Alexander Hamilton Fellows
"Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiassed by considerations not connected with the public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished, than seriously to be expected. The plan offered to our deliberations, affects too many particular interests, innovates upon too many local institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of objects foreign to its merits, and of views, passions and prejudices little favourable to the discovery of truth." Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #1
Charter Fellows
Douglas Ambrose
Ambrose is professor of history at Hamilton College, where he has taught since 1990. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the State University of New York at Binghamton. His teaching and research interests include early America, the Old South, and American religious history. His publications include Henry Hughes and Proslavery Thought in the Old South (LSU 1996) and The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton: The Life and Legacy of America's Most Elusive Founding Father (NYU 2006), a volume he co-edited with Hamilton colleague Robert W. T. Martin. He has also written numerous articles, book reviews and encyclopedia entries about Southern slavery and Southern intellectual life. Ambrose is a recipient of Hamilton College’s Class of 1963 Excellence in Teaching Award.
James Bradfield
Bradfield is the Elias W. Leavenworth Professor of Economics at Hamilton College. He teaches courses in microeconomics and in the theory of financial markets. With Robert Paquette, he teaches a course on the role of property, both as a concept and as an institution, in the rise of the modern state. To an important extent, the AHI is an outgrowth of that course. Professor Bradfield has written (with Jeffrey Baldani and Robert Turner) Mathematical Economics, now published in a second edition (2005) by Thomson-Southwestern Learning, and Introduction to the Economics of Financial Markets (Oxford University Press, 2007). Known for years as an excellent teacher and academic advisor, he was awarded a prize for excellence in teaching in 2006 by the Hamilton Chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. In 2007, the Student Assembly of Hamilton College awarded him the Sidney Wertimer, Jr., prize for excellence in teaching. He is now working on a book that will explain for a lay audience what academic economists have learned about how, and how well, financial markets promote mutually beneficial exchanges.
Robert L. Paquette
Paquette is Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History at Hamilton College. He received his B. A. cum laude in 1973 from Bowling Green State University. He received his Ph. D. with honors in 1982 from the University of Rochester. He has published dozens of books and articles on the history of slavery. His Sugar Is Made with Blood (Wesleyan University Press, 1988) won the Elsa Goveia Prize, given every three years by the Association of Caribbean Historians for the best book in Caribbean history. More recently, his essay "Of Facts and Fables: New Light on the Denmark Vesey Affair" (co-authored with Douglas Egerton) won the Malcolm C. Clark Award, given by the South Carolina Historical Society. He is currently working on A Grand Carnage (Yale University Press), a study of the largest slave insurrection in United States history. In 2005, the University of Rochester invited him to return to his alma mater to receive the Mary Young Award for distinguished achievement. A recipient of grants from the American Historical Association, the National Endowment of the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies, Paquette co-founded the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. In 2006-2008, he served on the Scholars Council of the Jack Miller Center. In 2008 he was appointed to the advisory board of the Cobb Forum on Southern Jurisprudence and Intellectual Thought of the Watson-Brown Foundation. That same year President George W. Bush forwarded Paquette's nomination to the Senate for a seat on the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has taught at Hamilton College for twenty-nine years. He lives on the edge of campus with his wife Zoya and their two children.
Senior Fellows
H. Lee Cheek
Cheek is Associate Vice-President of Academic Affairs at Athens State University in Athens, Alabama. He previously served as Vice-President of College Advancement and Professor of Political Science at Brewton-Parker College in Mt. Vernon, Georgia. Dr. Cheek received his bachelor's degree from Western Carolina University, his M.Div. from Duke University, his M.P.A. from Western Carolina University , and his Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America. Dr. Cheek taught at Brewton-Parker College from 1997-2000, and he rejoined the Brewton-Parker faculty in 2005. In 2000, 2006, and 2007. Cheek was awarded Brewton-Parker College's "Professor of the Year Award" by the student body; and, in 2008, the Jordan Excellence in Teaching Award was bestowed upon him by the College's faculty and administration. From 2000 to 2005, Dr. Cheek served as Associate Professor of Political Science at Lee University. In May 2002, Dr. Cheek was given Lee University’s Excellence in Scholarship award ; and in May 2004, he received Lee University's Excellence in Advising award. He has also served as a congressional aide and as a political consultant. Dr. Cheek's books include Political Philosophy and Cultural Renewal ( Transaction/Rutgers, 2001, with Kathy B. Cheek); Calhoun and Popular Rule , (University of Missouri Press, 2001; paper edition, 2004 ); Calhoun: Selected Speeches and Writings (Regnery, 2003); Order and Legitimacy ( Transaction/Rutgers, 2004); an edition of Calhoun's A Disquisition on Government ( St. Augustine's, 2007); and a critical edition of W. H. Mallock's The Limits of Pure Democracy(Transaction/Rutgers, 2007 ). He has also published numerous journal articles in publications like the Journal of Politics , Methodist History, International Social Science Review, Hebraic Political Studies , and is a regular commentator on American politics. Cheek’s current research includes an intellectual biography of Francis Graham Wilson (I.S.I. Books, 2009) , a study of the American Founding, and a book on Patrick Henry's constitutionalism and political theory. Cheek is also the founder and director of the Wesley Studies Society and a United Methodist clergyman. He currently serves on the editorial board of Humanitas and The University Bookman , and has served as a Fellow of the Earhart Foundation, Wilbur Foundation, the Center for Judicial Studies, and the Center for International Media Studies. He lives in Vidalia, Georgia, with his wife, Kathy B. Cheek , a teacher of ballet and owner of the Savannah Conservatory of Dance.
