Hamilton College Alumni for Governance Reform

This may well be a very important new iniative for the college. I fully support the exploration of such an idea for the college.

I hope to hear more about this development.

Pete Brown H'73

Traditional scholarship, highest of scholarly standards, American ideals & institutions. This puts Hamilton forward in a positive, constructive way.
Hunter Brown, '76
Feb 14, 2006 |

I think you should repost the mission statements of the James Madison program at Princeton and the Kirkland Project at Hamilton--- together..It was an informative comparison--particularly in the intellectual and social value systems asssociated with each!!!
Feb 14, 2006 Dick Erlanger '63

Good idea, Dick. Here it is:


KIRKLAND PROJECT

http://academics.hamilton.edu/organizations/kirkland/

THE KIRKLAND PROJECT for the Study of Gender, Society and Culture is an on-campus organization committed to social justice, focusing on issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, as well as other facets of human diversity. By sponsoring a lecture series, curricular initiatives, student research and community work, and faculty development seminars, the Kirkland Project seeks to provide the integrated, complex, rigorous intellectual analysis and engagement with ideas that is characteristic of a liberal arts education and necessary for social justice movements.



JAMES MADISON PROGRAM

http://web.princeton.edu/sites/jmadison/about/mission.htm

Mission Statement
What conditions are necessary to sustain America's experiment in ordered liberty? What is the proper relationship between government and civil society? What influence, if any, ought religion to have in public life? Are there objective principles of justice or other moral standards by which the decisions of public officials and citizens alike can be evaluated? What structures of government are most conducive to promoting the ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence ? Is there a relationship between economic freedom and civil liberty? What is the proper role of the judiciary in a democratic republic?...

The James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions in the Department of Politics at Princeton University promotes teaching and scholarship in constitutional law and political thought. Under the leadership of its director, Robert P. George, and with the guidance and support of an advisory board from the worlds of law, business, philanthropy and the academy, the Madison Program sponsors and guides research and teaching at the undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral levels...
Feb 14, 2006

Sounds good but is it more flash than pan. The basic problem is not lack of slick sounding entities at the College, but the lack of appropriate management of the institution.
Feb 18, 2006 | Matt Lechner

Hope you all have seen the recent expose of Princeton's Madison Center in the latest issue of _The Nation_. Given the degree of its independence from Princeton University, I'm surprised it wasn't set up on the standard right-wing 'think tank' model. What's the rationale for the Hamilton Institute for being part of Hamilton College?

I encourage Hamilton alumni to be wary of endorsing conservative attacks on the liberal arts. Check out

http://ovsc.blogspot.com/

for debates on such topics.

--Bruce Simon '91
Associate Professor of English, SUNY Fredonia
Mar 6, 2006 Bruce Simon

The site referenced has no mention of the James Madison Program that I could find and has no relationship to this site or any of the principles or principals of HCAGR.
..........................
Let's see if I get this:

Hamilton College needs to justify or be concerned about traditional scholarship of American ideals and institutions as embodied in the nexus of Alexander Hamilton's history, life, letters, studies, colleagues, and endeavors pertaining to the founding of this country?

Well, OK. Good luck at Fredonia.

Hey, the organizers of this project were the ones who made the connection to Princeton's James Madison Program in the title of this page. For a debate over what conservatives should do about their feelings of exclusion from control over higher education, try this one:

http://ovsc.blogspot.com/2006/02/debating-status-of-conservatives-in-us.html

I thought the problem with the Kirkland Project was too much independence from faculty decision-making and administrative influence. Why go even farther in that direction with an Alexander Hamilton Institute? To what extent do you want to imitate the Madison model in its funding and administrative structure?

Why not endow some named chairs (starting with an Alexander Hamilton Chair of...) in disciplines noted for the preponderance of conservatives in them?

It's not Hamilton College that needs to justify the connection to the Institute; it's the Institute that ought to be able to justify its connection to the College.

If you think "traditional scholarship of American ideals and institutions" isn't being given proper recognition at Hamilton or other colleges around the country, creating scholarships to encourage students interested in these topics to pursue graduate studies is another productive way to go.

If you all think setting something up that's independently funded yet has a "name" connection to Hamilton College is a good idea, go for it. It's your money.

The Alexander Hamilton Center or Institute will be a scholarly endeavor, and expressly not political. Your assumptions and characterization are incorrect.

As to your idea of endowing chairs, please feel free to do what you like. We have elected to pursue a different model than that presented by The Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professorship and would be happy to receive your pledge.

I fail to see how any "scholarly" endeavor can be expressly "not political". Any scholarly undertaking necessarily involves taking a point of view, a stance if you will, which will necessarily be interpreted by someone as "political".

It is impossible to have a scholarly endeavor without two points of view debating their respective positions.

Penny Watras Dana, K'78

We agree on the necessity of plurality of intellectual debate which is why we posted the exerpt from Stephen H Balch in the Chronicle Review of June 16, The Chronicle of Higher Education. If you missed it, it may help you understand his perspective, one with which we agree and think would be helpful in the context of Hamilton. Copyright issues preclude posting it in entirety.

Did Mrs. Dana just admit that professors do bring politics into the classroom at Hamilton?