Morela Hernandez, Donald and Lauren Morel Associate Professor in Business Administration at UVA’s Darden School of Business and author of “What New Normal Should We Create?”: 2020 has shown us what social psychologists have known for years: that “people are demonstrably undone by too much uncertainty or social invalidation.” Managers in 2021 will have to fight against the ruinous effects of uncertainty and social invalidation by re-creating a shared social understanding – a shared reality that allows people to more accurately assess data and effectively coordinate.
UVA history professor John Edwin Mason published a tweet asking what photojournalism and documentary photography would look like, now and in the past, if the photographer’s right to take someone’s image were balanced by that person’s right to say no.
UVA sociologist James Davison Hunter brought the term “culture war” into the American vernacular with his 1991 book “Culture Wars, The Struggle to Define America.” Executive director of the university’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, Hunter has argued that critics should not dismiss skirmishes over culture as being less important from policy issues.
A UVA Health professional recommends a different kind of New Year’s resolution for 2021. Psychologist Kim Penberthy treats patients with a wide variety of mental health issues as well as helping people manage stress, change and grief. She says in some cases, New Year’s resolutions can be more harmful than helpful.
The sense of loss we’ve all felt because of COVID-19 has, according to Bethany Teachman, a professor and the director of clinical training in UVA’s Department of Psychology, left us more than a bit drained. “People are heading into these holidays very depleted,” she said. “Far too many people have lost loved ones or jobs, or are experiencing serious economic stress, so there is considerable grief for millions of people this season. Even for those who have been more fortunate during this time, it has been an extended period of stress and uncertainty, and we are often not together with our famil...
“This election is about as close as you can get,” wrote J. Miles Coleman and Niles Francis in a recent analysis for UVA’s Center for Politics. “It’s hard to tell who has the edge, but undoubtedly, the party that does a better job turning out the base will be the party that carries the day.”
The last time a Republican won the gubernatorial race in Virginia was in 2010, when Bob McDonnell was elected. However, J. Miles Coleman at UVA’s Center for Politics says the commonwealth may not be nearly the blue state that it would appear based on the past few election cycles.
COVID-19 meant the Democratic Party moved most of their campaigning online – which may have also helped the Biden campaign. “Biden is memorable for making gaffes and misspeaking,” says Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a political analysis newsletter at the University of Virginia.
UVA sociologist Brad Wilcox is among those who predict that relationships will be stronger in the wake of the pandemic because “people value the safety of home when the world seems uncertain. … They appreciate their families and seek stability in tough times, even if this means sustaining a potentially less-than-ideal relationship.”
(Commentary) Two-parent families in America are in trouble, and kids suffer the results. More than one in three kids are raised without both parents in the home. For Black, non-Hispanic kids, that number is two in three. “This form of family inequality leaves many working-class and poor children ‘doubly disadvantaged,’UVA sociologist Brad Wilcox says.
(Commentary) As James Loeffler contends in “Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century,” the true origins of human rights can be traced back even further in time. “Much of what we think of today as post-World War II international human rights began life as a specifically Jewish pursuit of minority rights in the ravaged borderlands of post- World War I Eastern Europe,” writes Loeffler, a UVA professor of history and Jewish studies.
(Commentary) Trump’s wave of pardons, coming less than a month before he is set to leave office, is his latest exploitation of his executive powers in ways that offend the spirit of the Constitution, if not its letter, said Russell Riley, a presidential historian at UVA’s Miller Center. “The pardon is an unfettered power, so I don’t think that there was ever a chance that he wasn’t going to look after the people he’s been quietly authorizing and protecting all along,” he said.
Saikrishna Prakash, UVA’s James Munroe Distinguished Professor of Law, noted that on the question of the president’s constitutional authority, Trump probably lost more cases than he won. But on other questions pertaining to the executive branch, the record is mixed. “But that’s not uncommon,” he said. “Presidents don’t always win. They don’t always lose.”
Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia Miller Center, said Trump's call "strikes at the heart of American democracy" and amounts to constitutional violations of Article II and the presidential oath of office.
Biden’s Education Department has an opportunity to partner with state officials to address the needs of their students and educators, particularly when it comes to the widening achievement gaps created by the pandemic, UVA law professor Kimberly Jenkins Robinson said. “My hope is that President Biden will establish his own footprint in education and civil rights that would be forward looking and that will speak to the moment that we’re in.”
Aynne Kokas, a UVA assistant professor of media studies, felt that Zoom is “allowing for local censorship to take precedence over academic freedom.” She believes that any lesson can “turn sensitive to the Chinese government” and conducting classes on the platform would put the Chinese students in a “risky situation” as the lessons might involve “discussing a period of Chinese history that is perfectly fine to talk about in a U.S. classroom, but might be a very profoundly difficult thing for a student in China.”
Celebrated Urdu critic Shamsur Rehman Faruqi, who began his literary journey by waiting for many an editor’s rejection slip and discovered his early success printed on a grocer’s paper bag, succumbed to complications from coronavirus on Friday. He was 85. His elder daughter, Mehr Afshan Farooqi, a UVA associate professor of South Asian literatures, said that he was always “deeply engrossed in reading. He had a book open while eating dinner or drinking tea.”
Influential in Black photography circles, the Kamoinge collective is little-known beyond. “Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop,” now at the Whitney Museum after originating at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, is the first museum show focused on the group since the 1970s. “The exhibition introduces African-American artists who were ignored until recently,” said John Edwin Mason, a UVA historian who contributed to the catalog. “They were showing what could be done as individuals, but also as a collectivity. They came of age in the age of Black nationalism, Black self-as...
Cheryl Goolsby, a UVA medical assistant, says staying put this winter is key to ending the coronavirus pandemic. “People should stay home because we have COVID out here and the only way we can get this taken care of is if people stay put,” Goolsby said.
If you’re the kind of person who delights in creating a spreadsheet on Jan. 1 to plot out the coming year, slow your roll. You can still plan small things to look forward to, said Bethany Teachman, a UVA psychology professor.