Experts in the News | Miller Center

Virtual and in-person event on the future of democracy coming up

The University of Virginia Karsh Institute of Democracy will be holding a two-day event in September to talk about the future of democracy. The featured speakers are Melody Barnes of the Karsh Institute of Democracy; Julian Castor, the Housing and Urban Development Secretary in the Obama administration; John Dickerson of CBS News; Robert Dole of the American Enterprise Institute; Tom Perez, the Secretary of Labor in the Obama administration; former Congressman Denver Riggleman; Rashad Robinson of Color of Change; Stephanie Ruhle of NBC News/MSNBC; David Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group, and Margaret Spellings, the Secretary of Education in the George W. Bush administration.

Melody Barnes

Chinese social media shutdown of LGBT student groups ‘highlights backlash against Western influences’

Miller Center senior fellow Aynne Kokas is interviewed.

Aynne Kokas

Garland Settles In but Trump Era Still Shadows the Justice Dept.

“The question for Garland is whether righting the ship of the department is mutually exclusive from moving on from Trump,” said Barbara Perry, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

Barbara Perry

Eric Edelman on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan

Senior Fellow Eric Edelman explains why the withdrawal from Afghanistan may be an important strategic mistake.

Eric Edelman

Where did covid come from? We need to get serious about finding out.

Mr. Biden has ordered an intelligence review, due this summer, but that’s hardly enough, and he should actively support the creation of an independent commission that would examine virus origins and the nation’s response to the crisis. Congress ought to join in. Many national and global calamities were later subject to bipartisan investigation: Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War, the John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, 9/11. A great start already exists with the Covid Commission Planning Group led by Philip Zelikow, but it needs a sense that the White House, Congress and other national leaders will welcome the probe and assist with a full-blown independent investigation.

Philip Zelikow

Could Wilson have Ended the Great War Two Years Earlier? Zelikow's "Road Less Traveled" Reviewed

Could World War I have been ended in December 1916 with a negotiated peace, thus sparing millions of lives on both sides? This starting proposition—an end to the war two full years before November 11, 1918—is explored in Philip Zelikow’s new book, The Road Less Traveled. It is a debatable assertion rejected by most historians. Zelikow, however, is used to controversy. A former U.S. State Department official, he served as the executive director of the national 9/11 Commission and has co-authored two books on the Cold War with Condoleezza Rice.

Philip Zelikow