely attended her public meetings, sitting in the back with members of the police department. At one point a sergeant leaned over to implore, “Doc, you got to do something. We’re finding these kids dead with the needle still in their arm.”

Forand had already been thinking about how to grab the attention of teenagers, a group that had seen a large increase in opioid use. He’d pondered whether he could motivate them by showing how quickly fentanyl stops a person from breathing. Would watching a patient’s last breath tracked on an anesthesia monitoring screen make the point? Forand even considered whether a movie could be an effective vehicle to deliver that image. Two weeks after the police sergeant’s plea, Forand was sitting with representatives of a production company. The result is his short film, Anatomy of an Overdose. Forand is one of two executive producers. The movie, supported by the Missouri Society of Anesthesiologists and St. Anthony’s Charitable Foundation, debuted in 2014, and is available on YouTube. It presents personal accounts of recovering addicts who survived an overdose and the science of what happens. The film drew attention from the media and a range of health and community organizations. Forand remains in the fight. He’s still talking to groups (he recently led a Hamilton alumni event) and serves on the county board of health. St. Louis County has its own prescription monitoring program, and he’s on its advisory board. Missouri is the only state without a prescription drug monitoring program, Forand says, and he’s been working hard to change that. He frequently points out that he’s not an expert on the epidemic, that his interest is really just a hobby. It looks more like a cause. “We’re in healthcare to save lives,” he says. n

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RECENT NEWS HIGHLIGHTS From across the Hamilverse

1 LIST CENTER

As we go to press, renovations wrap up on the former List Art Center, soon to be the home of the Literature and Creative Writing Department. The building, scheduled to reopen with the start of fall semester classes, will feature eight classrooms, 16 offices, collaborative and maker spaces, and the College’s letterpress.

2 KENNEDY CENTER FOR THEATRE

AND THE STUDIO ARTS

Audience members pondered the fate of perhaps the most infamous traitor in history when the Theatre Department presented The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Guirgis in April. A limited number of guests attended the mainstage production in person; others tuned in via livestream. Directed by Associate Professor of Theatre Mark Cryer, the performance featured a cast of 17 students.

3 TOLLES PAVILION

While a more normal routine is expected this fall, “Protect the Hubble” was the mantra of 2020-21. To ensure that happened, students filed through the COVID-19 testing center three times a week — faculty and staff in regular contact with students twice a week. As of the first week of June, nearly 165,000 tests had been administered during the academic year.

3 4 GLEN HOUSE

How sweet it was! Dozens of students took part in a maple sugaring effort last spring as part of an independent study project in environmental studies created by Hannah Katz ’21 and Asha Grossberndt ’21. After gathering 20 gallons of sap from trees on campus, students boiled it down to 42 ounces of syrup.

WANT MORE HAMILTON NEWS? Visit hamilton.edu/news. And if you’re not receiving our monthly Hamilton Headlines in your inbox, send a note to editor@hamilton.edu, and we’ll add you to the list.

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5 DUNHAM GREEN

White canopies dotted campus last spring, providing outdoor accommodations for classes, club meetings, and social gatherings. The largest, on Dunham Green, served as a venue for everything from a cappella group concerts to the annual Class & Charter Day ceremony.

6 NORTH RESIDENCE HALL

Recognizing the feelings of isolation and loneliness brought on by the pandemic, students in North shared notes of encouragement and hope with residents of the Lutheran Home in Clinton last spring. The letter campaign made their day, according to LutheranCare.

7 TAYLOR SCIENCE CENTER

The eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano began on Dec. 20, 2020, and within a month, cooled particles found their way to Hamilton’s Analytical Lab. The U.S. Geological Survey has a contract with the College, where scientists analyze the lava samples using an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. Hamilton is one of a handful of colleges to have such an instrument.

7 8 ALUMNI GYM 6

Even when Upstate New York weather isn’t cooperating, the men’s and women’s golf teams can gear up for competitive play. The old squash courts have been outfitted with cameras and a golf simulator screen/projector designed to run a TrackMan golf radar system, which calculates ball trajectory and measures swing speed and attack angle. Golfers can look at videos to make adjustments to their swings — and even compare them to those of golfers on the PGA Tour.

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SHOW AND TELL

he topics vary as much as the students who pursue them — and so do the lessons learned. We asked a smattering of members of the Class of 2021 to tell us about their senior projects and share the biggest takeaways from the capstone academic experience. (To make it more fun, see if you can match the senior with the project; answers on p. 47.)

WILL ANDRIOLA

SHAVELL JONES

LINDSAY GEARTY

“I learned that I could successfully complete a long-term project integrating historical background and statistical analysis all while navigating data-sets that were often in a foreign language!”

“I learned how to make

“I gained confidence in my ability to problemsolve and learned the importance of being able to adapt to new challenges.”

cross-cultural connections and question my own assumptions. Completing a senior thesis also taught me important skills that will be useful for further research in graduate school.”

SOPHIA COREN

AMY HARFF

MAJESTIC TERHUNE

“Working on my project for the past year has shown me that I can contribute meaningful knowledge to my field and empowered me to share my experiences and beliefs unabashedly.”

“I learned to trust the process. The initial plan and the final result were completely different, and because I let the project reveal itself slowly — instead of sticking to the original plan — I was much happier with the result.”

“I learned that here, at the end of my college career, I really am a scholar in my field. Beyond glimpsing into academia, I engage with it, too.”

ADEOTO “ADE” SOTINWA

“The biggest thing I learned was the importance of subjective intuition in research. This may seem counterintuitive as we are often taught to look at empirical evidence objectively, but in my limited experience, subjective intuition is necessary in figuring out which questions to H A M I LTO N ask to begin with.”

AMANDA KIM

JESSE ELMER

“Through my senior project, I gained greater confidence in my own capacity for creative independent thought and learned how to turn abstract questions into empirically supported conclusions.”

“My project taught me that no small contribution is meaningless and helped me internalize that the pursuit of knowledge is valuable in and of itself.”

Waste Not, Cheat Not: The Effects of Resource Availability on Cheater Detection

Conflation of Race and Ethnicity: Chinese Adoptees and Their ‘Cultural’ Upbringing

Illustrating the Impact of Climate Change in Oneida County, N.Y.

Previous research suggests that people may possess an evolved “cheater detection mechanism” that helps us identify and avoid individuals who might cheat us in an exchange. I investigated whether or not the availability of essential resources in one’s environment would influence their ability to detect cheating.

Many transracial adoptees experience feelings of in-betweenness because they are not the same race as their adoptive families. In my thesis, I argued that this tension between race and culture is due to “white” not being an acceptable ethnic identity in the U.S. In other words, my interlocutors had no way to account for their “white” cultural upbringings because “white” is the unmarked norm and as such is not distinguished as an identity, ethnicity, or culture.

My project combined my interest in environmental and climate action with my favorite medium, drawing, to use art as an educational tool. For my studio art thesis, I created illustrations showing how climate change is projected to impact biodiversity, dairy production, and Lyme disease. I included informational paragraphs and gave postcards to gallery visitors that included a QR code to the thesis website where I included additional information.

Afro-Japanese Visions: Representations of Blackness in Japanese Media

Teutonic Brothers: British Affinity with Germany Before WWI

In response to the Black Lives Matters movement, many in the Japanese public see racism as an American problem since Japan is a homogenous country. I deconstructed the origin of this myth by analyzing how Black characters and culture are represented in two movies released in Japan post World War II. Ultimately, I found that the depiction of Blackness in American popular culture greatly influenced the negative representation of Blackness in Japanese media.

My thesis examined British periodicals prior to the First World War in order to discover the point at which British writers viewed Germany not as a “racial brother” but as the Barbaric Hun from World War propaganda.

Patterns of Opposition Electoral Performance in Authoritarian States: The 2020 Russian Regional Elections

Porting Code and Assessing Expectations for Measuring Faraday Rotation

Performing Queenship: The Fairy Queen in the Elvetham and Ditchley Progresses

This project develops code that uses a lock-in fitting technique to measure unpolarized Faraday Rotation as a step toward improving the efficacy of helium-3 neutron spin filters used in neutron scattering experiments.

I analyzed how the nobility used Fairy Queen characters (like Titania from A Midsummer Night’s Dream) in entertainment performed before Queen Elizabeth I to subtly communicate with the queen.

Russia’s electoral system is a web of spoiler parties, selectively enforced rules, and straight-up fraud intended to perpetuate centralized authoritarian control. Yet, there are dramatic variations in opposition party performance. Using data from recent Russian regional parliamentary elections, I argue that these variations stem primarily from differences in regional state capacity to turn out probable United Russia voters.

Terrorism as a Brain Drain Push Factor: Evidence from Nigeria’s Boko Haram Insurgency My project used Nigeria as a case study to explore how terrorism in developing countries causes highly educated individuals to leave those countries.

