Experts in the News

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screenshot of University of Virginia grounds

Nau Foundation’s $17 million gift supports Democracy Institute, teaching of history

“The Nau Foundation’s extraordinary generosity positions the Karsh Institute for impact on Grounds and beyond the University,” J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance at the University of Virginia's Miller Center and executive director of the UVA Karsh Institute of Democracy Melody Barnes said. “It enhances our ability to accelerate collaboration among UVA’s world-class schools, centers, faculty and students; develop unique and effective programming; and build meaningful local, state and national partnerships.”
Melody Barnes
screenshot of Erdoğan at podium with Turkish flags in the background

What Erdoğan has wrought?

Eric Edelman, Practitioner Senior Fellow at University of Virginia's Miller Center, writes that "in the wake of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, moving swiftly to incorporate Finland and Sweden into NATO is imperative for the geopolitical and military benefits it brings to European security."
Eric Edelman
View of the empty Xizang Middle Road and People's Square, one of Shanghai's busiest roads during the lockdown

Economic Issues

China’s slowdown and its spillovers around the world

A slowdown in China, the second largest economy in the world, will undoubtedly affect the rest of the world. But the severity of the impact is difficult to estimate.
Frank Warnock
Miller Center Ukraine war blog
Watergate Hotel sign with hotel building in the background

Fifty years later, the shadow of Watergate still lingers

"People would like the Trump investigation to be the next Watergate, and often I tell them it is, it's just that we don't see it. Because we haven't yet learned the lessons of Watergate. It's such a complex scandal,” says University of Virginia's Miller Center Research Specialist Ken Hughes.
Ken Hughes
screenshot of Capitol photographed through mesh fence

Will the Jan. 6 hearings change any minds? UVA scholars weigh in

"The hearings were carefully designed to deliver a series of key moments that can circulate in both traditional and social media," says Guian McKee, an associate professor in presidential studies at UVA's Miller Center. "Some of those may break through partisan bubbles, or simple apathy, to create at least a limited shift in public opinion—a shift to the realization that the insurrection was an assault on the Constitution, and that its apologists are staging a slow-moving assault on democracy. Ultimately, there is a question about whether there is still any capacity for shame in American public life. I hope that there is."
Guian McKee
screenshot of Capitol photographed through mesh fence

Will the Jan. 6 hearings change any minds? UVA scholars weigh in

As she watched the Congressional hearing Thursday evening, Barbara Perry, the University of Virginia's Miller Center Director of Presidential Studies, thought back to a comment made to her shortly after the attack that unfolded at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. "It wasn’t a coup," Perry said one of her service providers told her. "Just a few protestors got out of line." While efforts to form different narratives about what happened on that fateful day continue, what the committee appointed to investigate the events of Jan. 6 presented on primetime TV on Thursday, Perry said, "utterly obliterated" inaccurate accounts of the violent attempt by Donald Trump supporters to overturn Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
Barbara Perry