In The News

(Editorial) They say that politics makes strange bedfellows. It also makes strange fault-finders. The Republican Party once was the party of individual freedom. Now the Virginia version of the party has condemned University of Virginia professor and Center for Politics founder Larry Sabato for exercising that freedom.

(Co-written by Anita McGinty, Ann Partee, Allison Lynn Gray, Walter Herring and Jim Soland, all of the School of Education and Human Development) With the largest-ever federal investment in education, hundreds of billions of dollars are flowing to states and school districts under the American Rescue Act. The call is for states to use this money for innovation across a broad set of priorities. As schools and school districts consider students’ needs and how to allocate resources, data are critical to the decision-making process.

(By W. Bernard Carlson, professor of humanties and chair of the Department of Engineering and Society) Oil and gas pipelines have become flashpoints in discussions of climate change. From the Atlantic coast to the Dakotas, pipelines that would deliver fossil fuels to customers have sparked protests and legal challenges. The Keystone XL pipeline, which was designed to carry oil from Alberta tar sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, roiled U.S.-Canadian relations for a decade before it was finally canceled in 2021. Amid these debates, it’s easy to forget how heavily the U.S. economy relies...

(By Naomi Chan, professor of law) Spears’ case is unusual: Conservatorships are typically not imposed on someone who doesn’t have severe cognitive impairments, and Spears has toured the world, released four albums and earned US$131 million, all while deemed legally unfit to manage her finances or her own body. But it does illustrate how easily conservatorships can be abused – which is one reason some members of Congress are considering ways to reform the state-run system.

A Friday update from UVA’s Biocomplexity Institute, which has tracked COVID trends statewide, reported how the delta variant – currently the most severe strain causing COVID surges across the country – will “cause COVID surges in areas with low vaccination.” The report added that even in highly vaccinated areas outbreaks among unvaccinated residents are likely to occur.

According to David Nemer, assistant professor of communication at the University of Virginia and author of the forthcoming book “Technology of the Oppressed: Inequity and the Digital Mundane in Favelas of Brazil,” what we are seeing isn’t a new phenomenon: “People from the favelas have always been interested in culturally manifesting themselves by building digital content for individual and community promotion.” The difference now is that mainstream media and audiences are paying attention.

Road crews on Monday shut down the a lane of Emmet Street near the University of Virginia to repair a utility trench damaged during heavy rains over the weekend. The southbound lane of Emmet Street near Ivy Road was closed late Monday afternoon and will remain closed for at least 48 hours and as long as 72 hours.

An event that was supposed to take place last month is now going to happen this week. UVA’s Miller Center is hosting a webinar on Tuesday called “White Supremacy on Trial.” The webinar will be about the Sines v. Kessler lawsuit, which was filed against the organizers of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

A Norfolk man sentenced to 48 years in prison for a drive-by shooting in which no one was injured has received an absolute pardon, thanks in part to efforts from the University of Virginia’s Innocence Project.

Even in a city like Houston, which has a uniquely large network of air quality monitors, pollution hotspots can easily be missed due to constraints on how many monitors are present and where they’re allowed to be installed. And this disproportionately affects marginalized communities, who are far more likely to live near pollution sources. So, a team of researchers – led by Sally Pusede, a UVA assistant professor of environmental science – used satellite data to measure these disparities.

Dr. Christopher Holstege, director of UVA’s Blue Ridge Poison Center, encourages people to think twice before recreational marijuana use. “We know there’s a couple of things that occur ... increased exposure to the pediatric population, toddlers are getting into different items ... brownies with marijuana or gummies with marijuana,” he said.

Is the significant number of cases a sign of COVID in the world around us, or is there something different about sports competitions? “There’s not a lot of places we test as frequently as we do with professional sports and college sports,” said Dr. Costi Sifri, a UVA infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist. He said it’s not a bad thing that frequent testing of athletes is picking up what have often been notable numbers of asymptomatic cases.

June 24 was a bittersweet day for Virginia baseball coach Brian O’Connor. His team fell to Texas in Omaha, ending its College World Series run. That same day, however, O’Connor put pen to paper on a contract extension, keeping him in Charlottesville through at least the 2027 season. “He is the ultimate professional, an amazing leader and a great representative of the University of Virginia,” athletic director Carla Williams said in a statement.

The Indiana Pacers announced Friday the hiring of Lloyd Pierce, Ronald Nored, Mike Weinar and Jenny Boucek as assistant coaches for Head Coach Rick Carlisle’s staff. Per team policy, terms were not disclosed. Boucek, a UVA alumna, joins the Pacers after spending the past three seasons as an assistant coach with the Dallas Mavericks.

Todd Hall, a McNair graduate, said he understands the board’s desire to change the policy, but cautioned that a similar shift in Chicago public schools in 2009 led a reduction in both racial and socioeconomic diversity. “With that my suggestion is that if you want to focus on improving socioeconomic diversity, it really would really be helpful to rely on student’s own free and reduced lunch status,” Hall, an education policy Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia, said.

The story of Jacob Lawrence’s “Struggle” series first unfolded in our pages in an article by [UVA professor] Elizabeth Hutton Turner in January/February 2017. At the time, six of the series’ 30 panels had been lost. Three have now resurfaced.

For Brad Wilcox, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and fellow Deseret News contributor, one reason behind the seeming upsurge of reports in estrangement between parents and their adult children is divorce. “When parents get divorced, children are often hurt. And now, it seems, some young adults are steering clear of one or both of their parents because they are angry about how their parents’ marriage ended.”

A USA Today survey of GOP lawmakers who voted to impeach Trump and those who questioned the severity of the Capitol riot found prolific fundraising on both sides. “This is so unprecedented that a lot of people will give more money than they usually will because the stakes are so high for this country,” said Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics, who predicted a banner year for all fundraising.

(Commentary) Ain’t politics grand? So, now Virginia GOP chairman, Rich Anderson, wants long-celebrated University of Virginia political pundit and all-utility analyst Professor Larry Sabato to shut up. Well, good luck on that. Over the decades, a lot of pins and voodoo dolls have been expended by pols hoping to do in Sabato, a Norfolk-native. None of it worked. He’s not going to keel over — and he’s not going to clam up, either.

W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, says he would like to see Congress enact a child allowance. “I think making the child tax credit permanent would give Americans greater confidence when it comes to having and raising kids,” he says via email.