Thursday, November 30, 2006

Hamilton nixes Hamilton   [Stephen H. Balch]

Hamilton College Professor Robert Paquette yesterday released a statement on the collapse of negotiations to establish a center named for, and philosophically in tune with, the institution's eponym. Hamilton's president, after publicly accepting the center, was forced to backtrack on essential governance guarantees when faculty, alarmed that it would enjoy unwarranted autonomy (from them), raised the predictable hue and cry. In the wake of the red carpet earlier rolled out for the likes of Susan Rosenberg and Ward Churchill, the administration's spinelessness will surely exact a price in alumni support. But, for the time being, the college's radical faculty have demonstrated who's really in charge.

One wishes Paquette and his doughty colleagues all the best in trying to get their project back on track. If there is a lesson here, however, it lies in the special difficulties of breaking ideological monopolies at small liberal-arts colleges. Large universities offer a greater variety of organizational niches within which new programming can be planted, as well as faculties less institutionally focused and more divided in professional interest, if not philosophical outlook. Tightly knit academic communities like Hamilton's are better situated to make their intolerance effective. Needless to say, Publius would have understood completely.

11/30 12:15 PMShare