Before I joined Hamilton College as a bright-eyed, forward-thinking freshman in the fall of 2019, I was informed by the guidance counselor at my high school that graduates who attended the college had spoken highly of the Alexander Hamilton Institute (AHI). It was described as a welcoming community, determined to help supplement a Hamilton College education by sharing perspectives that differ from the left-leaning norm of our community. As an academically-inclined student who appreciated the merits and pitfalls of all parts of the political spectrum, I was excited to explore this opportunity and was even more delighted to be welcomed into a community that fosters personal growth, promotes academic rigor, and accepts dissenting opinions. As a moderate, I often find myself walking the line between left-leaning social policies and right-leaning economic policies. Like what I think is a silent majority of the Hamilton College community, I identify as socially liberal and fiscally conservative on most issues. My political identity is respected and accepted by the AHI.

The AHI has also provided me with opportunities I would be able to find nowhere else. I was fortunate to be accepted to the WAPONS (Washington Program on National Security) program, open to students from across the country but limited to less than twenty per year, attending with two other Hamilton students and a dozen from various institutions across the nation. Led by the sweet and respected Dr. Juliana Pilon, former Professor of Politics and Culture and Director of the Center for Culture and Security at the Institute of World Politics in Washington DC, the program took us around the city and politically around the world, from dawn to dusk, speaking with influential figures who work in a variety of venues involving national security. I had the unique opportunity to have discussions with Raytheon lobbyists speaking about how defense contracts operate, a Brigadier General of the U.S. Army who operated in Afghanistan and described his personal experience, experts in Middle Eastern politics who offered enlightened perspectives on deteriorating Israeli-Palestinian relations and nuclear proliferation, and representatives from the International Monetary Fund’s Polish delegation who addressed the future of cryptocurrency in regard to national and global economic agendas.

Dr. Pilon radiated expertise, energy, and passion for every trip we took on our two-week journey, and that enthusiasm clearly permeated the program's atmosphere. Even after hours, when she went home after a long day of leading “her children” around the capital, the students often met to discuss the day’s events together with her right-hand man, Mason Goad (a scholar and graduate student pursuing a higher degree in International Security), who assisted in all daily activities. As if Dr. Pilon’s connections allowing her to bring in a variety of high-profile figures weren’t enough, she invited the whole WAPONS delegation to her home outside the city, where we had coffee, hors d'oeuvres, and dinner-table chats about her and her accomplished husband Dr. Roger Pilon’s antics in graduate school and beyond. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had to date.

The WAPONS program was one of the best summer experiences in which I’ve been involved. Informative and engaging, exhausting but worth every minute, it helped foster new understandings of the meaning of national security, including the importance of collective action and collaboration in finding modern, creative solutions to difficult, timeless problems. This opportunity was possible only through the coordinated efforts of leaders of the AHI, especially its president Dr. Robert Paquette and Dr. Pilon, one of its Senior Fellows.

My experience with the AHI has been everything I expected and more – accepting, engaging, philosophical, and academic. The opportunities I have had through the AHI are unparalleled in quality and unmatched in perspective. A community that welcomes dissenting opinions and will challenge members and non-members alike with occasions to analyze political and apolitical topics, the AHI takes a facts-based and reasoned approach with which every member of the Hamilton Community should engage. Whether you agree with the right-leaning tendencies of the AHI’s president and staff or not, it is always beneficial to understand and discuss the reasoning and opinions in alternatives to one’s own beliefs, to stray from the spiraling whirlpool of confirmation bias. The AHI offers that, in a safe environment for intellectual discussion and dissent.