Photos by Nancy L. Ford; Illustration by Alex Eben Meyer

SUMMER 2021

THE BIG PICTURE

Star Light, Star Bright IN THE DARKNESS, THE SOLAR CLASSROOM IN PETERS OBSERVATORY TWINkles with the light of over 5,600 stars. The Milky Way and constellations of the northern hemisphere drift up the walls and across the ceiling. The artistic paintings took physics major Leenie Wilcox ’21 a year to complete, and with the encouragement and help of Director of Laboratories Adam Lark, the room was transformed from a neglected storage area into a space intended to inspire wonder. “Despite all that physics has explained about the universe, I believe there still lingers a magical sense of reverence when we look up at a dark and starry sky, or when we find that a whole galaxy is contained in the eyepiece of a telescope. I hoped to bring this awe into the classroom,” Wilcox said. PHOTO BY NANCY L. FORD

H A M I LTO N

S U M M E R 2 0 2 1

VOICES

VIEW FROM COLLEGE HILL

Relationships BY DAV ID W IPPM AN CO L L EGE PR ESID EN T

NANCY L. FORD

E ARE PROUD, and more than a little relieved, to have successfully completed the 2020-21 academic year. You have no doubt read of the hard work and many sacrifices made to provide our students with the best education and the richest campus experience possible in the midst of a pandemic. From blended learning to Food Truck Fridays, Hamilton reinvented virtually every aspect of its operations. We succeeded in ways that far exceeded most people’s most optimistic predictions, but in a world of masks and physical distancing, inevitably much was lost. Perhaps most important, we could not fully replicate the dense network of close, personal relationships that are the essence of a Hamilton education. The richness of a lively class discussion; the intimacy of a one-onone conversation between a professor and a student over coffee; the sense of discovery that comes while working intensely with others in a lab, a studio, or on stage; the excitement and challenge of athletic compe tition; and the chance encounters that happen all over campus — none of the connections forged in these and many other campus settings happen as meaningfully or as effectively over Zoom or when masks and physical distancing create barriers to the usual warmth of campus interactions. The importance relationships play at Hamilton was illustrated by the alumni response to the May issue of the online Hamilton Headlines, which included short profiles of the 14 faculty members who retired over the past two academic years. They taught on College Hill for a combined

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524 years and touched the lives of thousands of students. And those students, now alumni, remembered. More than 6,400 of you read that story, and many reached out directly to former teachers, mentors, and friends to offer congratulations, best wishes, and appreciation. We know the relationships you have with your former professors endure, so this issue of Hamilton (pg. 36) profiles 10 faculty members who retired years earlier, and includes an introductory essay by newly retired Professor of Sociology Dan Chambliss. On a personal note, I, too, missed the in-person interactions that have enriched my Hamilton experiences with students, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni. Meeting with Hamilton graduates at reunions and around the country and hearing their stories of transformation and success have been highlights of my five years as president, and I’m looking forward to renewing old acquaintances and making new ones in the coming year. As we eagerly anticipate the coming academic year, our faculty and staff are excited to be getting back to doing what they do so well — creating relationships that change lives and endure for decades. n

QUOTABLES

We have been building bridges. Professor of Government Frank Anechiarico ’71, who has been leading the College-Community Partnership for Racial and Criminal Justice Reform. The partnership harnessed the talents of 12 professors, 20 professional experts, and 35 students in analyzing surveys, presenting webinars, and summarizing best practices for a report used by the Utica and Rome police departments in their responses to the governor’s executive order requiring police agencies to submit reform plans by April 1, 2021.

Something I taught you, something you learned here, is wrong … No education is complete, and knowledge changes constantly. That’s why at this commencement, at this beginning, realize that to ‘Know Thyself ’ requires a commitment to lifelong learning. Commencement speaker Ty Seidule, a military historian and the College’s inaugural Chamberlain Fellow, in his charge to Hamilton’s 484 graduating seniors on May 22, 2021.

Dear Larry and Sarah, thank you so much for everything — I loved being a part of the Café Opus team, and it gave me a sense of belonging.

Illustration by Chad Varney ’22

We logged thousands of miles in the car. And as we got closer to publication, it wasn’t uncommon for me to be at my laptop in my home office until 2 a.m.

Kat Kenney ’08, in a note to Larry Bender and Sarah Goldstein, co-founders of Café Opus, who retired this spring.

Kat McGrory ’05, an investigative reporter with the Tampa Bay Times, who won a Pulitzer Prize on June 11, 2021, in the Local Reporting category.

Culture is crucial. Engaging students as partners worked better than blaming and shaming. President David Wippman in a co-authored essay in the Jan. 11, 2021, Inside Higher Ed. He outlined lessons learned during the fall 2020 semester, one in which Hamilton saw relatively few COVID-19 cases.

SUMMER 2021

VOICES

KNOW THYSELF

Ron Kim ’02 Ron Kim ’02 still lives in the Flushing, Queens, neighborhood where his parents settled after they emigrated from Korea when he was 7. Now, Kim represents his community as a five-term New York state assemblyman who takes pride in being the only Korean American ever elected to that governing body. A Hamilton government major, Kim’s first job in public service was working with a representative for Flushing on the New York

City Council. He became a National Urban Fellow in 2004 and earned a master’s degree in public administration from Baruch College. A Democrat, Kim was first elected to the New York Legislature in 2012. Over the last year, he’s been in a regional and national spotlight: The pandemic hit especially hard in his district, and he’s been a vocal critic of how former Governor Andrew Cuomo handled the COVID-19 crisis in nursing homes.

START HERE

’87 A SLICE AND A SODA A few weeks after I immigrated to Queens, N.Y., from South Korea, I had my first slice of pizza on Roosevelt Ave. My grandmother, who had already been living stateside for over 10 years but still didn’t speak a word of English, took me to this Italian joint and yelled at the Italian man (in Korean), “Hey! Give me two slices and a Coke!” I took two bites and hated it. But that moment symbolized everything that is still awesome about Queens. Only here, an old Korean lady can find comfort walking into a restaurant, order in Korean, and a non-Korean can fully understand and make us feel welcome.

’93 AN EARLY LESSON

JORG MEYER

Right before I started high school, my parents filed for bankruptcy. They gave up everything in South Korea for me to have a better future, working endless hours in their small grocery store. This period left an indelible mark on my life and shaped my views on economic justice and political involvement. I spent most of my academic and professional career trying to connect the dots for people like my parents, immigrants and small business owners, who worked so hard but felt defeated by our broken system. 18

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KNOW THYSELF

’09

VOICES

’15

THE BIGGEST WIN

TACKLING CRIME

When I turned 30, I ran for New York City Council. It was a disastrous failure, and I didn’t even make the ballot. But soon after this loss, I met someone special, Alison Tan. As my life partner, as the mother of my three beautiful daughters, she later told me that she chose to be with me because I ran for public office and found me to be a decent man. In 2012, when I turned 33, I won my first election to the state legislature with Alison campaigning by my side every day.

I landed in the news after tackling a mugger attempting to rob a mother with her baby. In the aftermath, the media focused on how I stopped a crime. But the larger story was how my office spent months trying to understand the root causes behind the attack and the suspect’s experience with a mental health and substance abuse crisis. This incident shaped how I view criminal justice and how we must do a better job improving the social conditions that lead to violence in our communities.

“ As an only child of

immigrant parents who ran a small business, I saw how our system rewards monopolistic growth and punishes workers who stand in the way. I use everything I’ve learned to reverse this trend so we can have a more equitable economy that treats workers with dignity and lifts everyone up.

’99 UP FROM ROCK BOTTOM At the end of my sophomore year at Hamilton, I was suspended for one year. I was struggling academically and found myself constantly in the middle of bar fights and getting into trouble. It was a wake-up call that changed me forever. I spent that year working three jobs, volunteering, and taking classes at City University of New York. During that year off, when I felt like I hit rock bottom, I found the resilience, grit, and determination that shaped the person I am today. Luckily, Hamilton gave me another chance and embraced me back on campus.

’18 NOT IN MY DISTRICT I became the first New York lawmaker to denounce the proposed Amazon HQ2 expansion into Queens. The deal would have cost taxpayers $3+ billion and forfeited New York’s strong union-centric identity. The data supports my belief that corporate welfare does not create jobs, nor does it lead to resilient communities. Instead, investing in small businesses who have ties and roots in our communities leads to more positive, worker-centered, sustainable solutions.

’20 CALLING OUT CUOMO During the height of the pandemic, I spoke out against [now former] Governor Cuomo’s COVID mandate regarding nursing homes and long-term care facilities — policies I believe led to thousands of unnecessary deaths. Despite pressure from the top, I told the truth and paved the way to hold his administration accountable.

SUMMER 2021

‘TRYING TO REMEMBER THE COLOR OF THE SKY ON THAT SEPTEMBER MORNING’ 20

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by MAUREEN A. NOLAN photos by JORG MEYER

HE ORIGINAL INTENT WAS TO LEAVE the vast wall empty save for a quote from Virgil. Behind the wall was the repository for the remains of those who lost their lives in the World Trade Center terrorist attack 20 years ago on September 11. But late in the long planning process for New York City’s National September 11 Memorial & Museum, its advisory committee wanted something more for the east-facing wall. The committee’s 90 or so members consisted of family members of those who died, survivors, rescue workers, downtown residents, and others who were an intimate part of the tragedy. The families, in particular, thought that the nearly bare wall was too somber, recalls Jan Seidler Ramirez, chief curator and executive vice president of collections for the memorial. “They felt that with all the good that had been done after 9/11, in the names of the victims, and the hope and resilience that the city and the country had shown, we needed to do something to lighten the emotional load. And so the idea was, then, to introduce, in a major way, a unique art piece that we would commission,” she says. It would be the only piece commissioned for the museum, and after considering several artists for the job, planners selected Spencer Finch ’85. “He had the brilliant idea of making it at once about collective memory and honoring the individual memory of each and every person who died,” Ramirez says. His installation, “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on that September Morning,” became an iconic element of the museum, which opened in 2014.

