Hamilton Gazetteer / Entities / Robert Paquette

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person

Robert Paquette

Overview

Robert Louis Paquette (born 1951) is an American historian and former Professor of American History at Hamilton College. He held the Publius Virgilius Rogers Professorship (appointed 1994) and is particularly known for his scholarship on the history of slavery in Cuba. He is documented in the Spectator corpus primarily through a December 1997 controversy in which he published a letter in the Wall Street Journal accusing the Hamilton administration of systematic liberal ideological bias. He is also the co-founder of the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, an independent conservative scholarly organization housed off-campus in Clinton, NY. He formally resigned his endowed professorship (but not his faculty position) in 2011 and left Hamilton College in 2018.

Relevance to Research

Paquette appears centrally in the December 12, 1997 Spectator issue, which documented both his Wall Street Journal letter and the responses by President Eugene Tobin and Dean of Faculty Bobby Fong. The episode reflects broader national debates about political balance in higher education and is one of the more extensively documented faculty-administration controversies in the extended corpus. His role as president of the Alexander Hamilton Institute adds a continuing institutional dimension to his presence in the record.

Notes

Born: 1951
Education: BA cum laude, Bowling Green State University (1973); PhD with honors, University of Rochester (1982); doctoral adviser Eugene Genovese (eminent historian of slavery and antebellum Southern society)
Role: Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History (appointed 1994); co-founder of the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization
Key events: - Published a letter in the Wall Street Journal in December 1997 accusing Hamilton’s administration of systematic liberal ideological bias - President Eugene Tobin and Dean of Faculty Bobby Fong both responded publicly in the Spectator - The controversy was covered in the December 12, 1997 issue and documented in the corpus as one of the more significant faculty-administration episodes of the 1990s - In 2002, protested a student group’s invitation of Annie Sprinkle (actress and former porn star) to speak on campus - Led an attempt to create an alumni-endowed on-campus center dedicated to “the study of capitalism, natural law and the role of religion in politics”; the initiative was rejected by the faculty and administration - In response, co-founded the independent Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, housed off-campus in Clinton, NY - Formally resigned his endowed professorship (though not his faculty position) in 2011, citing the college’s handling of the Institute issue - Left Hamilton College entirely in 2018 - Awarded the Mary Young Award for distinguished achievement by the University of Rochester (2005)

Scholarship: Specialist in the history of slavery in Cuba and the antebellum Americas. Major work: Sugar is made with blood: the conspiracy of La Escalera and the conflict between empires over slavery in Cuba (Wesleyan University Press, 1988). Co-edited Slavery (Oxford University Press, 2001) with Stanley Engerman and Seymour Drescher.