The Alexander Hamilton Institute

The Honorable Jeffrey S. Sutton, judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, will present the inaugural David Aldrich Nelson Lecture in Constitutional Jurisprudence on Constitution Day, 17 September, at 7:30 in the Hamilton College Chapel.   The lecture, sponsored by the AHI in conjunction with  Senior Fellow Ted Eismeier and the Hamilton College government department,  is open to the public.

Judge Sutton received a B. A. from Williams College in 1983 and LL. B. from the Moritz College of Law at the Ohio State University in 1990. He served as a law clerk for Judge Thomas Meskill of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Justice Lewis Powell and Justice Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court. Nominated for the Sixth Circuit by President George W. Bush, Judge Sutton was confirmed by the Senate in 2003. He will be presenting on "Originalism or the Living Constitution?  Interpreting the Supreme Court."

The lecture honors David Aldrich Nelson, whom Judge Sutton succeeded on the Sixth Circuit. Judge Nelson was graduated from Hamilton College, 1954, valedictorian of his class. He attended the Harvard Law School and read law as a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University, in England. He began the practice of law with Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in Cleveland, Ohio, and served on active duty at the Pentagon as an attorney in the Office of the General Counsel of the Secretary of the Air Force. President Nixon appointed him General Counsel of the Post Office Department in 1969, and he later became Senior Assistant Postmaster General and General Counsel of the reorganized United States Postal Service. He rejoined his former law firm in 1972, remaining with it until President Reagan appointed him to the bench in 1985. Judge Nelson took senior status in 1999 but continued to hear cases until he closed his chambers in 2006. He is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He was a long-standing member of the Criminal Law Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He has served as a trustee of Hamilton College and as a member of the National Council of the Ohio State University College of Law.

A private reception and dinner at the AHI will precede Judge Sutton's lecture. 

Many of those who attended the AHI's inaugural colloquium on the meaning of freedom, commented on the wit, grace, and intelligence of Professor H. Lee Cheek, who served as moderator of the six sessions during the two-day event.   The AHI is pleased to announce that Professor Cheek has agreed to help us water the seed of educational reform by joining the AHI as a senior fellow.

Professor Cheek is chairman of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Division and Professor of Political Science at Brewton-Parker College in Mt. Vernon, Georgia.  He received a Ph. D. in political science from The Catholic University of America.  Professor Cheek is also a Methodist minister who holds a Master of Divinity degree from Duke University.  He has published dozens of books and articles on political and religious thought.  As the author of  Calhoun and Popular Rule (University of Missouri Press, 2001) and editor of a new edition of Calhoun's A Disquisition on Government (St. Augustine, 2007),  Professor Cheek ranks as a leading authority on one of this country's most brilliant and original political thinkers. He has also won multiple teaching awards at several universities.

In commenting on the addition of Professor Cheek to the AHI, Robert Paquette noted how Professor Cheek will help expand the influence of the AHI both regionally and organizationally.  "Lee Cheek is well-connected in the South, to private religious schools, and to such kindred-spirit organizations as Liberty Fund.  He will prove to be an enormous asset in the AHI's development of cooperative programming with groups and individuals who share our concerns about the state of higher learning and about  the fate of Western culture."  Douglas Ambrose added, "Lee Cheek embodies much of what is best in the Western intellectual tradition: inquisitiveness, rigor, humility, honesty, and a deep  appreciation of the complexities of the human condition.  He cuts  through the cant and pretentiousness that informs so much of today's  scholarship in an effort to understand American political thought and  the various traditions that have contributed to it. His work reminds  us of how much we can learn from a sincere engagement with thinkers, such as Calhoun, that too many of us dismiss or have forgotten.  He  proved a marvelous moderator of the AHI's inaugural colloquium, and I, for one, am eager to work with him on future AHI projects."

The AHI's inaugural experimental colloquium on the meaning of freedom in the antebellum debate about slavery brought together more than a 150 scholars, students, and informed lay persons for  two and a half days of stimulating conversation.  Undergraduate classes from Harvard University, Colgate University, and Hamilton College participated in the event.  Students attended each of the six sessions, asked questions of the conferees, and composed papers in response to assignments related both to the prescribed set of readings and to the ensuing discussion of these readings during  the colloquium.

Professors John Stauffer of Harvard, Pete Banner-Haley of Colgate, and Douglas Ambrose and Robert Paquette of Hamilton College have identified the best paper from each class.  Altin Gavranovic of Harvard, Samantha Feldman of Colgate, and Peter Mallozzi of Hamilton will each receive a cache of inscribed books written by the scholars who participated as conferees in the colloquium. 

Honorable mention prizes will go to Kelsey Rice and Sarah Cryer of Hamilton College.  Each  will receive an inscribed copy of Mind of the Master Class, a monumental work on the political and religious thought of southern slaveholders by Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese.