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Finch, who lives and works in Brooklyn, employs a wide range of media, and his art, much of it public, can be seen around the globe. He recently completed an installation at a new Paddington rail station in London. “Trying to Remember” comprises 2,983 squares of paper that Finch hand painted in watercolor, each square a different shade of blue. Each represents a victim of the 9/11 attacks or the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The day of the 9/11 attack, the sky in New York City was a brilliant blue, a detail fixed in the memories of countless people who were in the city or on the East Coast that day. “The piece, really, is about the act of remembering what you bring to it, your collective memory of the day, the events, and then your very individual memory,” Ramirez says. Just before the museum opened, Finch told The New York Times that he liked to think of the squares as drawings. When he went to work painting the paper tiles, Ramirez says, he was like a monk in his studio monastery. “It was almost a religious experience for him to do this, thinking of the different colors and the shades and the discipline, and that each square deserved and merited his full artistic attention: Each square, as each person who was killed, merits individualization and memory,” she says. He painted two of each tile; one full set is archived at the memorial as a safeguard. Because the tiles are made of paper, they require painstaking care, and they get dusty. Ramirez says it took a team more than 90 hours to clean them for the museum’s post-COVID reopening.

Quotes from the May 15, 2014, New York Times article “The Searing Blues of the 9/11 Sky” announcing the opening of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum:

“Spencer’s work is about memory and subjectivity and everyone coming to this museum is going to need something different from it and project something different onto it. And I think the piece is designed for that.” — Susan Cross, curator at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art

MICHAEL KIRBY SMITH /NYT

he museum’s original plan was to periodically replace its commissioned art piece, but that idea faded because Finch’s work was so impressive and so right, Ramirez says. “We’ve found that our visitors interact with it in so many different ways, and it just keeps on performing the work that Spencer intended for it, which is active engagement in memory,” she says. Along with the Ladder Company 3 rescue truck, the installation may be the most Instagrammed object in the museum.

“As an artist, I don’t feel like my motives are always pure. But I feel that they’re pretty pure here. I’m a New Yorker, and I was here that day.” — Spencer Finch ’85

As part of its observance of the anniversary of 9/11, the memorial is planning an Instagram event that is an homage to the importance of Finch’s piece. People are asked to photograph the sky on or about Sept. 11 and to share the photo and a thought about that day 20 years ago. In The New York Times story, written just prior to the memorial’s opening, Finch says he was uncertain whether the work would be successful but thought it might be if he did it in an honest way. “As an artist, I don’t feel like my motives are always pure. But I feel that they’re pretty pure here. I’m a New Yorker, and I was here that day,” he told the reporter. n

“It was a risk, certainly, to do. ... I got to see it early and I became a real advocate. I think it’s extraordinary, and it’s so needed, and it brings in the light of day on so many levels and in so many dimensions.” — Paula Grant Berry, a chairwoman of the program committee of the Sept. 11 Memorial Foundation’s board

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Three Hamilton alumni — Arthur Jones III ’86, Adam Lewis ’87, and Sylvia San Pio Resta ’95 — lost their lives in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

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I PATH

N THE LATE 1970S, Channing Richardson, Hamilton’s first professor of international relations, envisioned a place on campus that would “connect abstract and theoretical knowledge with concrete, real-world problems, bridging the gap between the classroom and the ‘real’ world.” The College had just launched an interdisciplinary concentration in public policy designed to combine the study of economics, government, and philosophy in examining persistent

societal issues. Richardson and his colleagues knew that a physical space — a center — was necessary if students were to take what they learned in the classroom and apply it through research, community service, and interactions with policy experts.

PUBLIC SERVICE

That vision became the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center. Now in its 40th year, the center

has provided opportunities for more than 2,000 students to develop the academic knowledge and practical skills that lead to innovative and positive social change. “Having grown from a drawer in someone’s desk, the center is now, among other things, an incubator for student social engagement, a path to public service, and a clearinghouse for course development, visiting lecturers, conferences, and residencies,” says Frank Anechiarico ’71, the Maynard-Knox Professor of Government and Law and current Levitt Center director. More than a training ground for the next generation of ethical leaders, the Levitt Center’s programs and resources also lead to real benefits for the community. The following pages highlight just some of the Levitt Center initiatives throughout the past four decades.

4 Years

Levitt Center Highlights of

1980 To honor longtime New York State Comptroller Arthur Levitt, Sr. for his career in public service, his family and the Winston Foundation provide funding to establish the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center.

1979 Hamilton receives a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts to establish an interdisciplinary program in public policy designed to encourage students and faculty members to use the three disciplines of economics, government, and philosophy in analyzing public policy issues.

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“Through the generous support of a Levitt Fellowship, I did a summer collaborative research project with Professor [of Economics] Stephen Wu. We worked on the behavioral determinants of households’ health insurance preferences. Through his mentoring, I learned so much that summer, and the fellowship helped define my interest in economics research. After Hamilton, I went to Princeton for my Ph.D. in economics, and I am currently teaching at Vassar College. What’s more, I am still collaborating with Steve — in fact, one of our joint projects was just accepted for publication!” — QI GE ’06, assistant professor of economics, Vassar College

1993 Students in a public policy class led by Levitt Center Director and Professor of Government Gary Wyckoff develop a plan to overhaul the nation’s health care system at the same time President Bill Clinton’s administration is set to release its own health care plan. News of recommendations from the Clinton, N.Y., plan receive widespread coverage ranging from The New York Times to appearances on NBC’s Today show and ABC’s World News Sunday. • SOL LINOWITZ ’35

• BERNIE SANDERS AT HAMILTON

1986

1994

Hamilton announces the Sol M. Linowitz Visiting

U.S. Rep. Bernie Sanders visits Hamilton to

Professor of International Affairs, funded by

present the lecture “Why the U.S. Needs a

the Endeavor Foundation with support from

Canadian-Style Health Care System.” He is one of

the Winston Foundation. Named in honor of Sol

hundreds of speakers brought to campus over the

Linowitz ’35, a U.S. ambassador and presidential

last 40 years thanks to Levitt Center funding.

advisor, the professorship has brought to campus many eminent diplomats, including Ned Walker, Jr. ’62, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, the Arab Republic of Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.

• FILMING FOR THE TODAY SHOW OUTSIDE CHRISTIAN A. JOHNSON HALL

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“My semester as a Levitt Scholar made an indelible and enormously positive impact on my life. I had the pleasure of interning for Sen. Bill Bradley from my home state of New Jersey as well as with a Nicaraguan human rights organization called La Red de Solidaridad. Even better were the impassioned arguments we had about politics — what was wrong with the world and how to fix it — [in] Frank Anechiarico’s outstanding classes. When I started Hamilton I was on track to be a prosecutor. Being a Levitt Scholar taught me that I loved ideas and talking about them and that I wanted to do something else with my life. I am now in my 20th year as a professor of philosophy and honors at Eastern Washington University. I specialize in political philosophy and philosophy of race. I am almost half as good as Professor Anechiarico on his worst day. I believe that my primary area of research, which is on addressing and correcting habits of white supremacist racism, is motivated by a desire to practice philosophy as a form of public service that addresses the real problems of people and not the more abstract problems that often occupy philosophers’ attention.” — TERRANCE MACMULLAN ’94, professor of philosophy and honors, Eastern Washington University

1999 The Levitt Center releases results of the public opinion poll Racial Attitudes of Young Americans, in conjunction with the NAACP and Zogby International. The survey was developed by Professor of Government Phil

2008

Klinkner and students in the class Race and

The Levitt Center

American Democracy, and the press confer-

moves into its new

ence announcing the results was broadcast

space on the second

live by C-SPAN. Other Levitt surveys would

floor of the reno-

follow on such topics as Youth and Guns, Gay

vated and expanded

Issues, Immigration Opinion, and Climate

Kirner-Johnson

Change and Environmental Issues.

Building.

1995

2004

With funding

The Levitt Center joins two programs — Project SHINE

from Bris-

(Students Helping in the Naturalization of Elders), a

tol-Myers

national service-learning program through which stu-

Squibb, the

dents help refugees and immigrants in the Utica area

Levitt Center is

develop English skills, and VITA (Volunteer Income

equipped with

Tax Assistance), which matches students with low- to

six computers.

moderate-income families who need assistance with their tax returns.

• JANNETT MATTHEWS ’99 DISCUSSING POLL FINDINGS ON C-SPAN

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“The culture of cultivating leadership skills, nurturing and harnessing student creativity, and exposing students to diverse perspectives and strategies for addressing social issues — all this drew me to the Levitt Center as a first-year student and kept me until I graduated. With Levitt funding, I undertook a social innovation internship in Washington, D.C., traveled to New Orleans for the Ashoka University conference, and to Osakikamijima, Japan. I also participated in the Leadership Fellowship and numerous conferences and workshops on leadership and innovation. During my senior year, it was an honor to lead the innovation team in spearheading campus-wide town halls. Not only did these practical and real-world experiences make my time at Hamilton more enjoyable, they also broadened my understanding of what it means to be a leader and a change agent.” — CHIDERA ONYEOZIRI ’18, J.D. candidate, Harvard Law School

2014 The Social Innovation Lab opens. Designed to support student innovators as they work to develop novel solutions to persistent social problems, the lab is equipped with video conferencing

2011

equipment, wall-to-wall white boards, and comfortable seating to spur creative thought.

