Experts in the News | Miller Center

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. apologizes for saying the unvaccinated have less freedom than Anne Frank did

Barbara A. Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and a Kennedy family scholar, said she suspected Robert Kennedy Jr.’s opposition to vaccine mandates came from his work as an environmentalist. He has campaigned against pollutants, such as mercury, that contaminate food sources, Perry said in an interview. “Clearly he doesn’t want people poisoned in the environment by pollutants,” she said. “In his mind, I guess, it’s a pretty easy step to [think] not poisoning the body through vaccination.”

Barbara Perry

Will RI Democrats Nominate a Woman for Congress?

"I don’t think there will be 'pressure' to nominate a woman for a few reasons. First, Rhode Island has come a long way in terms of women’s representation. A woman has served as governor. Women are the lieutenant governor and Secretary of State. Multiple women are running for governor this cycle," said Lawless, who today is the Chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Department.

Jennifer Lawless

Biden's year two won't be about bipartisanship

Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said it was “a bit naïve on Biden’s part” to believe Republicans would not be hell-bent on tanking his agenda and said it reflected an unwillingness to accept the reality of the highly partisan Trump era in which bipartisanship is near impossible. “Those days are just gone. They’re absolutely gone,” Perry said.

Barbara Perry

Biden seeks to save what he can from Build Back Better

Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said that Biden has been one of the most involved modern presidents in legislative negotiations.

Barbara Perry

Biden’s first year brought a cascade of foreign policy challenges, undermining his goal of projecting calm competence

“You can’t underestimate the degree to which our democratic crisis is changing the view of the rest of the world,” said Eric Edelman, a career Foreign Service officer who served in senior State and Defense Department positions under both Republican and Democratic administrations. “Dysfunctionality . . . violence . . . the assault on democratic institutions are spilling into the way in which the rest of the world is looking upon us,” Edelman said last week at a forum on Biden’s first-year foreign policy at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

Eric Edelman

How to assess Joe Biden's first year in office

As President Joe Biden completed his first year, the Miller Center hosted a two-hour webinar, featuring Democratic, Republican and independent practitioners and scholars, who assessed his performance. That’s also why I’ve spent the past two weeks in private conversations with two dozen individuals – a bipartisan list of senior government officials, journalists, members of Congress, think-tank researchers, political consultants and nonprofit leaders. The interviews were conducted by 10 terrific UVA undergraduate students, as part of a class I co-taught on President Biden’s first year.

William Antholis