The New Criterion

As any one who has ever lived in the real world knows, there are often as many sides to a story as there are facets to a diamond. In academia, however, there is often a pervasive feeling that students should only hear one side of the story--you can guess which side. It is sad, then, to read on the website of upsate New York’s Hamilton College that the foundation of the Alexander Hamilton Center, which we wrote about in Notes and Comments, is now indefinitely postponed.

Frequent readers of Armavirumque will recall Hamilton as the home of the radical Kirkland Project for the Study of Gender, Society and Culture (is the Oxford comma an instrument of male chauvinist oppression?), tales of which we have previously brought to your attention here, here, here, here, and here. Inspired in part by Princeton’s conservative-leaning James Madison Program, the Alexander Hamilton Center was conceived as sort-of retort to the Kirkland Project, funded by Hamilton alumni and friends outraged by the Project’s antics. But now the Hamilton College website reports:

Hamilton College has announced that the Alexander Hamilton Center will not be established at this time due to a lack of consensus about institutional oversight of the Center as a Hamilton program. The College administration and trustees believed the Alexander Hamilton Center to have significant potential to enhance the educational experience of Hamilton students and regret that it is not going forward. We are hopeful that -- even in the absence of a formal center structure -- some of the programming that was envisioned can still be realized.

Reading between the lines, "Concerns about oversight" sounds like the head honchos at Hamilton didn’t want to run the risk of having a bastion of independent thought on their campus. But is this really a common and necessary part of academic ethics? Returning to Princeton, a gander at the website of Princeton’s prominent Woodrow Wilson Center, another center-within-an-institution, shows that none of the members of the Board of Trustees seem to be members of Princeton University’s administration. Is Hamilton College just more obsessed with its centers and programs toeing the party line?