With support from Arthur Levitt, Jr., Hamilton establishes the Levitt Public Service Internship

LEAP (Leadership Experience and Preparation)

Fund to support students interested in careers

launches. A residential, credit-bearing program

in public service. Awards provide funding for

for first-year students led by peer co-directors

students who secure unpaid or minimally paid

and LEAP alumni, it includes in-class speakers,

summer internships that focus on an aspect of

discussions, and workshops addressing leader-

public service (e.g., nonprofits, government and

ship in the context of morality, power, popular

nongovernmental organizations, think tanks).

culture, politics, and the self.

• THE FIRST LEVITT LEADERS IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

2012 Former U.S. Ambassador to Kenya and Guatemala Prudence Bushnell and Christine Powers, a former director at the Foreign Service Institute, team with the Levitt Center to create the Levitt Leadership Institute. In its inaugural year, 17 students spend two weeks, one in January on campus and one in Washington, D.C., in March, learning about the theory and practice of leadership while developing and practicing skills essential for creating personal and societal change. • GATHERING GROUNDWATER SAMPLES

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“The Levitt Center is the reason I am in the career I’m in today. After my sophomore year, I was awarded a $4,000 grant to cover the expenses of an unpaid internship at the National Women’s Law Center, which inspired my career advocating for gender equity and racial justice. I later worked as a program assistant for Project SHINE, giving back to the Levitt Center. Since graduating, I earned a master’s in gender studies from the London School of Economics and have been steeped in the nonprofit sector advocating for social justice in a variety of areas — gender equity, racial justice, reproductive and sexual health, legal justice, and LGBTQ advocacy. I currently do marketing and grant writing at Nontraditional Employment for Women, a nonprofit that helps women, trans, and non-binary folks get into union construction careers, ensuring economic stability for themselves and their families.” — CAROLYN KOSSOW ’17, gender equity and racial justice communications professional

2020 The Law and Justice Lab launches to pair theoretical study of the legal system with practical application of concepts to realworld issues. Through the program, developed by Professor of Government Frank Anechiarico ’71, students have participated

2018

in the practicum Crafting Criminal Justice Reform in Response

The Levitt Center joins the Shepherd

residents of Herkimer and Oneida counties to understand

Higher Education Consortium on Poverty,

perceptions of law enforcement and racial justice topics; and

a collaboration among 26 colleges and

engaged in the Community-College Partnership for Racial and

universities that integrates classroom

Criminal Justice Reform, which brought together academic,

study of poverty with summer internships

legal, and community leaders throughout the Mohawk Valley

and co-curricular activities.

to discuss these pressing issues.

to Black Lives Matter; deployed and analyzed a survey of

2019 The Levitt Center initiates Faculty Research and Innovation Awards that provide for faculty-initiated interdisciplinary work that engages with contemporary issues, problems, or challenges, and makes connections between theory and practice (e.g., developing online academic or public interest journals, hosting conferences or workshops, pursuing projects focused on the local community).

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• STUDENTS WITH UTICA CITY COURT JUDGE RALPH EANNACE

Arthur Levitt, Sr. (1900-80) WIDELY ACKNOWLEDGED AS AMONG the most popular and effective administrators in New York’s history, Arthur Levitt, Sr. served as state comptroller for 24 years — the longest in the history of the office. Through six elections, he received impressive bipartisan support, attaining the largest majority ever accorded a candidate in a New York State election in his last reelection campaign. During his career, Levitt became known for his fiscal prudence and probity. He introduced management practices and auditing procedures to the comptroller’s office that became models for fiscal officers throughout the country. In a published obituary, New York Mayor Edward Koch said Levitt’s service as comptroller “set standards nationwide that everyone holding such office aspires to fulfill and few can. Integrity, intelligence, courage, and love of his fellow New Yorkers were his hallmarks.” In 1979, Hamilton recognized Levitt’s lifelong commitment to service — from infantry private in World War I to colonel in the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps in World War II to his many years as comptroller — by awarding him an honorary degree.

Underway: •

Expansion of the Law and Justice Lab. Proposed future topics include public health, refugee policy, and income inequality.

•

Residencies for Local and State Policymakers. Piggybacking on the success of the Levitt Resident Lectureship, which brings to campus national figures, this program would draw resident lecturers from municipal, county, and state agencies, and nonprofits in the Mohawk Valley and Albany. Students would have expanded opportunities for conversation with experts in lunch talks, career counseling, and classroom visits.

•

Public Policy Field Studies. Intensive, two-week examinations of a particular public policy issue onsite in the U.S. or abroad that would allow students to extend class-

2021 Coinciding with the 40th anniversary, the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs

room learning by examining public policy in action. •

Human Rights Clinic. Jointly with the Upstate Institute

Center Fund is established as part of a $2.2 million grant from the

at Colgate University, the Levitt Center is examining the

Winston Foundation and contributions from the Levitt family. Proceeds

feasibility of a bi-county (Oneida and Madison) human

from the endowment fund will allow the center to provide students

rights commission that would include staff work by

with enhanced opportunities, including immersive public policy experi-

undergraduates. A second human rights initiative entails

ences, direct access to policy innovators, additional summer research

documentation and publication of human rights viola-

fellowships, new public service internships, and an annual post-gradu-

tions internationally.

ate fellowship.

hamilton.edu/levitt

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PHOTOS BY NANCY L. FORD

OUR LIFE’S WORK I

T’S BEEN 40 YEARS SINCE sociology majors Scott Eveleth ’82 and Margaret Irwin ’83 showed me around the Hamilton campus on my “candidate day,” and since [then Professor of Anthropology] Doug Raybeck tried, at my candidate dinner that evening, to persuade me to join him in the purchase of an ultralight flying machine. I politely declined his offer. Four days later, despite a lukewarm endorsement from the hiring committee (“Mr. Chambliss has some odd mannerisms, but the students seem to like him…”) I got the job. The hiring season was almost over, the Sociology Department was desperate, and I was happy to say yes. I’ve been lucky to work at Hamilton ever since.

Dan Chambliss Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus

And lucky, too, that only once in those years did some alums write to the president [Hank Payne] and complain that my teaching would precipitate “the decline of Western Civilization.” Hank disagreed, and I kept my job — but more on that later. The College has changed dramatically since I arrived. In the early ’80s, the wounds of the Kirkland merger were still fresh, kept open by an animosity that surprised us newcomers. Then the anti-apartheid divestment movement rocked the campus, with marches and teachins and “shanties” dotting lawns on the “light side.” Responding to the takeover of his office, President [Martin] Carovano suspended a dozen of the College’s star students, so the faculty revolted; he resigned a year or two later.

n 1995, of course, the trustees voted to close fraternity houses, ending my annual visits to the Chi Psi Halloween party and occasional dinners at AD. Once I even went to a DU clambake, but only for about 30 minutes, just enough to sample the unique flavor of that storied event. The closures had the desired effect of dramatically improving the College’s admission profile and helped move us closer to a gender-equal campus. And since 2000, the College has consistently increased its national (and international) profile, its demographic diversity, and its selectivity. Incoming students now, in my view, are academically stronger, more engaged, and consistently hardworking, but are also more anxious about their futures (reasonably enough),

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◀ Dan Chambliss in the classroom, 2011.

How College Works, a 2014 book by Dan Chambliss and Christopher Takacs ’05, reveals how strong personal relationships are key to determining a student’s collegiate success.

and apparently less likely to read for pleasure, judging from their oddly limited vocabularies. I blame the internet. Like every teacher, I’ve had my signature techniques. For my first eight years of teaching Intro, I posed a challenge to the students: If everyone in this class skips the final exam, everyone will get an A (sounds good so far!). But — here’s the catch — if anyone, any student at all, does take the exam, everyone who skips will get an F. Notice that downside risk. The apparently easy challenge — just don’t show up! — is in fact ruthlessly dangerous. My goal was exemplifying the difficulty of overthrowing a tyrannical government: If you shoot at a dictator, you’d better not miss. In eight years, no class ever came close. Then in fall 1988, first-year student John Kellogg Werner ’92 spent the better part of his semester organizing the revolt. Using some official-looking legal documents, John spent long hours tracking down all 63 students (presocial media) and getting their commitment. It worked. No one showed up for the exam. I was genuinely relieved; could I really have flunked an entire class? Then some alums complained bitterly to the president that I was giving away A’s (as mentioned above). The whole episode got national attention, but I never again offered the challenge. Believing it’s possible was the biggest hurdle, and John had cleared it. After that, in 1991, I started using oral exams, which thousands of students since have endured with me and my colleagues. The format is simple: No written work in the course (again, sounds good so far!), just a series of one-onone oral exams. Each exam was drawn from

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six essay questions shared a week in advance. For the exam itself, facing off with me, students picked three questions to answer by rolling a die. It’s nerve-wracking, especially for first-years. Hands trembled, faces turned red, but only once in three decades did I hear of a student literally vomiting beforehand. Everyone survived, learned to prepare, and gained confidence. They learned lots and even became articulate. Countless alums

