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.
Civil rights activist Julian Bond died in 2010, but his lessons endure. Bond, who served in the Georgia House of Representatives and State Senate, also co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, chaired the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for more than a decade, and taught the history of the civil rights movement at UVA. “Julian Bond’s Time to Teach” compiles his original lecture notes into a motivational guide for modern activists in the age of Black Lives Matter.
Carolyn Long Engelhard, a UVA health policy professor, said many hospitals may not comply. “They’re awaiting the Biden administration who might come in and overturn this ruling,” Engelhard said.
It was not enough for Bonnie Gordon to be a tenured University of Virginia music professor, author of several books, mother of three and a violist in a jazz and a rock band – she had to make a difference in her community, as well.
A new strain of the coronavirus found in the United Kingdom has gained the attention of health officials here in the United States. The new strain means lots of new questions. Arguably the biggest is: will the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines be effective against it? Dr. Costi Sifri, an infectious disease expert with UVA Health, says it may be. “From a scientific standpoint, the ability to have those platforms to essentially plug-and-play with new emerging pathogens is quite exciting,” he said.
Dr. Bryan Lewis of UVA’s Biocomplexity Institute said he believes the CDC findings paint a grimmer picture of the pandemic than what is officially known. “What we’re looking at now is a vast underestimate in terms of the total number of people we’ve lost,” Lewis said. “I think that the impact of this has not been fully appreciated.”
The high court has pending petitions asking it to revisit its standard for determining if a religious accommodation is an undue burden. But even if it takes up the issue and raises the bar for what’s considered too burdensome, that may not be enough to significantly change the legal calculus for workers trying to avoid vaccination based on religious reasons. “The employer has a strong need to protect his workers and his customers, and to assure his customers that his place of business is safe,” said Douglas Laycock, a UVA law professor who’s written extensively about religious freedom.