Experts in the News | Miller Center

The weaponization of the federal government has a long history

"Now that House Republicans have created a “Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government,” let’s revisit a classic of that power-abusing genre, featuring its greatest star, Richard M. Nixon," writes Ken Hughes, research specialist at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.

Ken Hughes

Superpowered Arms

Eric and Eliot welcome John Maurer, Professor of Strategy and Security Studies at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Air University in Alabama and author of Competitive Arms Control, Nixon, Kissinger and SALT, 1969-1972 (Yale University Press, 2022). They discuss the competitive and cooperative approaches to arms control, interagency deliberations and conflicts in the Nixon Administration, the motivations and policies of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and especially Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird.

Eric Edelman

Shining a light on the era of integration

Sharing their personal stories, journalist Jill Lawrence and psychologist Pamela Gipson Banks discuss the recent culture wars over how race is taught in public schools. As a teenager in the 1960s, Banks, an African American student from Jackson, Mississippi, attended Lawrence's white high school in Long Island, New York. (Read Lawrence's recent USA Today column about their experiences here.) Their conversation offers lessons from the past to help overcome the racial strife in our current politics.

Kevin K. Gaines

They can’t quit Joe

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a nonresident senior fellow at The Brookings Institution who studies White House staff turnover, said that, so far, 40 percent of Biden’s “A-team” — a group of 66 influential staff positions Tenpas has identified as core advisers — has turned over. However, some are still part of the administration, including senior adviser ANITA DUNN, who left and then returned, and White House counsel STUART DELERY, who was initially deputy counsel before being promoted.

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

How will Biden handle a hostile Republican House and what does it mean for 2024?

Americans should brace for a “period of ugly conflict” in Washington that echoes early clashes between Bill Clinton and the Republican speaker Newt Gingrich, said Russell Riley, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

Russell Riley

The four ages of American foreign policy (with Michael Mandelbaum)

Eric Edelman, practitioner senior fellow at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, and Eliot Cohen welcome their SAIS colleague Michael Mandelbaum to talk about his recent book, 'The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy.'

Eric Edelman