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Try new stuff, new subjects, new people and projects. Hamilton is life with a strong safety net.

over the years have reported that after those exams, they never feared a job interview. I always tried to learn students’ names. My peak performance came one day in the early ’90s in the old Chemistry Auditorium, when I successfully named all 144 students in a gargantuan Self in Society class. The last four were tough, but when I hesitatingly pointed out that final sophomore, the entire class burst out in a huge round of applause. With increasing age, though, I needed new memory tricks. So, starting around 2000, I would begin the first day of every course by lining students up around the room and snapping their individual photographs. People would giggle, and chat with each other, and make funny faces. Then before each class meeting, I’d review the pictures to help me remember names. A few years later at the family reception held the day before Commencement, I’d pull out these old photographs, share them with my students and their folks, and we’d all have a good laugh.

long the way students learned sociology. I loved packing an entire class together, shoulder to shoulder in the KJ Auditorium, rocking back and forth chanting “Swing to the Left, Swing to the Right!” and other old football cheers; or watching Bon Jovi playing “Living on a Prayer” before 100,000 fans in London’s Wembley Stadium, seeing how group solidarity arises from interaction rituals. In Methods, we took notes about behavior in the gym and calculated percentages from contingency tables. In Theory, we studied religious callings and global capitalism, then worked on paragraphing and topic sentences. In Self in Society class, we talked about situational definitions, bad faith, and the limits of free

choice. One time, on a beautiful spring day when dissecting ideas in the Red Pit was just insufficient, all 41 of us trooped outside, took a spontaneous tour of campus, and finished up by lining the sides of Martin’s Way and doing the Hokey Pokey, to the mystification of students heading to their next class. Some actually stepped around us, frowning a little. Everything was grist for analyzing social relationships, including our own: about how to assemble and weigh evidence; how to be honest with yourself, not constrained by prior opinions; and how to write and speak clearly, so you could share your ideas. It was sociology; however, we also actually studied history, economics, political science, psychology, some math, a little biology … I taught liberal arts. It was intellectual cross-training, strengthening the mind and character to work on anything that came along. And we had fun doing it.

ere’s my advice for students: Try new stuff, new subjects, new people, and projects. Hamilton is life with a strong safety net. You’ve got a place to sleep and some good food and lots of potential friends within a few minutes’ walk. If you fail, nothing really bad happens. Therefore, you can explore in all directions. Don’t waste the opportunity; for many alums, that’s their biggest regret. And one suggestion to new faculty: Don’t require attendance. Hamilton students want to learn. If they aren’t voluntarily coming to class, then something’s wrong, either with them or with you. Find out which it is, and do something about it. As my historian friend [Edgar B. Graves Professor of History Emeritus] Al Kelly says, “Never bore them.” In the classroom each day counts, but true teaching is a 30-year project; we aim for the future. If you don’t completely alienate the students, they can always come back to what you said, even many years later. At a reunion reception about five years ago, standing in a crowd on the Bristol porch, I spotted a guy who took my classes in the mid-1980s. He was a lousy

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I taught liberal arts. It was intellectual cross-training, strengthening the mind and character to work on anything that came along.

TOP: Dan Chambliss with former student John Kellogg Werner ’92, organizer of a successful revolt. BOTTOM: Speaking at Class & Charter Day, 2019.

student, frankly, and not a very nice person; plus, I suspected — but couldn’t prove — that he cheated on a final paper. So, seeing him at the reunion, I groaned, dreading the encounter. But when he saw me, his eyes widened, and he plowed his way through the crowd, obviously wanting to talk. “I was such a jerk!” he yelled as he approached. (OK, that’s not the actual word he used, but you get the idea.) He was embarrassed, mortified really, and apologized at length. He described a misspent youth, an eventual repentance, and now a fulfilled mid-life, in both his family and his work. And he really did learn some good things in those classes; it wasn’t my fault. By this point, we were both a bit weepy and had a big hug. All was forgiven.

o, if you’re a teacher, remember to play the long game. And if you’re an alum, please remember that for those of us now retired from long careers at Hamilton, you were not just temporary visitors to the Hill. You were, and you are, our life’s work. ■

Dan Chambliss retired this summer after 40 years of teaching on College Hill. Throughout his career, he has written numerous articles and books, including How College Works (2014), with Christopher Takacs ’05, which received Harvard University Press’ Stone Prize for outstanding book on education and society. Recipient of the American Sociological Association’s Career Prize for Distinguished Contributions to Teaching in 2018, Chambliss’ interests include higher education, formal organizations, social psychology, and research methods. He holds a doctorate and master’s degree from Yale University and a bachelor’s degree from the New College of the University of South Florida. Chambliss has directed the Mellon Foundation Project for Assessment of Liberal Arts Learning and Hamilton’s New York City program, and chaired the Sociology Department and the Committee on Gender Equity in Athletics.

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FOREVER

TEACHERS By Maureen A. Nolan

To their former students, Hamilton’s now-retired faculty members were teachers, advisors, mentors, and friends. And they were unforgettable. We invite you to catch up with a handful of professors to see what they’re up to now. Not surprisingly, it’s a lot.

NANCY L. FORD

JEAN D’COSTA

Leavenworth Professor of English (1980-1998)

onsidering that writer Jean D’Costa’s very conversation overflows with stories, insights, intellectual sidelights, and funny lines, the autobiography she’s working on should be riveting. She’s writing it at the behest of two close friends who thought she should record the stories she’s told them over the years. “A lot of the stories are about very early childhood in rural Jamaica. The first place that I remember was a place up in the mountains, in the middle of the island, where the roads ended. You couldn’t go any farther,” D’Costa says. “It was wonderful.” Besides her autobiography and sundry other projects, D’Costa, who is 84, is writing a series of essays about the genesis of her children’s novels. The most recent is Jenny and the General, published in 2002 by Carlong Publications, Kingston, Jamaica. As a linguist and academic, D’Costa’s work and writing focus on multilingualism in Jamaica, ranging from Jamaican Creole to standard English. She and her husband, David, live in Gainesville, Fla., settling there for its convenience

• Jean D’Costa spent time this summer at the Clinton home of her friend Bonnie Urciuoli, the Leonard C. Ferguson Professor of Anthropology Emerita.

for frequent travel to visit family and friends in Jamaica. Retirement dovetails nicely with D’Costa’s approach to writing. For the deep work, she doesn’t set a schedule but writes only when in “the proper state of mind.” “If I come to a point where I don’t know what to say, I stop and I go away, and I do other things,” D’Costa says. “And while I’m doing other things, I’ve learned not to consciously think about the process and act of writing because that literally blocks one.” Since she left Hamilton, D’Costa’s work has ranged widely. Starting in 2004, she spent a decade copyediting for the university press at the University of the West Indies and became chief editor for a UNESCO project on the African diaspora in Jamaica and the Caribbean. She co-wrote Caribbean Literary Discourse: Voice and Cultural Identity in the Anglophone Caribbean, published in 2014. And there’s much, much, more. For instance, at the University of

Florida, D’Costa helped copyedit a dictionary of a vanishing language in central Ghana; gave linguistic advice on an article on Rastafarian poetics; and, in her estimation, “failed utterly to help in a discussion of 21st-century Caribbean literature by women.” “My happiest time was last November– December when I read the rough draft of a doctoral dissertation on suicide and suicidal ideation among Jamaican adolescents in care,” D’Costa says. “This is very important research and will lead, I hope, to much better awareness among caregivers, nursing staff, parents, and school authorities.” She’s long had a strong and active interest in education. Just about every summer, the D’Costas visit College Hill where good friends include Bonnie Urciuoli, the Leonard C. Ferguson Professor of Anthropology Emerita. D’Costa’s Hamilton years were good ones for her, especially for her research into the history of pidgins, dialects, and Creole languages in Jamaica. “The only thing I couldn’t stand were faculty meetings. I became allergic to them,” she admits.

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SETH KAYE

DOUGLAS RAYBECK

Professor of Anthropology (1970-2007)

n his 80th birthday, Doug Raybeck was having dinner at home with his family and some friends who’d taught with him at Kirkland College, when his daughter, as she often does, handed him her computer to show him something. “So I opened it up, and there were 80 students,” Raybeck says. That’s 80 former students from his time as a professor at Kirkland and Hamilton wishing him a happy birthday, which was a sweet, yet mildly distressing, surprise. Distressing for Raybeck only because he wasn’t able to speak to the students individually. Individual relationships are fundamental to Raybeck the teacher, and the relationships often endure. His wife, Karen Jones, who is the mathematician of the family, puts the count of former students who have visited their home in Amherst, Mass., at 28. As a professor, Raybeck loved working with students and watching them grow. Now he’s seeing them grow older. “Some of my students are in their 50s now. Some are bald,” he says with a laugh. “Everybody’s either got gray hair or they’re coloring. And I’m very pleased that a number did go on in anthropology. One woman has an interna-

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• Doug Raybeck at his home in Amherst, Mass., where he settled in part because of its proximity to colleges and universities.