These inaugural awards are named after Carl B. Menges, a distinguished alumnus of Hamilton College who has staunchly supported the work of the AHI from its inception.  The students will receive their awards on 17 September, Constitution Day, at a special dinner at the AHI.

On 17 September, Constitution Day, the AHI will celebrate its first anniversary by inaugurating the David Aldrich Nelson Lecture in Constitutional Jurisprudence. Over the past few months, friends and fellows of the AHI have traveled to various parts of country to meet with supporters. One question frequently arises: How have students responded to what the AHI had to offer during its first year? We respond initially by reminding our questioners that most of the AHI events are open to the public, and so our "students" include not only undergraduates from Hamilton and Colgate, but high school students, adults in the community, and children who are home schooled. Some of the adults who have participated or will be participating in the Christopher Dawson Society and Edmund Burke Association reside in places like Batavia and Rochester, New York, more than 100 miles away.

Professor James Bradfield, one of the AHI's three founders and an economist who has spent more than thirty years in an undergraduate classroom, has frequently remarked on the "spirited discussions" at the AHI and the "comfortableness" of the students in voicing their arguments. Many of our undergraduate participants have contrasted this experience to that on campus, where in certain classrooms self-censorship becomes a prerequisite to success.

We post, for our supporters benefit and for the edification of others, what we believe is a representative sampling from Hamilton College undergraduates who have experienced  the AHI.  The founders of the AHI  thank these students for allowing us to make their names public.

"As a student at Hamilton College I understand the unequivocal importance of sound intellectual practice and effective communication. The Alexander Hamilton Institute offers students the opportunity to pursue these scholastic talents at a high level. By promoting passionate research, cogent analysis and persuasive public speaking the AHI can contribute greatly to a complete education." - Reid Snyder, Hamilton, Class of 2008

“The Alexander Hamilton Institute provides a much-needed haven for the communion of ideas here at the College. It fosters intellectual diversity and tolerance, giving students of all backgrounds and persuasions a voice. The Publius Society, Edmund Burke Association, and Christopher Dawson Society each have unique missions and engage a diverse group of individuals, offering opportunities for education and expression on pertinent issues. The AHI has already become an integral part of this institution and the wider community, and we look forward to its further development with great anticipation.” Elizabeth Farrington, Class of 2010

“The Alexander Hamilton Institute is the only entity in which students, professors, and the general public can come together to discuss ideas and develop a broad base of knowledge on history, politics, and modern civilization. The AHI has provided many students, myself included, with the opportunity to learn more about key political issues affecting our society outside of the classroom. I have personally seen the hard work that goes into making the AHI possible. The variety of organizations that choose to meet at the Institute have seen substantial growth in both membership and student interest. The AHI has been a vital part in strengthening intellect, understanding, and promoting diverse discussion between Hamilton students, faculty, and the local community.” Edward Ajaeb, Class of 2011

"The Alexander Hamilton Institute provides a unique opportunity for Hamilton students and faculty to study Western Civilization by examining and discussing freedom, democracy, and capitalism. While Hamilton College spends a large sum of money inviting guest speakers onto campus, the guests almost always invoke a left-wing activist message. The lack of a conservative or traditional voice makes the campus hostile to a diversity of thought. This year, the Alexander Hamilton Institute has served as a meeting place for both the Publius Society, in which members studied and discussed the Federalist Papers, and the Edmund Burke Association, a new organization based around the work of British writer Edmund Burke.
In the Edmund Burke Association’s inaugural meeting, the Alexander Hamilton Institute invited Colgate University Professor and Western Civilization scholar Robert Kraynak. Kraynak lectured on the conservative thought of Edmund Burke, and applied it to the conservative movement in America today. This engaging lecture was attended by students and faculty of both Hamilton College and Colgate University, as well as many residents of the local area. The Alexander Hamilton Institute provides an intellectual experience that would otherwise be ignored by a faculty and student body hostile to traditional and conservative thought. The success of the Institute would have a great measure on improving the academic diversity on Hamilton’s campus." Joe Bock, Class of 2009

"The Alexander Hamilton Institute embodies the best qualities of elite liberal arts campuses: intellectual excellence, dedicated, world-class faculty, and individual attention for students. Fortunately, the Institute is also a lot of things these campuses are not: intellectually diverse, open-minded, and a safe environment for students of any political persuasion to voice their opinions. The Institute has been a necessity for anyone seeking to study a balanced curriculum in Central New York. Personally, it has a been a blessing; as an opportunity for learning, to attend informative lectures, meet incredible lecturers, and as an outlet for an oppressed Conservative student. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Professors Ambrose, Bradfield, and Paquette for their creation of the Alexander Hamilton Institute." John McRae, Hamilton College Class of 2009

