(Podcast Interview) NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks to Professor Liz Magill, executive vice president and provost of the University of Virginia, who clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
With the court vacancy coming so near the Nov. 3 presidential and congressional elections, Democrats argue that the voters should weigh in before Trump and McConnell rush to fill the seat – the very argument McConnell employed in 2016 to block a nominee of President Barack Obama’s. “There are those people who have a hypocrisy meter and it just offends them,” said Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics, referring to Republicans’ changing strategies.
(Analysis co-written by Craig Volden, professor of public policy and co-director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking) Increasingly, both the administration and Congress lack policy expertise, which makes it harder to solve policy problems, break through political disagreement and build coalitions.
At a time when many low-income districts are staying remote, California’s Cajon Valley has opened its 27 schools for a mixture of in-person and remote instruction. It was, in the minds of many educational experts, a small victory for poorer students who, studies show, have been disproportionately hurt by remote instruction. “There’s a substantial gap to begin with, and it’s expanding under COVID,” said James Soland, a UVA professor of education and one author of a study that looked at learning loss during the pandemic.
(Commentary by Bob Gibson, communications director and senior researcher at UVA’s Cooper Center for Public Service) Election Day is technically still Nov. 3 this year, but that one day now is simply the last chance to cast a vote in person the traditional way at a polling place.
The much anticipated football matchup between the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech will have to wait. Because of an outbreak of the coronavirus on Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus, theAtlantic Coast Conference contest set for Saturday, Sept. 19, has been postponed. The game was to be televised nationally on ABC.
In the first home Duke Athletics contest in 190 days, the Blue Devil and Virginia women's soccer teams battled for 120 minutes in heavy rain, before finishing in a 1-1 draw in double-overtime at Koskinen Stadium in Durham, N.C.
Increased demand for absentee voting may mean that the wait for election results will be longer than in years past. "In both the 2016 and the 2012 elections in Virginia, less than 15 percent of the vote was cast absentee, and this year, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a third or more," said J. Miles Coleman, Associate Editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
(PoliticKING with Larry King) Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, discusses the impact of Donald Trump's taped conversations with journalist Bob Woodward on the presidential race.
One point. That is how much Democrat Dr. Cameron Webb, is trailing Republican Bob Good, a self-described "biblical conservative," for Virginia's open 5th Congressional District, according to an internal Democratic poll provided to Newsweek. Dr. Webb, who practices general internal medicine in Charlottesville and teaches at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, held brief White House stints under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, dealing with health care policy and economic development.
Virginia’s seemingly quick flip into and out of swing territory may look like a smooth red-to-purple-to-blue metamorphosis, but nothing’s permanent in politics, said Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
The number of COVID-19 cases at the University of Virginia jumped Thursday, but the new cases are actually from the past few days. UVA says a testing machine was not operating properly, so there were about three days of tests that were slowed down.
The University of Virginia says its increasing testing of students after it identified a cluster of coronavirus cases in a residence hall. The Daily Progress reports that the school in Charlottesville reported five cases on Wednesday that were identified through wastewater and individual testing programs. All 188 students in the building were notified and were to be tested Wednesday evening.
Many students at the University of Virginia will be voting for the first time in the 2020 elections. Several groups across the commonwealth are rallying students virtually to get registered to vote and cast their ballot. The Virginia Young Americans for Biden-Harris made a stop in Charlottesville Thursday as part of their virtual “bus tour” to spread the word about early voting.
The University of Virginia calls the decision to contextualize the Thomas Jefferson statue in front of the UVA Rotunda part of a plan to tell the complicated life of contradiction its founder lived.
The impact of the coronavirus on the University of Virginia has spurred an estimated $90 million in cuts to this year’s budget.
The team of case investigators and contact tracers supported by University of Virginia funding will help manage positive cases related to UVA and its close contacts. The investigators who work directly with someone who tests positive will have information about quarantine and isolation resources at UVA and provide those recommendations about what a person should do.
Two new Resident Scholars will be working with staff and students at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. The 2020-2021 resident scholars are political communications veteran Tara Setmayer and journalist and UVA graduate Jamelle Bouie. They will participate as guest speakers in classes, as panelists for events and will develop a public program for the spring semester at the Center for Politics.
While warm weather has given families the opportunity to gather relatively safely in backyards, fall and winter celebrations are a trickier proposition. Developing a plan, clearly communicating expectations and discussing it with family members now can help alleviate tensions, said Robert E. Emery, a professor of psychology and director of the Center for Children, Families and the Law at the University of Virginia.
And with China poised to surpass the U.S. in box office revenue, it's an impossible market to ignore. For Disney, it goes beyond box office. The company owns a big chunk of a multi-billion-dollar Disneyland Resort in Shanghai, and its partner is the city government. Aynne Kokas of the University of Virginia says in China, Disney basically acts like a Chinese company, and its response to the "Mulan" controversies has been in character. “I think it's going to help them in terms of their ability to remain in the mainland market - the fact that they've held this line so firmly. And I don't see it ...