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Some of my students are in their 50s now … And I’m very pleased that a number did go on in anthropology.

tional reputation, which is something I never got.” He laughs again. Another student who became an anthropologist was chair of her department for years and is about to retire, he says. And if she follows his example, she’ll semi-retire. Since leaving Hamilton, Raybeck has published a second edition of his book Mad Dogs, Englishmen, and the Errant Anthropologist: Fieldwork In Malaysia. Malaysian culture is the focus of his academic work. He’s published several articles, and he’s working on his memoir. “I’ve got a lot of stories about things I did, principally when I was young, to stay alive,” he says. He’s talking about economic survival. Raybeck still teaches. He says he’s addicted to it. He and his wife moved to Amherst to be near their daughter, but also because the area is home to five higher education institutions. During the pandemic, he taught online. He may teach this fall at Hampshire College, which he views as similar to Kirkland in its conventions and values. He taught three years at Amherst College and one semester at the University of Massachusetts. That went sour fast, he admits. “They gave me an intro class with 190 students, and I’m sorry, you do not educate 190 students, you talk at them, and that’s not my idea of education,” Raybeck says. Eighty former students who joined his birthday dinner would agree.

HONG GANG JIN

DE BAO XU

Leonard C. Ferguson Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures (1991-2014)

hey are twice retired, but they aren’t yet traveling the globe as they’d longed to do. The pandemic delayed that part of their post-career plans. Still, with no administrative chores to manage, Hong Gang Jin and De Bao Xu are feeling free in their new home in Orange County, Calif. The couple retired most recently last fall from demanding jobs at the University of Macau in China. In retired professor style, they are kicking up their heels. “I’m reading a lot of things, thinking about life, thinking about politics, thinking about the China-American relationship,” says Xu. At Macau, he was a distinguished professor and master (or dean) of a residential college within the university. Jin was the dean of faculty of arts and humanities at the university. Now she can devote all the time she wants to her personal research. “I would like to consider myself retired in many ways, but I’m still active in the field, doing things at my pace, and helping with teacher training, workshops, collaborative research projects here and there,” she says. At Macau, their work was satisfying but nonstop, given the administrative duties, research, publication pressure, teaching, and mentoring. They were ready to take life a little easier and eager to explore Europe, countries in Asia they haven’t yet visited, and other places they’ve never been. “We haven’t even gone to the Grand Canyon,” Xu says.

SLAVA BLAZER

William R. Kenan Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures/Director, Associated Colleges in China (1989-2014)

• Hong Gang Jin and De Bao Xu made a stop in San Francisco this summer as part of their post-pandemic travels.

But they have been able to see their daughter a couple of times since the pandemic hit, recently combining a trek to Boston, where she lives, with a conference they participated in at the University of Rhode Island. They’d been at Macau since retiring from Hamilton. During their long careers on the Hill, Jin and Xu were fundamental to the East Asian Languages and Literatures Program as it grew into a department. Jin’s Hamilton legacy includes founding in 1996 the Associated Colleges in China, an intensive Chinese language and culture program in Beijing. In 1998, she was

published the second edition of his chiefedited Contemporary Linguistic Theory Series (10 monographs). While at Hamilton, backed by the College, he founded the International Conference and Workshops on Technology and Chinese Language Teaching in the 21st Century. Xu is still active in the organization, and, among other activities, serves as editor-inchief of the Journal of Technology and Chinese Language Teaching. Both he and Jin speak of how their time at Hamilton shaped their perspectives and careers. It was their first experience with the liberal arts,

named the National Outstanding Baccalaureate College Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Her research focuses on language processing, acquisition, and pedagogy. Her sundry projects-in-progress include a collaboration, with professors at the University of California Los Angeles and the University of Oklahoma, that uses linguistics data to analyze Chinese-language learning paths, patterns, and errors. Another of her projects looks at reading comprehension and how video captions are processed. Xu’s field is theoretical and Chinese linguistics and teaching Chinese as a second language, and over the years he’s authored or co-authored dozens of papers and books. At Macau, he

and they shared some of what they learned with students at Macau. Xu modeled the residential college he ran there after Hamilton. “The working experience at Hamilton for 25 years really taught me so much about the philosophy of the College and also the way we interact with each other — the way we treat our students,” Jin observes. “That’s why I’m very close to my students, and we always feel like a family.” Jin and Xu are proud that they helped inspire a love of Chinese language and culture in their Hamilton students, whom they often hear from. “And they are everywhere — in China, in Singapore, in Hong Kong, and back in the United States,” Xu says.

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NANCY L. FORD

MANFRED VON SCHILLER

Professor of Physical Education and Head Coach, Men’s Soccer and Lacrosse (1959-98)

pples and cherries can’t be coached, even by Manfred von Schiller, who is worried about this year’s crops. “We have some varieties, there’s too many apples on them, and some varieties, hardly any apples. And the cherries, compared to last year, we have maybe a quarter to a third of a crop,” he says. Von Schiller, 91, still works the farm his parents handed down to their children. He’s a steward of 20 acres of cherries and 30 acres of apples, handling much of the tractor work for the operation. He and his wife, Freida, live on the property in Sodus, N.Y., about five miles from Lake Ontario. Von Schiller returned home after he retired from Hamilton, where he was head soccer coach for nearly 40 years and head men’s lacrosse coach for 36 years. A modest man who tries to steer the conversation away from himself, von Schiller still can’t believe he landed the Hamilton job all those decades ago. After four years in the service and with money from the GI Bill, he entered the State University of New York at Brockport to graduate in 1959 with a physical education degree. He heard word-of-mouth about a soccer coaching job at Hamilton, applied, and surprised himself by landing it. He would go on to earn a master’s degree from St. Lawrence University. When von Schiller talks about his successes on College Hill, he clearly prizes them for what they meant for the young men on his teams. He remembers their faces after Eastern College Athletic Conference tournaments. His lacrosse teams competed in them in 1975, 1988, and 1993. In 1979, his soccer team finished with a 12-1-1 record and won a conference title. “One of the best feelings I’ve had in my life,” von Schiller

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• At 91, Manfred von Schiller still handles the tractor work on his family cherry and apple farm.

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The main thing that we always did was try to do the best we possibly could.

says. Seeing his team’s faces was like winning the World Cup. Hamilton soccer players created an award in von Schiller’s honor. It goes to a player who displays team spirit, leadership, and integrity. That fits. “The main thing that we always did was try to do the best we possibly could,” von Schiller says. “I mean, you can’t always be undefeated, you can’t always win; we tried to do the best we possibly could.” When he turned 90 last year, well-wishes poured in from “the guys” — his former students — and von Schiller was tickled to be remembered. He remembers them, too. Tucked into the pocket of a Hamilton jacket from his coaching days is a hat that says “soccer coach,” a gift from a graduating senior, who, years later, became ill and died. Von Schiller still wears the old jacket. He doesn’t wear the precious hat. “It’s always in a jacket,” he says. “Well, it’s going to stay there.”

AUSTIN BRIGGS

Hamilton B. Tompkins Professor of English Literature (1957-2000)

wanted to become a high school English teacher, and on that odd basis, Briggs says, they built

life,” Briggs says. “One is that when we packed up and sent our stuff off to Mexico, I wish I had

a friendship that lasted years. He remains an active scholar, using the Hamilton archives online for a project on Ezra Pound, Hamilton Class of 1905; contributing — by invitation — to a volume of essays; and convening and chairing a roundtable at a virtual Joyce conference sponsored by the University of Trieste in Italy. He loves San Miguel, a UNESCO World Heritage City, for the warm and friendly people, the rich classical music scene, and the close-knit community of smart and interesting people. After decades of Central New York winters, he revels in the perfect year-round weather. “You know, I have very few regrets in

brought my snow shovel down here so I could hang it on the wall.” When the pandemic abated in San Miguel and the fully vaccinated couple ventured out to their favorite restaurant for the first time in months, they wanted a photograph of themselves with their regular waiter. “And then the waiter who took the photograph and several others asked whether it would be all right if they took a picture of us with them,” he recalls. “Isn’t that wonderful? Like going home.” Briggs swims miles every week, and the couple, who don’t have a car, stay fit walking up streets of their mountain city. Navigating the language is trickier for Briggs, who acknowledges that his Spanish is lousy. But he gets by and is the better for the challenge. “I know there are people my age who are doing puzzles to try to keep their minds active,” he says. “What I’m doing is continuing to read difficult books and socializing with friends who are smart and interesting. And also, you know, trying to figure out how I’m going to ask in Spanish for a Phillips screwdriver in the hardware store — there’s a puzzle!” At 90, Briggs says he doesn’t know himself better than he did as a younger man; he knows himself differently. “One of the really great things about getting on in years is that you no longer have to prove anything,” he says. “There was a time when I felt I had to keep up with the latest books. No more. I’m rereading great poetry and fiction that mattered to me over a lifetime.”

• Austin Briggs lives in the World Heritage City of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he keeps fit by walking the hilly streets.

