The Death of the Hamilton Center

ON August 24, 2006, Hamilton College president Joan Stewart, one of her top deans, and three professors toasted the birth of the Alexander Hamilton Center. They poured champagne, clinked glasses, and anticipated a bright future for their new project. “We drank from a bottle of Dom Pérignon that I had purchased for the occasion,” says Robert Paquette, a history professor who was to become the center’s first director. The group was in a festive mood-and a couple of them even joked that they should go light on the bubbly because they were supposed to meet with parents of incoming students later in the day.

The administration of the small liberal-arts college, located in upstate New York, certainly had high hopes for the project. “The Alexander Hamilton Center is an exciting faculty initiative, one that will draw renewed attention on this campus to the considerable scholarly interest in the life and work of the founder who lent his name to our college,” said Joseph Urgo, the dean of the faculty, in a formal announcement on September 6.

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.

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ON August 24, 2006, Hamilton College president Joan Stewart, one of her top deans, and three professors toasted the birth of the Alexander Hamilton Center. They poured champagne, clinked glasses, and anticipated a bright future for their new project. “We drank from a bottle of Dom Pérignon that I had purchased for the occasion,” says Robert Paquette, a history professor who was to become the center’s first director. The group was in a festive mood-and a couple of them even joked that they should go light on the bubbly because they were supposed to meet with parents of incoming students later in the day.

The administration of the small liberal-arts college, located in upstate New York, certainly had high hopes for the project. “The Alexander Hamilton Center is an exciting faculty initiative, one that will draw renewed attention on this campus to the considerable scholarly interest in the life and work of the founder who lent his name to our college,” said Joseph Urgo, the dean of the faculty, in a formal announcement on September 6.

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.