The memorial is expected to get underway at 11 a.m., and seating will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Following the Unite the Right rally and violence in Charlottesville on Saturday, a group of UVA graduates sent a letter to the community expressing horror and hope. In the letter, the alumni say Charlottesville will always be home to them.
Horrifying images have emerged of the injuries suffered by a Houston woman after she was one of several plowed into by a car at a white nationalist rally on Saturday. Natalie Romero, 20, from Texas, is currently recovering in a hospital in Virginia. She suffered a small skull fracture and multiple injuries to her face. Romero, a University of Virginia sophomore, was a counter-protester against the supremacist groups marching in Charlottesville against the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee.
This essay was written by a UVA law student who decided to counterprotest on Friday when members of Unite the Right stormed the campus. She shared it in the Pantsuit Nation Facebook group with the hope of calling allies to arms to join Saturday's protest.
(Commentary) The University of Virginia, where the white extremists marched with their lit torches, is the home of James Davison Hunter, the sociologist who helped define the contemporary American culture war. In 1992 – as the American presidential election was rocked by the debate over a TV character’s single motherhood in “Murphy Brown” – Hunter reminded us that these cultural skirmishes aren’t just rhetoric or “political froth.”
“The bottom line is if it weren’t for a bunch of neo-Nazis marching around it would have been a regular peaceful day in Charlottesville,” said Kyle Kondik, with the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “Whether he likes it or not, the president, the person that holds that office, is supposed to act as the person setting a moral standard for the country, and I think he’s been falling far short in that regard.”
In televised remarks on Saturday, Trump condemned the violence in Charlottesville “on many sides,” but did not directly address the behavior of white supremacist groups drawn to the rally. The White House clarified his remarks on Sunday to include “white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups.” But the president’s campaign organization also announced a new television advertisement on Sunday morning that trumpeted the administration’s achievements and scorned Democrats and the news media for attacking him. The timing of the announcement so soon after the violence in Charlottesvill...
Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics, lamented that in his 47 years with the college, he had never been so sickened as when torch-bearing white nationalists gathered Friday on the grassy courtyard known as the Lawn, many chanting the Nazi slogan "Blood and soil." "We need an exorcism on the Lawn," Sabato tweeted.
“Jefferson was an exemplar of a long-running tension between global and national influences,” Brian Balogh, University of Virginia history professor and co-host of the history podcast “BackStory,” wrote in an email. “He embraced … the Enlightenment experiment. On the other hand, Jefferson was deeply embedded in a network of far more parochial attitudes, exemplified by his attitudes towards slavery and his attachment to a narrow conception of political economy.” From the university’s earliest days, Jefferson’s inclinations toward enlightenment progressivism were constrained by the realities of ...
“The bottom line is if it weren’t for a bunch of neo-Nazis marching around it would have been a regular peaceful day in Charlottesville,” said Kyle Kondik, with UVA’s Center for Politics. “Whether he likes it or not, the president, the person that holds that office, is supposed to act as the person setting a moral standard for the country, and I think he’s been falling far short in that regard.”
CNN’s Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter spoke with Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics, this Sunday about Trump’s refusal to condemn the white supremacists at the protests in Charlottesville over the weekend.
(By Larry J. Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics) How many times have we read that the outcome of November’s race for governor of Virginia will be a “bellwether” for the 2018 midterm elections? Many journalists and analysts clearly think it is. But is it true, or is this another alternative fact?
(By Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia) They hurt us. But they did not defeat us. Local clergy locked arms to stare down the attackers. Volunteers dispensed water to counter-demonstrators. Black Lives Matter members put their bodies on the line for all of us. Medics treated the pepper-sprayed eyes of racists and anti-racists alike. Just as the hatred came from one side only, the care did not come from “many sides.” It came only from the people of Charlottesville. These invaders hate my family. They threaten my country. They are numerous. They are emb...
The University of Virginia became the latest public-college campus to be thrust into political discord and deadly violence when white supremacists paraded through the streets of Charlottesville this weekend. It brought to light questions about what college leaders can do when extremists descend on campuses.
The scars and horrors endured by Charlottesville this weekend will persist, but so will its heroes. The clergy members who stood between the white supremacists and the town, the locals who sang and handed out water, the activists who civilly held their ground, the teachers and students who reclaimed the UVA campus for tolerance, our hospital workers, and Heather Heyer, who gave her life. But Charlottesville has other heroes, too: every child who watched Nickelodeon in her basement, every University of Virginia student who will arrive on campus this month, the Syrian immigrant families just set...
University of Virginia President Teresa A. Sullivan released a statement on Sunday calling out the violence and offered condolences to the lives lost over the weekend.
In recent years, college towns and campuses have attracted divisive figures like Richard Spencer, the white nationalist leader who organized the rally, as youthful activism in the community all but guarantees protest and media coverage. The New York Times reached out to University of Virginia students to reflect on the event.
On Friday night, like a nightmarish graduation procession, a few hundred white supremacists marched with torches down the long green lawn that leads to the Rotunda, UVA’s signature building. They chanted Nazi slogans in the open, undisguised, unafraid of being photographed, proud to be seen. They circled a statue of Thomas Jefferson and attacked a group of student counter-protesters who held a banner reading “UVA Students Act Against White Supremacy” at the statue’s base.