BARRY WEISS

fter 50 years of teaching at Hamilton, Austin Briggs and his wife sold their house in Clinton, gave their car to their kids, and headed to central Mexico and the beautiful city of San Miguel de Allende. Briggs retired from full-time teaching in 2000 but continued to offer a seminar on James Joyce each fall. To mark his golden jubilee in 2007, the English Department sponsored a day-long Joyce symposium during Fallcoming. The next year, Briggs moved to San Miguel with his wife, Bunny Serlin, who was known as Bunny Lieberman when she served as founding director of the Career Center. The couple never looked back, but Briggs misses the autumn leaves, the College swimming pool and library, and, of course, his friends. He remembers Hamilton for the wonderful opportunities to form close relationships with students. Early in his career at the College, he had to fail a freshman comp student who

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ERNEST WILLIAMS

s ever, Ernest Williams is a man of science and nature, but now he’s a man of photography and painting, too. The professor of biology emeritus has since started to paint, mostly landscapes. He created a website, ewnature.com, as “a celebration of the beauty and diversity of nature,” and on it he shares his nature photographs and paintings. “Students, I think, sometimes categorize people, and they categorize themselves: They’re either a science person or they’re an arts person, and so forth. Well, one can be interested in and do many things, and one should not be limited by categorization like that,” observes Williams, who relishes the freedom he’s found in retirement. If the weather is miserable, he doesn’t have to go outside. Any deadline he faces is self-imposed. “One is free from other people’s schedules,” he says with satisfaction. Williams, who taught his first course on the Hill in January 1984, retired in 2014, but kept teaching one course a year until 2017. By his count, over the decades he assigned 4,760 final grades and taught Ecology 38 times, Introductory Biology 40 times, and Evolution 30 times. He produced four books and published 66 articles, and was the founding chair of the Environmental Studies Program. Over his career, he focused his research on the population biology and conservation of butterflies, including the monarch, and he still receives invitations to write and speak about them. Clinton remains home for Williams and his wife, Sharon, who ran Hamilton’s Writing Center for 30 years. Often they make the drive to spend a few days at their camp on Twitchell Lake in the Adirondacks. Williams is secretary of the Monarch Butterfly Fund, an international

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NANCY L. FORD

William R. Kenan Professor of Biology (1983-2014)

• Ernest Williams keeps a scholarly — and artistic — eye on the birds, butterflies, wildflowers, and other natural wonders of the Upstate New York region.

organization that works for the conservation of monarchs. The couple work with Kirkland Trails, a local group that’s developing a trail system. Sharon was the group’s founding president. Even after retirement, Williams led Hamilton alumni trips to the Galapagos and Costa Rica, and has traveled on his own, with nature as a focus. His daily exercise regimen, which includes long walks, inspired him to create a periodic report about the birds, wildflowers, and butterflies on the Kirkland Trail and at Twitchell Lake, and he emails his updates to anyone who is interested. Williams loves to hear from and about former students, and he misses his colleagues from the Hill, but that’s OK. “I loved teaching, but I’m having a wonderful time retired in part because there are a lot of things I’m interested in, and I’m doing a lot of different activities,” he says.

SANTIAGO TEJERINA-CANAL

Professor of Hispanic Studies (1984-2010)

etirement sounds more enticing in Spanish. The word is jubilación — that’s jubilation in English, explains Santiago “Santy” Tejerina-Canal, who is enjoying partial jubilation and would love to attain 100 percent status. Tejerina-Canal lives in León, Spain, with his family and directs the Summer Institute of Hispanic Studies in cooperation with the University of León. He’d like to step down from that position but is reluctant to do so until he can ascertain a secure future for the program he co-founded in 1992. He retired from Hamilton in 2010 after creating and directing in 2007 Stanford University’s Bing Overseas Study Program in Madrid. He continued that work, retiring from the position in 2015. He, his wife, Bonnie Kay Canori, and the youngest of their three children split their time between León and Tejerina-Canal’s native village of Las Salas in the Picos de Europa National Park.

He considers Hamilton his “American alma mater,” although he didn’t attend the College. Hamilton was a special and productive place for him. His work at the College included heading the Spanish section of the Romance Languages Department for several years, and he was the first chair of the newly created Hispanic Studies Department. He spent 20 to 30 extra hours a week working on behalf of Hamilton’s Academic Year in Spain, serving as its director in Clinton for seven years and in situ in Madrid for another seven. “Let me add,” he says via email, “that Hamilton’s size, beauty (including the Glen) and Arcadian mores and collegiality with students are unparalleled in all the prestigious institutions [where] I have taught.” In retirement, he’s kept busy. “I have read more in my five years of jubilant retirement than in the previous years,” Tejerina-Canal says. He’s recently written articles for Spanish newspapers, delivered papers in Spain and the U.S., and given presentations annually about the Summer Institute at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and other institutions. Tejerina-Canal is working on three new diverse books: one on study-abroad programs, one about the Camino de Santiago, a cultural/spiritual pilgrimage in Spain; and one about his experience creating an “Atlantic bridge of understanding” between the Americas and Spain. He and Bonnie remain connected to College Hill and their Hamilton friends. “Every November I have gone to Hamilton to visit for the past 14 years, and I would actually love to return for a longer period, as we still have our house in Clinton,” Tejerina-Canal says. “After all, I received with tenure my own plot in the College Cemetery!”

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I have read more in my five years of jubilant retirement than in the previous years.

JINNIE GARRETT

William R. Kenan Professor of Biology (1985-2015)

his summer, Jinnie Garrett will log another 1,000-plus miles on her trek through retirement. The solo trip with her teardrop trailer will take her from her condo in Moneta, Va., to Maine and back. She’s considering a stop in Clinton. It’s Garrett’s second big post-retirement road trip. The first was a five-month, 17,000mile journey. “It was wonderful. I went to 25

• In 2018, Santiago Tejerina-Canal walked more than 900 kilometers on the Camino de Santiago, through the French Camino to Finisterre.

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JAMES BRADFIELD

Elias W. Leavenworth Professor of Economics (1976-2012)

J • Jinnie Garrett travels the country with her teardrop trailer. Here she is at Angel’s Landing in Utah’s Zion National Park.

national parks, visited friends, family, a former student, a former colleague or two, people scattered all around the place. I left mid-August and came back just before Christmas,” she says. She struck out on the road after she retired in 2019 as dean of natural sciences and mathematics at Ferrum College in Virginia. She first retired from Hamilton in 2015 after 29 years. Garrett’s primary interest was in genetic research, and her expertise included molecular genetics of yeast and microbial metagenomics. Garrett has a long interest in helping students from underrepresented groups access higher education. At Hamilton, she was a Posse mentor. She spent 2012-14 on leave to serve as dean of the Asian University for Women in Chittagong, Bangladesh, a U.S.-style liberal arts college for women from South Asia. The move to Ferrum gave her the opportunity to work in a small, private liberal arts college whose students are very culturally and socially diverse.

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Garrett gravitated to Ferrum in part for its location. She loves the Blue Ridge Mountains, hiking, and the music of the region. And it is near her oldest son and her grandchildren. In retirement, with more free time and inspired by the old-time and bluegrass music that surrounds her, Garrett has taken up the guitar for the first time in decades. “I think, like many people, I’ve found that you go back to what you were really interested in as a young adult and then kind of put aside,” says Garrett, who was once deep into English folk music. Her favorite place for music and jamming is the community of Floyd, where she had a chance to play with Jake Blount ’17, an acclaimed banjo player — and a classmate of Garrett’s daughter, Cori Smith ’17. “I’m very much in the background of a jam. Jake leads it,” Garrett quickly points out. She keeps in touch with Boston Posse students she mentored and remains friends with many people from her Hamilton years. “Hamilton was an amazing opportunity and wonderful place to work for almost 30 years. I’ve met so many great people, and it’s such a beautiful place to be,” she says. “I’m from England; we don’t have liberal arts colleges, and I never really knew what one was until I worked there, and I’m an absolute advocate for liberal arts education. I believe in it 100 percent.”

im Bradfield thinks professors are particularly well suited to enjoy retirement. “I think it’s because most of us like to learn things. What you’re going to do with that learning is beside the point,” he says. He strikes a balance between his scholarly work and recreation, which primarily consists of spending time with his grandchildren, who number six. Bradfield and his wife, Alice, enjoy the summer months on Fourth Lake in the Adirondack Mountains and winters in Lewiston, Maine, to be near his daughter, her husband, and their twin daughters. The Bradfields’ other two children and their families live in New York State. No longer bound by an academic calendar, when the Bradfields get a call about a grandchild’s event, even on short notice, they can easily hop in the car to be there. That’s their priority. Even so, Bradfield gets nostalgic when he reflects back to the days when he faced a classroom of college students several times a week. It seems to him that by the time he learned to deliver a decent lecture, retirement was almost at hand.

• In the summer, look for Jim Bradfield at his camp on Fourth Lake in the Adirondacks.

“But I am glad I spent the bulk of my life — it was 36 years — at Hamilton,” he adds. When he left the College, he vowed to stay broadly engaged intellectually, including in his fields — microeconomic theory, mathematical economics, and financial markets. While at Hamilton, he published two books, and he’s still writing. He’s about to complete a book on the economic efficiency of the financial markets and another on the optimal way for the typical retail investor to build wealth for retirement.

“

Most of the students I had were quite respectful and eager to learn, and that was very rewarding for me. I miss that.