"The Alexander Hamilton Institute provides students with a place off-campus for open discussion on a variety of different topics. I am part of two student organizations that hold meetings there. At the AHI, I have felt very free to express my views without any fear of peer pressure that can exist in the classroom. Often, I have learned more in my discussions at AHI than I have in some of my classes at Hamilton College." Tim Eismeier, Class of 2010

” I only recently discovered the Alexander Hamilton Institute, and just became a member this semester, but I already think it is a great Hamilton asset. While the lectures are interesting, as many Hamilton special events are, the particularly unique feature of the Institute is the open intellectual debate amongst students and professors. The open conversations, where people are taken out of their established roles on the Hill and thrown into discussion, has generated very thought provoking experiences. I've heard really interesting perspectives from professors and students I otherwise would have missed.
Thanks!" -Laura Mattison, Class of 2009

A meeting of the board of directors of the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, Inc., has been scheduled for August 14, 2008.

The historic, stately yellow-brick mansion that serves as the headquarters of the Alexander Hamilton Institute will be undergoing a face-lift in August,  thanks to a generous donation.  The exterior will be painted, caulked, and repaired.  Improvements will also be made to the interior. 

The Jane Fraser Room will be renovated to accommodate a series of distinguished guests who will be making their appearance in Clinton during the 2008-2009 academic year.  The AHI will  celebrate its first anniversary on Constitution Day, 17 September by inaugurating the David Aldrich Nelson Lecture in Constitutional Jurisprudence.  The Honorable Jeffrey Sutton, a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ,will be presenting.  We will announce details shortly.

A substantial number of smaller donations will allow improvements to the interior of the building .  To accommodate the informational  needs of visiting dignitaries and scholars a wireless network will be established throughout the building.  Computers will be added to several rooms, which will be renovated to provide office space for AHI fellows.

The AHI extends its deepest appreciation to those individuals and institutions across the country who are helping us water the seed of educational reform with their donations.

On 10 July President George W. Bush forwarded to the United States Senate the nomination of Robert L. Paquette  for a seat on the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Professor Paquette, one of the three founders of the AHI, has served the NEH in multiple capacities during his academic career.  President Bush nominated Paquette to fill the seat of the late Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, a prize-winning scholar and conspicuous public intellectual who received the National Humanities Medal in 2003.  Paquette paid tribute to Professor Fox-Genovese in the February 2007 issue of The New Criterion.

In learning of the nomination, Professor Paquette thanked President Bush and Dr. Bruce Cole, Chairman of the NEH, for their  support.  "Given recent trends in higher education," Paquette noted, 'the work of the NEH in cementing the bonds of E Pluribus Unum has become ever more important.  I am particularly honored to learn that President Bush has nominated me to fill the seat of someone for whom I have the highest respect as an intellectual and who not only played a crucial role in mentoring me as a graduate student, but who also provided me with infallible counsel and guidance during my professorial career."

He counts only three conservative professors in a Harvard government department that boasts fifty members.  He counts not one conservative among the dozens of African-American faculty that Harvard has so visibly and proudly recruited in recent decades.  Multiculturalism, he contends, which manifests a "strange combination of relativism and moralism," has led not only to  active intolerance of conservatives on campus in the name of promoting a more homogenous, less exclusivistic academic village, but to the degradation of "Harvard's academic integrity" itself. 

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On 10 April, the AHI launched its inaugural fundraising event at the Turning Stone Resort & Casino in Verona, New York. John Stauffer, Professor of English, American Literature, and Language at Harvard University, provided the keynote address that preceded an innovative two-day colloquium on the meaning of freedom.

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The AHI cordially invites alumni returning to Clinton for Reunion Weekend '08 on the Hamilton College campus to attend an open house at our headquarters on 21 West Park Row, Friday, June 6th,  9 am to 4 pm and Saturday, June 7th, 9 am to 1 pm.

Refreshments will be served. Visitors will receive a priceless gift.  Founders and fellows will be on hand to discuss the future of the AHI.  We will use the opportunity to share with visitors exciting news--to be made public in the forthcoming weeks--about a major gift and initiative.

