“After petitioning for this statue to come down over five years ago, I still believe that they all must come down,” said Zyahna Bryant, who was a student at Charlottesville High School when she wrote the 2016 petition that ultimately led to the statues’ removal. Bryant, now a third-year University of Virginia student majoring in sociology and a civil rights activist and organizer, said more symbols like the statues should be removed. “We must not continue to offer platforms and dedicate space to honor white supremacy and the legacies of those who fought to uphold it,” she said in a statement. ...
The most recent removal push focused on the Lee monument began in 2016, thanks in part to a petition started by a black high school student, Zyahna Bryant. A lawsuit was quickly filed, putting the city’s plans on hold, and white supremacists seized on the issue. “This is a crucial first step in the right direction to tell a more historically accurate and complete story of this place and the people who call this place home. The work did not start here and it will not end here,” Bryant, now a student at the University of Virginia, said in a statement.
The most recent removal push focused on the Lee monument began in 2016, thanks in part to a petition started by a Black high school student, Zyahna Bryant. “This is well overdue,” said Bryant, who’s now a student at the University of Virginia. “No platform for white supremacy. No platform for racism. No platform for hate.”
One person celebrating the removal of the statues was Zyahna Bryant, who was a high school student in 2016 and started a petition to remove Lee’s statue. “We must not continue to offer platforms and dedicate space to honor white supremacy and the legacies of those who fought to uphold it,” Bryant, now a third-year University of Virginia student, said. “This is a crucial first step in the right direction to tell a more historically accurate and complete story of this place and the people who call this place home.”
“Republicans still see his endorsement as extremely valuable, and he remains a draw at his rallies,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, adding that all GOP candidates had no choice but to pay attention to the losing 2020 candidate. “Trump remains extremely visible for an ex-president,” he said.
More common among voting experts, though, is a view that Republicans, facing unfavorable demographic tides, see their future linked to limiting Democratic turnout. “They’re going to do everything they can to hold on to power, and one essential of that is limiting the Democratic vote,” said Larry J. Sabato, a veteran political analyst and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Some problems, particularly those that arise through data collection and analysis, can likely be solved; some may be more endemic to the methods themselves. But none are as dire as many tweets and headlines proclaim. “It doesn’t hurt to remind people that you’ve got to keep those limitations in mind, no matter how advanced the field gets,” says Kevin Pelphrey, professor of neurology at the University of Virginia Brain Institute.
“As medicine increasingly puts itself in this position of being in the service of emancipatory projects that help self-determination efforts, using all sorts of new technologies, it is a deep corruption,” University of Virginia bioethicist Joseph Davis told the Free Beacon. “Sometimes it’s called a kind of consumerism, or that medicine has become more consumerist…. My view is that what medicine is losing is its ethical nature.”
“Someone’s going to build wealth every time we change the built environment,” says Barbara Wilson, an environmental planning professor at the University of Virginia. “It is just very rare that the people who benefit are those who already live in a low-income community.” If a new green space attracts wealthier residents and real estate speculators looking for cheap property to redevelop, the most marginalized people in the neighborhood may be forced to leave. As a result, they’re left with a longer commute to the city center and higher carbon footprints.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Mark Edmundson, an author and professor of English at the University of Virginia, argues that Ralph Waldo Emerson, a giant of poetic letters, is an excellent example of resilience. Emerson, like so many of that era, knew loss up close and personally. His wife died at 19, and his eldest son died at age 5. “Life only avails not the having lived,” wrote Emerson in his essay, “Self-Reliance.” “Power ceases in the instant of repose, it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.” Edmundson...
At many B-schools, admissions officers are starting to see that standardized testing is not an accurate, nor fair, way to assess whether a candidate will succeed in an MBA program. “Standardized tests have always been just one indication of a student’s ability to succeed at Darden, and we continue to broaden our criteria for consideration, accepting a number of standardized tests and offering test waivers to create flexibility for applicants,” Dawna Clarke, executive director of admissions at University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, says. “Our message to applicants is to find the ap...
“Moïse had a large number of enemies,” said Laurent Dubois, a Haiti expert at the University of Virginia. “One could speculate in many different directions. I imagine this will be traced back to an internal source but it’s hard to say whether we’ll ever really know.”
Some criticism has focused on the contested legacy of a U.N. peacekeeping mission that intervened in Haiti from 2004 to 2017. Peacekeepers brought cholera to the country, and numerous instances of rape and sexual abuse, including of girls as young as 11, have been documented. “This is outrageous,” Marlene Daut, a professor of American and African diaspora studies at the University of Virginia, said this week in response to a Washington Post editorial that called for a new international peacekeeping force in Haiti. The editorial described the previous U.N. peacekeeping mission as having brought...
In the wake of Moise’s assassination, many questions remain about the role of the US, including how to successfully effect long-lasting change. Robert Fatton, a Haitian-born historian and political science professor at the University of Virginia, spoke to Time about the harm that international involvement in Haiti has caused. “[After the intervention], Haiti became a country dependent on international financial organizations for its funding, its budget – it was and still is at the mercy of what the international community is willing to give,” he said.
(Video and transcript) Haiti police arrested at least 20 people, including two U.S. citizens, in the aftermath of the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse’s in his home on Wednesday. While the Haitian first lady is recovering in a hospital in Florida, the nation’s interim president asked the U.S. and the United Nations for military help to protect critical infrastructure. Marlene Daut, professor of African diaspora studies at the University of Virginia joins.
The Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus has made its way to Virginia, but it only makes up about 11 percent of cases. That’s according to Dr. Costi Sifri, the director of hospital epidemiology at UVA Health. However, because this variant of the virus is more transmissible, he also thinks that it’s only a matter of time before it becomes the most common variant in the commonwealth.
(Video) Dr. Ebony Jade Hilton, an associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at UVA, joins “American Voices with Alicia Menendez” to share advice for anyone with a loved one who doesn’t want to get vaccinated, and discusses why “long COVID” serves as a reminder of the seriousness of the virus.
(Transcript) As the debate over cancel culture grows, NPR’s Ari Shapiro takes a look back at a similar phenomenon in the early 1990s: the moral panic over political correctness. Among those interviewed is UVA media studies professor Meredith Clark.
University of Virginia Professor Larycia Hawkins said she was excited to witness this ‘historical correction.’ “This is a good day. It’s not erasing history. It’s, it’s removing monuments that tell the wrong narrative about history.”
Jalane Schmidt, a local activist and University of Virginia professor, said the forces that kept the statues standing for decades are still at work. “Those values that kept it there are still here; they’re still operative,” she said after the Jackson statue departed Court Square. “So we’ve got a lot of work to do. We can’t just pat ourselves on the back and say, ‘Oh good, we did it; we undid racism. There’s a lot of work to do, and this is just a more visible symbol of it, but the institutional systemic nature with the zoning codes” goes on. That’s why she’s going to continue to share the hist...