Constitutional expert and UVA law professor Micah Schwartzman talks gay wedding cakes and SCOTUS.
Half a dozen Democrats are locked in a tight battle to take on Rep. Barbara Comstock (Va.), one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the country. But she faces three other well-funded challengers in Army veteran Dan Helmer, anti-human trafficking activist Alison Friedman and Lindsey Davis Stover, who worked as a senior adviser on veterans policy in the Obama administration. Helmer, a Rhodes scholar and veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, has flirted with controversy during the race. He made national headlines when he released an undercover video that showed him buying a semi-automatic r...
A single-minded focus on college completion can create a whole slew of unintended problems. As we have seen in K-12 schooling, simple metrics can yield gamesmanship, corner cutting, or manipulation. That said, there are examples of promising developments that merit careful attention. Thirty-two states currently use performance-based funding policies that award a larger share of public subsidies to colleges that deliver impressive performance metrics. It’s useful to note, as UVA’s Sarah Turner has observed, that incorporating multiple performance measures in an evaluation “lessens incentiv...
Jay Shimshack, a UVA associate professor of public policy and economics and an expert in environmental and health policy, said the problem lies with the way policymakers frame the message when issuing health advisories. “Fish consumption advice is often complex and confusing. Message-framing matters a lot, and real-world constraints like affordability are as important as the true risks and benefits,” he said.
The very thing that sets Howard Schultz apart from many other would-be presidential contenders could also be the thing that would keep him from winning the White House, analysts say. “It will be tempting to look for a Trump of the left,” says UVA analyst Kyle Kondik. “But it’s not clear that Democrats are really looking for a person with a business background to lead their party.”
(Co-written by Douglas Laycock, UVA’s Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law) “We approach Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission from the perspective of supporting same-sex marriage and supporting religious liberty.”
(By Barbara A. Perry, Gerald L. Baliles Professor and director of presidential studies at UVA’s Miller Center) When Robert F. Kennedy died 50 years ago today, the victim of assassination like his brother, President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Edward Kennedy received word of the unfathomable historical repetition while completing a campaign swing through northern California. Just when they had achieved victory in the Golden State’s 1968 Democratic presidential primary, the Kennedys’ world collapsed, as it had on that horrific November day in 1963.
Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of President John F. Kennedy who graduated from the UVA School of Law and mounted a presidential campaign, died 50 years ago Wednesday. He is remembered today as a peace candidate who tried to bridge racial and economic divisions during a troubled decade.
UVA psychology professor Brian Nosek is gearing up for his upcoming talk on "understanding implicit bias,” to be held Monday at 6 p.m. at the MLK Performing Arts Center at Charlottesville High School.
UVA law professor Saikrishna Prakash discusses the history of presidential pardons as well as the political nature of impeachment in the context of today's political climate.
A recent call was led by two early-career professionals who focused the conversation on the ways landscape history is taught in landscape architecture schools. In sharing some notes from this conversation with two teaching landscape historians, Elizabeth K. Meyer and Thaïsa Way, I received no disagreement on the points raised, though each of them did cite entrenched realities that limit the academy’s ability to build up non-European perspectives in landscape history courses. Meyer, at the University of Virginia, said she thinks the accreditation standards for landscape architecture degree prog...
Some studies have shown that global temperatures have risen by about two degrees Celsius in the past 100 years, and without intervention (for example, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and conserving the environment) temperatures are expected to rise in the next 15 years with more pronounced negative effects. A study released by the University of Virginia in early May indicated that East Africans will experience heat stress later this century as temperatures hit new highs buoyed by greenhouse gases.
UVA’s College at Wise: The budget earmarks $46.44 million in 2018-19, an increase of about $2.53 million compared to the current-year budget, and $47.95 million in 2019-20. Education and general program funds go up in the second year by almost $1.69 million; that reflects a roughly $2 million increase for instruction and a $200,000-plus decrease in plant operation and maintenance.
School district leaders in Aurora are proposing to spend almost half a million dollars next school year to train more principals in leadership skills that have helped some of the district’s low-performing schools improve. After a $1.6 million experiment with three leadership programs – of which more than half was covered by grant money – district administrators have recommended one, the University of Virginia’s School Turnaround Program.
"You’ve got a possible basis for constitutional protection, but there’s some uncertainty about it," said Douglas Laycock, a UVA law professor and expert on religious liberty who won a Supreme Court case in 2015 establishing Muslim prisoner's right to grow a beard. "It does not create a simple across-the-board right to conscientious objection."
Doug Harnsberger first saw the sketch in 2012 while searching through Thomas Jefferson’s papers: a thumbnail drawing of a circle with spokes radiating outwards. For 200 years, the sketch was mislabeled as a skylight at UVA’s Rotunda. But the sketch was the first plans for the Rotunda’s dome, he realized, setting off a years-long effort to recreate Jefferson’s original vision.
(Commentary) Our central finding is that top colleges are more affordable than many people realize – not only for poor students, but also for those from the middle class. Here is the full breakdown of costs, for each of six representative families, at each of the 32 colleges – including UVA – that participate in the MyIntuition online calculator.
Gregory B. Fairchild, the Isidore Horween Research Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, was given the added duties as the inaugural director of Northern Virginia operations for the university.
A UVA School of Medicine professor will continue working in Gov. Ralph Northam’s Cabinet as the state’s chief health czar. Dr. M. Norman Oliver had been serving as acting state health commissioner since April.
With President Donald Trump’s approval ratings below 50 percent and control of the U.S. House at stake, Republicans are being forced to spend money and time trying to hold two Ohio seats they normally would not have to worry about. “If the Democrats netted a seat in Ohio, it probably is suggestive they are winning the House,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of a major political website at UVA’s Center for Politics.