The results of the AHI's experimental inaugural  colloquium, "Liberty and Slavery:  The Civil War between Gerrit Smith and George Fitzhugh" exceeded our own ample expectations.  The audio of each of the six sessions is now available on our publications page http://www.theahi.org/papers-publications/  They ranged over the following topics:

Session 1: "The Nature of Man"
Session 2: "Christianity and Slavery"
Session 3: "The Meaning of Freedom
Session 4: "The Idea and Institution of Property"
Session 5: "Capitalism and its Alternatives"
Session 6: "Race and Slavery"

The magnificent Driskell Hotel, completed in 1886 by cattle baron Jesse Driskell and located in downtown Austin, Texas, served May 9-11 as the venue for the "National Summit on the Building Academic Centers."  Sponsored by the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America's Founding Principles and History and by Robert Koons' Program in Western Civilization and American Institutions at the University of Texas, the summit assembled from across the country more than forty scholars and public intellectuals engaged in addressing the general crisis of civic illiteracy and historical amnesia among college graduates.  Participants included AHI Senior Fellows Mary and David Nichols from Baylor University, AHI Academic Advisor Colleen Shaheen from Villanova University, John Tomasi from Brown University, Mark Bauerlein from Emory University, and National Association of Scholars Executive Director Peter Wood.

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The AHI will open its doors to graduating Hamilton seniors and their families on Saturday, May 24, from 9 a.m. to 1 p. m.  AHI founders and fellows will be on hand to answer questions about the history and mission of the Institute and its scholarly agenda. Since a good deal of misinformation is in circulation about the AHI, we encourage all interested parties, including Hamilton College trustees, to pay us a visit and help clear fog from the air.  The AHI has an archive of materials related to its history and available for perusal by interested parties.

Refreshments will be served, and we promise to each visitor a tour of our headquarters as well as a priceless gift.

Topic: "Liberty and Slavery: The Civil War between Gerrit Smith and George Fitzhugh"

Held: April 10-13, 2008, Turning Stone Resort & Casino, Verona, New York

Opening Banquet Proceedings and Keynote Address by John Stauffer - Videos

Part 1 - J. Hunter Brown, Robert L. Paquette, Carl B. Menges, James Bradfield
Part 2 - James Bradfield (continued), Douglas Ambrose
Part 3 - Douglas Ambrose (continued), John Stauffer (Keynote Address: "Gerrit Smith and the Ambiguities of Social Reform")
Part 4 - John Stauffer (continued)

The New Criterion, the finest journal of arts and culture in the United States, has published an article ,"The World We Have Lost:  A Parable on the Academy," by Robert Paquette, one of the three founders of the AHI.  Paquette speaks on the implications of the Duke lacrosse case and of the collapse at Hamilton College of the original agreement to establish an "enduring edifice of learning devoted to American ideals and institutions."

This special issue, which is devoted to education, includes related essays on the state of the academy by an all-star class of commentators:  Roger Kimball, Alan Charles Kors, James Piereson, Charles Murray, and Victor Davis Hanson.

On Tuesday evening, 22 April, the AHI hosted the third meeting of the Christopher Dawson Society. Professor Kathleen Marks, Assistant Professor of English at St. John's University, led a discussion of Flannery O'Connor's, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and Dietrich Bonhoffer's "Costly Grace." Professor Marks, who received her Ph. D. from the University of Dallas in 2000, is the author of Toni Morrison's Beloved and the Apotropaic Imagination (University of Missouri Press, 2002). Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor, organized resistance to Adolph Hitler and to his anti-Semitic policies, participating in the plot to assassinate him in 1944. Captured and imprisoned, Bonhoeffer was brutally tortured by the Gestapo before his execution by slow asphyxiation in April 1945.

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On the evening of 8 April, the AHI in conjunction with the Hamilton Chapter of  Alpha Delta Phi sponsored a presentation by Nicholas D. Rockwell on "Securitized Mortgages and Liquidity in Financial Markets."

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AHI is pleased to announce the publication of Marriage: The Dream That Refuses to Die (ISI Books, May 2008), by the distinguished historian and literary critic Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (1941-2007). Professor Fox-Genovese, a friend of and mentor to two of the AHI's founders, was the Eleonore Raoul Professor of the Humanities and founding director of the Institute of Women’s Studies at Emory University.  A member of the Governing Council of the National Endowment of the Humanities and a recipient of the National Humanities Medal in 2003, Professor Fox-Genovese was at the time of her death working on expanding for publication a series of lectures on marriage that she had presented as the Charles E. Test, M.D., Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

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More than 140 students, faculty, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and educational leaders, turned out for a fundraising dinner sponsored by the AHI at the Turning Stone Resort & Casino.  The founders preceded Professor John Stauffer's keynote address by announcing several major educational intiatives:

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More than 140 guests--students, scholars, philanthropists, civic leaders, and entrepreneurs--will attend the inaugural dinner of the AHI on Thursday evening, 10 April, at the Turning Stone Resort & Casino.  The evening's event, which will include a sumptuous feast, will honor special guests and steadfast supporters of the AHI. Its founders—Douglas Ambrose, James Bradfield, and Robert Paquette—will speak briefly on the past, present, and future of the AHI with special attention to future initiatives.

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