He stays connected to the College through the Alexander Hamilton Institute, where he is a charter fellow. He’s also in touch with some former students, especially members of Alpha Delta Phi. When he was at Hamilton, the fraternity invited him to join its ranks, which he considered an honor. In 2006, the chapter gave him its award for outstanding teaching. A year later Bradfield received the Sidney J. Wertimer, Jr. Award for Excellence in Teaching, a career highlight. “This award is given by the Student Assembly, which I particularly prized because it did not come from the administration. There is no money attached to the award, so the honor does not become contaminated — my word — by money.” He keeps the plaques for both awards on the wall of his home office. ■

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NANCY L. FORD

“Most of the students I had were quite respectful and eager to learn, and that was very rewarding for me. I miss that,” he says. “But the cost of hanging on as I got older, as our grandchildren got older, became too high. And when you’re teaching at a college, there’s an interesting temporal phenomenon that goes on. The students are always 20, but you keep getting older and older and older.

Bookshelf SARA (SHAPIRO) HARBERSON ’97. Soundbite: The

Whitney (Martin) Collins ’95

Admissions Secret That Gets You Into College and Beyond (New York: Hachette Books, 2021).

Big Bad

(Louisville, Ky.: Sarabande Books, 2021)

BILL HARLEY ’76. Now You Say Yes (Atlanta:

inner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, and featuring a 2020 Pushcart-winning story, this collection of 13 tales is described as “part domestic horror, part flyover gothic.” Publishers Weekly included it in its 2001 Books for Short Attention Spans adding, “Fantastical novellas and collections of short fiction can offer readers a brief respite from reality.” Collins’ characters — including a woman destined to give birth to future iterations of herself; a sister who roots for the survival of one prematurely born twin brother over the other; a man and woman who discover magical stones at a couples’ retreat — must choose to fight or flee the “big bad” that dwells within us all. “These pieces are unapologetic when it comes to the issues that are generally swept under the rug. This bold approach is truly refreshing,” wrote Kate Murphy of Southern Review of Books. “This collection is easy to read while also being hard to swallow. The juxtaposition between what is right and what is easy is the common thread that links the reading experience with the content.” n

Peachtree Publishing, 2021).

MATTHEW E. KAHN ’88. Adapting to Climate

Change: Markets and the Management of an Uncertain Future (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2021).

MATTHEW E. KAHN ’88 and Mac McComas.

Unlocking the Potential of Post-Industrial Cities (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021).

STUART KESTENBAUM ’73. Things Seemed to Be

Breaking (Cumberland, Maine: Deerbrook Editions, 2021).

JENNA LANGBAUM ’15. Me in Search of You (Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2021).

R.T. “BOB” LUND ’77. A Climate for Death (Virginia Beach, Va.: Köehler Books, 2020).

ROBERT W. BARKER ’67. True Love Never Bleeds (Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, 2021).

CHRISTOPHER H. BOUTON ’09. Setting Slavery’s

SARAH DAMASKE ’99 and Kathleen Gerson. The

Science and Art of Interviewing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).

Limits: Physical Confrontations in Antebellum Virginia, 1801–1860 (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2019).

HUNTER DANSIN ’16. Dawn Must Follow Night

MIKE BURKHARD ’80. Defeating the Toxic New

(self-published, 2020).

Normal: Finding Our Path Back to Empathy and Understanding (Scotts Valley, Calif.: CreateSpace, 2020).

LEN CAVISE ’67. The Gentile’s Guide to the Jewish World (Parker, Colo.: Outskirts Press, 2021).

NANCY AVERY DAFOE K’74. Naimah and Ajmal on

Newton’s Mountain (Georgetown, Ky: Finish Line Press, 2021).

SARAH DAMASKE ’99. The Tolls of Uncertainty:

How Privilege and the Guilt Gap Shape Unemployment in America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2021).

(self-published, 2019).

JULIE (WOLF) DEFFENSE ’95. The Art of Salad CRISTINA L. GARAFOLA ’11 and Kenneth W. Allen.

70 Years of the PLA Air Force (Montgomery, Ala.: China Aerospace Studies Institute, 2021).

ANNELISE DRISCOLL (GINGROW) ’14. Pieces of Pink, Book 1 of the Color Code series (Grey Cap Books, 2020).

ANNELISE DRISCOLL (GINGROW) ’14. Prisons of Purple, Book 2 of the Color Code series (Grey Cap Books, 2021).

JOHN ROGER PAAS ’67. The Altzenbachs of Cologne — Early Modern German Print Publishers: Popular Prints of the Seventeenth Century (two volumes) (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2020).

STEPHEN G. RABE ’70. Kissinger and Latin

America: Intervention, Human Rights, and Diplomacy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2020).

NANCY SORKIN RABINOWITZ, professor of comparative literature emerita, and Emilio Capettini (coeditors). Classics and Prison Education in the US (New York and London: Routledge, 2021).

NHORA LUCÍA SERRANO, associate director of digital

learning and research (editor). Immigrants and Comics - Graphic Spaces of Remembrance, Transaction, and Mimesis (New York and London: Routledge, 2021).

RICHARD A. SMITH ’59. Fatboy (Boston: Everidge Press, 2019).

Answers to Show and Tell (from page 12)

Carolinda Goodman (Kaufman) K’74

Will Andriola: Government major from South Glastonbury, Conn. Patterns of Opposition Electoral Performance in Authoritarian States: The 2020 Russian Regional Elections

(Middletown, Del.: Little Cottage Press, 2020)

Sophia Coren: Anthropology major from Burnsville, N.C. The Conflation of Race and Ethnicity: Chinese Adoptees and Their ‘Cultural’ Upbringing

Once in a Full Moon

his petite picture book, beautifully illustrated by Marija Luzina, offers a history behind different names for the full moon — from January’s Wolf Moon to June’s Strawberry Moon to the Beaver Moon of November — all in lively rhyme. In April, flowers start to grow. So many colors, all for show. Phlox so rosy are the reason It’s named the Pink Moon in spring season.

Goodman noted that she has always been intrigued by the full moon, and the starry night sky is one of her favorite places to look for adventure. “Since we’ve all been stuck inside due to the pandemic, more people are getting outside to enjoy and appreciate nature,” she told her hometown newspaper, the Worchester, Mass., Telegram & Gazette. “I am hopeful that young readers (and the adults who read to them) will take the opportunity to make sky-watching a regular family activity.” Although this is her first book published for children, the author regularly writes about food and food history for Worcester Living magazine, the Telegram & Gazette, and for the Jewish press. n

Jesse Elmer: History major from Syracuse, N.Y. Teutonic Brothers: British Affinity with Germany Before WWI Lindsay Gearty: Physics and mathematics major from Springfield, Mass. Porting Code and Assessing Expectations for Measuring Faraday Rotation Amy Harff: Studio art and environmental studies major from Providence, R.I. Illustrating the Impact of Climate Change in Oneida County, N.Y. Shavell Jones: Asian studies major from Brooklyn, N.Y. Afro-Japanese Visions: Representations of Blackness in Japanese Media Amanda Kim: Economics and psychology major from Dallas, Texas Waste Not, Cheat Not: The Effects of Resource Availability on Cheater Detection Adeoto “Ade” Sotinwa: Economics major from Abuja, Nigeria Terrorism as a Brain Drain Push Factor: Evidence from Nigeria’s Boko Haram Insurgency Majestic Terhune: Literature and world politics major from Indianola, Iowa Performing Queenship: The Fairy Queen in the Elvetham and Ditchley Progresses

MARK SULLIVAN ’80. The Last Green Valley (Seattle: Lake Union Publishing, 2021).

RUTH KREISCHER TORDE ’75. Meadowlands: A

Haiku Collection (Claremont, N.H.: Laurel Elite Books, 2021).

PETER WELTNER ’64. Bird and Tree / In Place (Seattle: Marrowstone Press, 2020).

PETER WELTNER ’64. Scrapbook Mappings of My Country (Seattle: Marrowstone Press, 2021).

JOCELYN C. (CRAUGH) ZUCKERMAN ’87. Planet Palm:

How Palm Oil Ended Up in Everything — and Endangered the World (New York and London: The New Press, 2021).

For descriptions of the books listed, and links to where you might purchase them, visit hamilton.edu/alumni/books.

Trent A. Romer ’92

Finding Sustainability: The Personal and Professional Journey of a Plastic Bag Manufacturer (Winchester, United Kingdom: Business Books, 2021)

hat if the foundation of your family business were threatened by something out of your control? What if the livelihood of 70 employees were at stake, as the license to operate your business became called into question? And what if the reasons for all of this were ones with which you fundamentally agreed? These are the questions the author poses as he invites readers along on a journey that led him to eight states, three national parks, and three countries in a quest to identify sustainability practices for his business. Romer is co-owner of Clear View Bag Co., a family-owned and operated plastic bag manufacturing company founded in 1961 by his grandfather. He is also a lifelong lover of the outdoors who struggles with ocean plastic pollution and the anti-plastic narrative surrounding his industry. In his book, which won a Gold Award from the Nonfiction Authors Association, Romer describes how his “passion for the planet, his faith, and his family business ignited a quest to take action toward a better future.” n

The End of an Era IN MAY, CAFÉ OPUS FOUNDERS Larry Bender and Sarah Goldstein hung up their aprons for the last time. The duo retired after more than 26 years of managing the popular campus coffeehouses — starting with the original location below McEwen Dining Hall and, since 2005, Opus 2 snug within the Taylor Science Center’s Wellin Atrium. To share your Café Opus memories and read about FoJo Beans, the local coffee-roasting company with the tall order of following Opus’ legacy, visit hamilton.edu/opus. PHOTO BY NANCY L. FORD

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