Peter S. Onuf tells people upfront that he is not “a Jefferson worshiper.” The University of Virginia scholar, who teaches a free online course on Thomas Jefferson that will debut Monday, is struck by the paradox of a slave-owning Founding Father who espoused liberty. Onuf’s own political sympathies lie with the party that opposed the nation’s third president.
The younger you marry, the higher the risk of divorce, according to Bradford Wilcox, director of The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. “Marrying young is difficult in our society, unless you’re embedded in a supportive community, like a religious group,” Wilcox says.
Marriage is linked with numerous health benefits that simply cohabiting doesn't seem to provide. Now, research suggests the reason why — the brain links "just" living together with a lack of commitment and can't relax. "We really pay close attention to when it's safe to let down our guard and to outsource our stress response to our social networks," said study researcher Jim Coan, a psychologist at the University of Virginia.
While exact numbers on second and third marriages are hard to come by, the share of Americans having them is significantly higher than it was before the 1960s, and has generally plateaued since then, according to W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia who studies marriage trends.
In the 1950s around 3 percent of Americans checked the “none” box in surveys asking about religious affiliation. Now 20 percent of the population does so. Moreover, these so-called “nones” are heavily represented in elite culture. A recent report on family life from the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture identifies parents they call the “engaged progressives.” Representing 21 percent of parents, this group is the most highly educated and most influential. It overlaps with the nones. Fewer than 20 percent in this group go...
The president's new college rating system is going to be difficult to implement, say Awilda Rodriguez, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Andrew P. Kelly, director of the Center on Higher Education Reform. President Obama announced a plan last fall to distribute federal aid based on a federal college rating system that would measure access, affordability and student achievement. Those scoring higher in the rankings would receive more federal aid dollars.
While the RGA will likely still outraise the Democratic Governors Association, it will have to contend with a motivated union political machine that combined with the DGA actually accounted for more outside spending than the RGA in 2012. And money certainly doesn’t guarantee success at the ballot box. “You can’t just buy these elections,” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “There are all sorts of other factors that go into it.” The early read on 2014 elections is that the Democrats are better pois...
The University of Virginia Glee Club celebrated its annual SingFest Saturday night. The event featured nine different a cappella groups performing for a standing room only crowd in McLeod Hall. The event is also the club's biggest community service project of the year. All proceeds from the show are donated to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank.
On Wednesday, when University of Virginia Law School Innocence Project Legal Director Matthew Engle spoke to Coker, he noticed a change. “There was a sense of optimism that I’ve not heard in the four years I’ve been working with him,” Engle said. “He really sees the sex offender registry as something that has been holding him back,” Engle said. “That was really the first time I’ve heard excitement in his voice and hope for the future now that this is finally done.”
Cruz, Walker and Christie are among the top tier of GOP candidates looking to run for the White House in 2016, according to Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. The early trips to Florida are about getting exposure in a donor-rich swing state and gauging potential interest in their candidacies, Sabato said. “It is all about the money right now,” Sabato said.
Legal experts say the category of specially designated global terrorist, as Humayqani is described, is strictly a financial classification. But the Treasury’s depiction of Humayqani’s activities in al-Qaeda — as more than simply a financier — also raises the possibility that he could find himself on a U.S. kill list, said Ashley Deeks, a University of Virginia law professor and former legal adviser to the State Department.
Walt Heinecke, a University of Virginia professor who argued for a commission with enforcement powers, said he hopes Tewksbury’s office eventually will expand its investigations to bigger employers. “My intention was, once the commission gets going, to ask them to reconsider the piece about having the EEOC come in when it is a bigger employer than 15 employees,” he said.
Biosimilars likely would undercut prices by only 10 percent initially, and it’s difficult to predict the savings that could be realized longer term, said University of Virginia Health System Pharmacy Administrator Rafael Saenz. Still, he said, for someone paying out of pocket for monthly treatments that cost more than a mortgage, “it’ll be of high impact.” “We are seeing a dramatic increase in the need and use of these products, to the point where it’s hard to keep up with our own budget,” Saenz said. “They wreak havoc on our budget for sure, but...
Earlier this week, the University of Virginia hosted a conference on the issue that attracted college officials and students from across the country. The sold-out conference, which organizers called the first of its kind, came a month after President Obama announced the formation of The White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault and roughly three years after his administration issued revised guidelines for institutions of higher education dealing with rape and other incidents of sexual assault and misconduct.
Students at the University of Virginia danced for 16 hours straight and raised more than $71,000 at a dance marathon benefiting UVA's Children's Hospital.
Neeti Nair, who teaches at the University of Virginia and is author of “Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India,” noted last year in the Indian Economic and Social History Review, “how prescient some of the objections to this piece of legislation (Section 295A, IPC) were” when it was passed.
Some of the benefits of marriage that the pope spoke of were documented in a study by the University of Virginia's National Marriage Project in March of 2013. The study found that the average age of marriage in America is 29 for men and 27 for women. And while the study examines the pros and cons of marrying later, it did find that married people were more likely to be satisfied with their lives than their single or cohabitating counterparts.
The House of Delegates' revised budget proposal has more money for colleges, hospitals, mental health treatment, state pension obligations, bonuses for state workers, and even a long-range plan to build new office space for state lawmakers.
It put Monument Valley High in the running for Title I School Improvement Grants, which could mean $600,000 to $800,000 for the school during the next three years. And it will send district and school administrators this spring and summer to a boot camp: The Partnership for Leaders in Education at the University of Virginia.
(By Bob Gibson, executive director of U.Va.’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership) My brother is gay. He also is left-handed. Neither biological trait should disqualify him from leading a happily married life or holding gainful employment.