Theodore J. Eismeier
Eismeier is Professor of Government at Hamilton College, where he has taught since 1978. He graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College and received his PhD with Distinction from Yale University. A recipient of the Class of 1962 Outstanding Teacher Award, he teaches courses in American political institutions and public policy and regularly directs the Hamilton College Semester in Washington Program. He is the editor with Douglas W. Rae of Public Policy and Public Choice (Sage, 1979). He is the author, with Philip H. Pollock, of Business, Money, and the Rise of Corporate PACs in American Politics (Quorum Books, 1988), and has published widely in professional journals on the subject of campaign finance. He is currently working on a project on the Hudson River and the Politics of Place. He resides in Clinton and Poughkeepsie with his wife Betsy
Robert P. Kraynak
Kraynak is Professor of Political Science at Colgate University, Department Chairman, and Director of The Center for Freedom and Western Civilization. He came to Colgate in 1978 from Harvard University, where he received his Ph. D. in government. He teaches courses in the fields of political philosophy and general education, including courses on American political thought. He received the Colgate Alumni Corporation's "Distinguished Teaching Award" in 2006. His published books are History and Modernity in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes (Cornell University Press, 1990), Christian Faith and Modern Democracy (Notre Dame University Press, 2001), and In Defense of Human Dignity, edited with Glenn Tinder (Notre Dame University Press, 2003). He is a contributing author to Human Dignity and Bioethics, published by the President's Council on Bioethics. Kraynak served in the U. S, Army Reserves, is the faculty advisor to the College Republicans at Colgate, and is an active member of St. Mary's Church in the village of Hamilton, N.Y., where he lives with his wife, Sandra, and their four children.
David Nichols
Nichols is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Baylor University. Before coming to Baylor, he was the Director of the Honors Program at Montclair State University, and has taught at Fordham University, Claremont McKenna College, and served as the Olin Senior Scholar at the University of Virginia. Nichols has also worked as a Program Officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the author of The Myth of the Modern Presidency (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994) (Arabic translation published 2002) and is co-editor and co-author (with Mary Nichols) of Readings in American Government (Kendall/Hunt, 7th ed., 2004). In addition to his work on the presidency, Nichols also writes on topics in American political thought, constitutional law, political parties and politics, literature and film. He and his wife Mary reside in Waco Texas, and have two sons, Keith and John.
Mary Nichols
Nichols is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Baylor University. Before coming to Baylor in 2004, she taught in the political science department at Fordham University, in the Honors program at the University of Delaware, and as Visiting Professor of Government at Harvard University. She teaches courses in the history of political philosophy, politics, and literature, and politics and film. Her books include Socrates and the Political Community: An Ancient Debate (SUNY Press, 1987), and Citizens and Statesmen: A Commentary on Aristotle's Politics (Rowman & Littlefield, 1968). Her book, Socrates on Friendship and Community: Reflections on Plato's Symposium, Phaedrus, and Lysis will be published in 2009 by Cambridge University Press. She and David Nichols co-edit, Readings in American Government (Kendall/Hunt, 7th ed., 2004). She serves on the editorial boards of the Review of Politics and Polity. She is also director of the project, "Contemporary Media and the Great Books: A New Approach to the Classics," a curriculum package that studies seminal texts in Western thought in conjunction with classical and contemporary American films. She and her husband David have two sons, Keith and John.
Michael Rizzo
Rizzo is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester. He majored in economics at Amherst College, where he was graduated magna cum laude in 1996. After graduation he worked for several years as an investment banker at Putnam, Lovell and Thornton (PLT) in New York City. He received graduate degrees in economics at Cornell University, an M. A. in 2002 and Ph. D. in 2004. Professor Rizzo’s fields of specialization include the economics of education, labor economics, applied econometrics, and environmental economics. He also serves as a faculty research associate with the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute and as a consultant with Scannell & Kurz, Inc., an enrollment management firm based in Rochester, NY.
Professor Rizzo is working on two books: one on economic aphorisms and another on the economic, logical, and moral inconsistencies inherent in some of our most deeply held beliefs. His also specializes in teaching basic economics to non-academic audiences. He has published articles on economics in a wide variety of newspapers and has appeared on Fox News and many other national media outlets. Professor Rizzo maintains a blog, “The Unbroken Window,” designed as an educational resource to elevate public literacy in economics.
Professor Rizzo lives with his wife Rachel, their daughter Amelia and son Isaac, and their two Boston Terriers in Bushnell’s Basin, NY.
Fellows
Sheila O'Connor-Ambrose
O'Connor-Ambrose, who holds a Ph. D. in women's studies from Emory University, is an independent scholar whose main academic interests include women writers, feminist theory, American literature and life, and the role of Catholicism in contemporary culture. Her dissertation engages all of these interests by focusing on the writings of Gail Godwin, an award-winning contemporary writer whose collected works explore the meaning of the modern woman's sense of self. O'Connor-Ambrose's dissertation--" 'That I Will Find My Best Life': The Role of Marriage in the Quest for the Dedicated Life in the Works of Gail Godwin"--was directed by the late historian and literary scholar, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. A recipient of an H. B. Earhart Fellowship Grant, an Andrew J. Mellon Dissertation Fellowship in Southern Studies, and an Emory University Dean's Teaching Fellowship, O'Connor-Ambrose earned a bachelor's degree from Thomas More College and a master's degree from the University of Dallas. She was recently appointed by Syracuse Bishop James Moynihan to serve a three-year term on the Diocesan Commission on Women in Church and Society. She and her husband, Douglas Ambrose, have three children: Antonia, Augusta, and Dominic.