With 11,000 streams and 10 drive-in screenings, this year’s Virginia Film Festival was successful, albeit unusual.
The presidential election of 1800 was the first to go to the House of Representatives for resolution, after Vice President Thomas Jefferson received the same number of electoral votes as his fellow Democratic-Republican, Aaron Burr. “There were threats of violence and talk of the Virginia or Pennsylvania militias marching on the Capitol if Jefferson wasn’t elected,” says Sidney Milkis of UVA’s Miller Center of Public Affairs.
William Petri, a professor of infectious diseases at the UVA School of Medicine, said he is not traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday, but is driving with his wife in early November to see a newborn granddaughter in Tampa. For Thanksgiving, Petri said he would be OK with his two children on the West Coast flying to visit him, as long as they wore masks and goggles on the flight.
According to J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at UVA's Center for Politics, the 2016 election showed that accounting for education is now as important as race and gender for conducting an accurate poll. He said “the biggest lesson, especially in the Trump era, is educational attainment as a predictor of people's voting habits.”
The Board of Visitors at the University of Virginia has announced several changes to the campus landscape. UVA President Jim Ryan stated that these “actions that will make this place more clearly and obviously welcoming to all, and where all have an opportunity to thrive.”
Juan R. Torruella, a groundbreaking Hispanic federal judge in New England who championed the rights of his fellow Puerto Ricans and, in a recent case, joined a decision to overturn the death penalty imposed on a Boston Marathon bomber, died on Monday in San Juan. He was 87. He received a master of law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Dr. Bill Petri, a professor at the UVA School of Medicine, said that the next president needs to focus on finding a vaccine for the disease and producing those vaccines within the U.S.
Assuming Democrats win a Senate majority, “there will be a tremendous amount of pressure on Biden and on the Senate as well” to expand the size of the Supreme Court, said professor Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at UVA’s Miller Center and a Supreme Court expert, adding progressives might think they would need to “fight fire with fire” after Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court.
Republicans expected to re-up “conservative bias” complaints. Yet rigorous research has demonstrated that social media provides a megaphone for conservative stories and voices, sometimes even helping fringe right-wing views reach many millions of people. Steven Johnson, a data scientist at the University of Virginia, recently finished a study looking at how nearly 200,000 people used social media over four years.
This year, there’s a 20% increase in dementia-related deaths compared to the same time last year. So why is there such a big difference between this year and last year? Dr. Laurie Archbald-Pannone with the University of Virginia says these findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention correspond with her work.
Mass General Brigham is out with a plan to dismantle racism within its 12-hospital network. Dr. Taison Bell, who trained at Mass General, now an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, applauds MGB’s plan as a whole. He urges the hospital to consider adding a community health center in one of Boston’s predominantly Black neighborhoods.
With less than a week before Election Day, President Donald Trump held a pair of in-person campaign rallies in Arizona on Wednesday despite a U.S. surge in COVID-19 cases and criticism he is prioritizing his re-election above the health of his supporters. Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at UVA’s Center for Politics, said the rallies could backfire.
After Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential election, he got to work on a Republican promise to “attack the root causes of poverty,” agreeing to support a basic income payment, tied to work. “But, you know, it cost a lot so he really wasn’t for it and just expected it to die in committee, and it did,” said Ken Hughes, a historian at UVA’s Miller Center.
Thanks to secret ballots, no one can confirm how you vote this November, but it wasn’t always that way. Voting used to be a public affair. The University of Virginia website recounts how eligible American voters – “all men in those days” – would do so either by viva voce (calling out their preferred candidates) or by depositing “a highly visible ticket in a box or transparent jar or hand[ing] it in to an election clerk.”
Leaders from Albemarle County, the City of Charlottesville and the University of Virginia met virtually on Wednesday to work on improving equality in the area.
UVA’s Darden School of Business/Batten Institute offers a Master of Business Administration degree program with a major concentration in entrepreneurship and innovation that is recognized among the best masters in entrepreneurship programs in the United States. The program is ranked #8 on the list.
With the pandemic putting an end to lots of human activities that bring us joy, plenty of people have contracted a case of the blues, but at the University of Virginia some students are hoping to help with a new service based on an old idea – the singing telegram.
Halloween is on Saturday and children currently at UVA Children’s will be celebrating with onesies, coloring books and, of course, candy.
Charlottesville, Albemarle County and UVA officials are taking steps to be more collaborative as they work to increase equity and inclusion in their respective organizations.
Will we see a COVID-19 vaccine before the end of the year? UVA researchers say no, but they are making progress.