Much of this debt to France was the legacy of what the University of Virginia scholar Marlene Daut calls “the greatest heist in history”: surrounded by French gunboats, a newly independent Haiti was forced to pay its slaveholders reparations. You read that correctly. It was the former slaves of Haiti, not the French slaveholders, who were forced to pay reparations. Haitians compensated their oppressors and their oppressors’ descendants for the privilege of being free. It took Haiti more than a century to pay the reparation debts off.
(Commentary; subscription required) “You see lots of people putting forth a hopeful idea of a new, humane social media platform to rescue us — one that respects privacy or is less algorithmically coercive,” Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, told Warzel. “But if we’re being honest, what they’re really proposing at that point is not really social media anymore.”
(Subscription may be required; commentary co-written by Jeffrey Vergales, associate professor of pediatrics) With a pathogen as contagious as the delta variant of the coronavirus, there is a place for quarantines in the public health tool kit. But it’s important that they pass a basic cost-benefit test: The risks of quarantine, in a given situation, must be outweighed by the risk of contracting the virus. We, as parents and concerned individuals, would gladly embrace this public health strategy if it met that standard — if the tactic prevented dangerous spread in the school setting.
(Commentary by Dr. C. Edward Rose Jr., emeritus professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine) I have practiced and taught pulmonary and critical care medicine for more than 40 years, and I am chagrined when hearing allegations that mortality data are contrived and people are not really dying of COVID-19. My colleagues in critical care medicine, infectious disease and emergency medicine know and tell me otherwise.
Two directorial debuts, a 9/11 documentary and screenings of Halloween thrillers are among the latest additions to the Virginia Film Festival’s schedule.
The Virginia Film Festival announced today that several films have been added to its recently-revealed 2021 program - including two of the most talked-about titles on this year’s festival circuit. The Virginia Film Festival is presented by the University of Virginia and the Office of the Provost and the Vice Provost for the Arts.
After almost a year-and-a-half of hardship and physical and mental fatigue, University of Virginia Medical Center employees will be getting a monetary “thank you.” UVA Health has committed $30 million to compensate its employees. The money was not originally in the budget, but UVA Health CEO Wendy Horton said it had to be done. “We’re all exhausted in health care,” Horton said. “We’re working really hard. This will be an important time to really address the compensation and it’s our first step of principally many that need to come.”
A UVA data model is suggesting we might be past the peak of the Delta variant of the coronavirus. Data from the UVA Biocomplexity Institute suggests cases peaked around Sept. 19.
A new UVA Center for Politics study has found that a majority of GOP voters supported Republican states seceding from Democratic ones. The study found that 52% of voters who supported President Donald Trump and 41% of voters who supported President Joe Biden said they’d want the country to be split. Experts say politics are now personal and impact lives in person and online, causing deep divisions across the country. “The emotion is building up,” said Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics. “The anger is building up, and at some point, you’ll have an explosion.”
(Commentary) This week, the University of Virginia Center for Politics released a poll surveying Americans’ feelings about their political opponents. According to the poll, 80% of Biden voters and 84% of Trump voters believed that elected officials of the opposite party present a “clear and present danger to American democracy”; 78% of Biden voters believed that the Republican Party wanted to eliminate the influence of “progressive values” in American life, while 87% of Trump voters believed that the Democrats wanted to eliminate “traditional values”; 75% of Biden voters and 78% of Trump voter...
(Commentary; subscription may be required) Sitting on a shelf in my sunlit study are two massive works of history by the late, great scholar Zara Steiner, each dealing with the international politics of the 1920s and ‘30s. The first volume is “The Lights That Failed”; the second is “The Triumph of the Dark.” They came particularly to mind when I learned of the latest poll results from the University of Virginia Center for Politics, in which about three-quarters of Joe Biden and Donald Trump voters say that representatives of the opposing party are “a clear and present danger to American democr...
(Editorial) A new political poll offers an alarming look at the state of American unity and our population’s respect for some of the nation’s core values. The poll, conducted by the University of Virginia’s nonprofit Center for Politics, shows that 52% of respondents who voted for former President Donald Trump were in favor of splitting the country into red and blue states, while 41% of voters for President Joe Biden agree with the idea.
(Commentary) In a survey taken this summer by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, 83% of Trump voters agreed with this statement: “There are many radical, immoral people trying to ruin things; our society ought to stop them.”
(Commentary) To that point, a new poll from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics shows that more than 50% of Trump voters would support seceding from the Union. Given the racial grievance and white supremacy politics of Trump’s followers, such a course of action could lead to a second American civil war. It is no coincidence that a fair number of Trump’s terrorists waved Confederate flags as they attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
(Commentary; subscription required) The tools of political science, neuroscience, evolutionary theory, psychology, cognitive science and sociology are all necessary to understand the ongoing upheaval in politics — not just in America but also globally. On Sept. 30, for example, the University of Virginia Center for Politics and Project Home Fire released a survey showing unexpectedly large percentages of voters agreeing with this statement: “The situation in America is such that I would favor states seceding from the union to form their own separate country.” Among Trump voters, 52% agreed, wi...
A new way to be protected from COVID-19 without the poke of a needle is being researched right here in Virginia. If you’ve ever gotten a flu shot at the doctor’s office, sometimes they’ll ask you if you want the shot or the spray. Intranasal vaccines have been used by health care professionals for more than a decade. Now, researchers at UVA Health are developing their own version of a spray — but this time for COVID-19.
Developing vaccines is faster and easier than ever before, and with mRNA platforms, the global medical community now has a body of resources to quickly respond to future pandemics. … It’s what many in the field know as a “universal vaccine,” or a treatment for all future variants of coronaviruses (the family of spherical, crown-shaped pathogens) that would allow manufacturers to build new vaccines for new viruses in a matter of days or hours. It’s a subject of massive research investment globally, with researchers at the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ...
Virginia is still growing, although not nearly as fast as it did in the last decade. And that urban-rural divide everyone’s always talking about is growing wider. Shonel Sen at UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service says the projections from the summer of 2019 about those trends are now showing up in stark relief in new data from the 2020 Census. “So pretty much what we had anticipated is that given this pattern of regional population shares, we will see about 70% of the state’s population will reside in the three largest metro areas. And that is what the Census 2020 headcount also vali...
(Press release) On Sept. 28 at the IDEA2021 Annual Conference in Austin, Texas, IDEA presented the University of Virginia with the coveted 2021 IDEA Innovation Award for their submission, “Automated Chiller Tube Cleaning Improves Chilled Water Plant Efficiency.” The award was presented in person at the IDEA Networking and Recognition Lunch to Paul Zmick, Director of Energy and Utilities at UVA.
As director of Counseling and Psychological Services at UVA, Nicole Ruzek can see why so many students are in search of a therapist. “There’s been the pandemic, but even before that we were seeing students in a lot of distress,” she says. “Part of that may have to do with social media – kind of social comparison. Some of that could be due to climate change and maybe a perspective on the future that isn’t as bright as we would like it to be.” Issues of race or gender trouble others, and with a staff of about 25, Ruzek says UVA can’t supply prompt, in-person therapy to everyone who wants it. So ...