Last week, Jonathan Kuttab, a UVA Law alumnus, Palestinian-American lawyer and a leader among Palestinian activists, now residing in Virginia, spoke at a conference sponsored by overseas supporters of the Israeli Labor Party, and elaborated on his recently published book, “Beyond the Two-State Solution,” asking: “How about a state where any Jew, any time, no questions asked, can go and live where he doesn’t need to defend himself?”
(Commentary) Michael Bills is going long on Virginia politics. “There are voices that deserve to be heard,” said Bills, a UVA alumnus and a Charlottesville hedge fund guy. He, his political action committee and his wife, lawyer Sonjia Smith, collectively have given $6.7 million this campaign season to Democratic candidates who share their left-of-center, bright-green agenda, which includes shackling Dominion Energy.
William Scott lived an extraordinary life until someone took it from him earlier this week. Scott, 97, died after being shot to death. Two suspects, Mark Fleck and Devin Young, are accused of murdering him. “He was the smartest guy we ever knew,” his cousin Jeffrey Payne said. “He went to the University of Virginia got his master’s in engineering. Then went to Idaho Falls and worked with the nuclear research they were doing there after the war. Then back to Virginia, Newport News. He worked on the shipyard there and worked on nuclear reactors for aircraft carriers. Just incredibly smart.”
With her Hockney level talent, [UVA alumna] Uzo Njoku is the name to know in the art world right now. The buzzy newcomer has just opened her first exhibition, “A Space of My Own,” with Voltz Clarke Gallery in New York. She tells The Daily how she feels about being dubbed a breakout star and her unconventional path to success.
(Commentary) So how does Brooks Averell Ames – a St. Paul Prep School, University of Virginia, Boston Law School graduate, member of The Country Club, who was employed by a prestigious blue chip law firm in downtown Boston – become entangled in a lawsuit defending a Black firefighter’s civil rights against the Town of Brookline? Far too many lawyers I’m acquainted with in this Town drape themselves in “Civil Rights” banners across their chests, yet not one of them came within 10 miles of defending the Black firefighter who found the “N” word had been left on his cell phone by his white supervi...
(By environmental sciences student Shivani Lakshman, an intern at the High Atlas Foundation) Climate change is likely the most urgent crisis facing us in the 21st century. Rising temperatures are causing increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters, more droughts and heat waves, precipitation changes, and sea level rise. Consequently, this is leading to high levels of food insecurity, mass displacements, the spread of disease, and many other social, economic, and political challenges worldwide.
The University of Virginia has now been certified as a "Bee Campus" by the Xerces Society, thanks to the efforts of two graduate students. Emily Spindler and Kelsey Schoenemann are both in the UVA Department of Environmental Science.
Justin Thompson, a senior associate dean and chief operating officer at the University of Virginia, said directing money for a surplus could allow officials to direct more money for research in the long term because it provides GW with financial flexibility. “Inevitably, those investments – some portion of future investments from this so-called surplus – will be made in faculty research, so it’s not really a debate about research or not research, as a matter of research now or research and other investments later,” he said.
(Video) University of Virginia Political Science Chair Jennifer Lawless spoke to the “nuttiness quotient” in the midterm elections, as the Republican in-fighting around Representative Liz Cheney’s leadership has exposed serious rifts in the party.
The UVA Center for Politics’ executive director, Larry Sabato, said whichever GOP candidates come out on top will have an uphill battle in November. “What the Republicans are trying to do is to nominate somebody who can actually win a general election in a state where Democrats have won every significant election for over a decade,” Sabato said. “That’s going to be tough to do.”
Larry J. Sabato, the director of UVA’s Center for Politics, said the Republican candidates for governor this year fit into three categories: “Trumpy, Trumpier, Trumpiest.” By embracing the former president, who lost Virginia by 10 percentage points last year, Republicans are trading electability in the general election for viability in a primary. “They play the Republican nominating game very well, but they go so far to the right that most people find them offensive,” Sabato said. “It’s not respectable anymore for well-educated people to identify with the Trump G.O.P.”
Political observers said the arrangement was “unseemly,” but likely legal, so long as the rent is not inflated. Suozzi’s campaign provided documents showing it was paying market rate. “It’s absolutely not good. You shouldn’t use running for office or serving in office to enrich yourself in any form. Trump was a master of this,” Larry Sabato, a UVA political scientist, said.
Available data shows mRNA vaccines remain above the protection threshold established by regulatory agencies, although there is still the chance boosters would be needed earlier than after increased hospitalisations, particularly in certain at-risk subpopulations, noted Dr Steven Zeichner, professor, UVA Department of Pediatrics and Microbiology.
When it comes to treating COVID-19, by now most of us have heard of Remdesivir, the antiviral drug given to former President Donald Trump and used to treat hospitalized patients. But what many may not know is there’s another successful treatment, available right now, for those who have underlying conditions. “What we like to do is prevent you from having come into hospital,” said Dr. Bill Petri, a UVA professor of infectious disease. Petri said antibody infusions are doing just that.
Dr. Amy Mathers and her team of infectious disease specialists at UVA are tracking variants of COVID-19 in Central Virginia, studying nearly every single positive case in our region. “It’s been pretty interesting. We’ve been trying to get all sequences of all positive cases done since Feb. 1, so we’ve been watching a change in emergence of the different variants,” Mathers said in a press briefing hosted by UVA Health on Friday.
The hustle to allocate J&J immediately raised questions about whether America’s “problematic” vaccine was being earmarked for communities who are already distanced from medical resources and disproportionately pummeled by the virus, says Rachel Hardeman, a health-equity expert at the University of Minnesota. “There’s this undercurrent of tension,” Taison Bell, a critical-care physician at UVA Health, told me. Many of the populations described as good J&J candidates “feel, rightfully so, that they receive second-rate care.”
Tim Farmer believes he’s had the best job anywhere in the state. As public relations coordinator for the Blandy Experimental Farm/State Arboretum of Virginia, Farmer has combined his loves for communicating with people and exploring the outdoors. But after nearly 25 years in that role, he’s ready to explore beyond the Northern Shenandoah Valley. He’ll be retiring after this weekend’s Garden Fair. Operated by UVA, the 712-acre farm off U.S. 50 in Clarke County does agricultural research projects and holds educational programs to increase people’s awareness and understanding of nature.
(Podcast) The project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region, and the National Security Task Force the Hoover Institution hosted a conversation on, What’s Next for U.S.-Taiwan Economic Relations?, on Thursday, May 6. The speaker was Evan A. Feigenbaum, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was also the 2019-20 James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, where he is now a practitioner senior fellow.
(Commentary co-written by Brad Wilcox, professor of sociology and a senior fellow of the Institute for Family Studies) President Biden’s $1.8-trillion American Families Plan suffers from a common problem in work-family policy today. Much of it favors the family preferences of one group, our elites, rather than giving parents of every social background the choices they really want.
In March, the University of Virginia accepted the institute’s request for the repatriation of 17 items from the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection. They will arrive in Australia next month to return to Arrernte, Warlpiri and Warumungu communities.