The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI) honored senior Undergraduate Fellows Anthony Balbo, Kayla Safran, and Marta Johnson for excellence in developing and contributing to AHI programs. AHI Charter Fellow Robert Paquette used the opening night ceremonies of the Sixth Annual Carl B. Menges Colloquium at the Turning Stone Resort in Verona, NY, to present each undergraduate fellow with a gift that recognized their outstanding service to the AHI.

Professor Robert Paquette  Honors Outstanding Senior Undergraduate Fellows

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Anthony Balbo, an economics major at Hamilton College, was honored for taking the lead in establishing the AHI’s Entrepreneurship Club in 2012 and for assisting with program development over the course of the last year. “I will forever remember Anthony as a young man who quietly came up to me after class in a course I teach on conservative thought, expressing his thanks to me for providing him with the tools to articulate a sensibility that, he admitted, found itself under duress on campus,” said Paquette. “The AHI is very proud of him.”

Kaylan Safran, an honors student in history at Hamilton College and co-leader of the AHI Undergraduate Fellows program, was the first AHI Undergraduate Fellow to receive a fellowship to the Reid Buckley School of Public Speaking in Camden, South Carolina.  “Not only has Kayla participated in the majority of AHI activities since her freshman year,” Paquette observed, “her energy, intelligence, and charisma made her a natural choice to serve as co-leader of the Undergraduate Fellows program.” 

Marta Johnson, the third honoree, is a Phi Beta Kappa economics major at Hamilton College. With Ms. Safran, she has led the AHI Undergraduate Fellows program for two years. Ms. Johnson has interned for both the AHI and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni in Washington, D.C. She served as the student leader of the AHI’s Bertrand de Jouvenel reading cluster, and as a result of that experience, she was selected to present a paper on Jouvenel at Georgetown University for the prestigious Undergraduate Scholars Conference on the American Polity. “Marta has already landed an impressive job on the west coast with an executive compensation consulting firm,” said Paquette. “I suspect it will be a stepping stone to any number of other accomplishments.” 

The three students received their awards at the opening night of a three-day event that was devoted to the theme of civilizational struggle in the work of Samuel Huntington, one of the most influential political scientists of his generation. Dr. James Kurth, Claude Smith Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College and one of Samuel Huntington’s former students, was the keynote speaker.  Colgate University’s Center for Freedom and Western Civilization  under the direction of Professor of Political Science Robert Kraynak co-sponsored the event.