The region’s flagship universities – the University of Maryland at College Park and the University of Virginia – have tracked an alarming uptick in the number of viral cases on campus. And each school has taken a different approach to curbing the spread, illustrating the tensions and uncertainty of trying to operate major research universities in the pandemic and preserve public health.
(Commentary by David Flood, postdoctoral fellow) Two hours into a weekly planning session, the 15 or so black-clothed, tattooed, and pierced activists were getting cranky. People wanted action, and tempers were flaring. I thought that my research on leftist organizing might finally get exciting.
In a recent U.S. Census Bureau working paper co-written with Jonathan Colmer, a UVA assistant professor, we explore the long-term and even the multigenerational effects of pollution.
During the panel, Dr. Cameron Webb, senior White House policy advisor for COVID-19 equity and a UVA assistant professor of medicine and public health science, focused on the importance of equity initiatives.
As students at the University of Virginia, Danya Abutaleb and Taylor Trumble bonded over diversity and inclusion discussions. When George Floyd was killed last year, they decided to resume the conversation full-time, even though it meant quitting their jobs during pandemic. And so Pip DEI Collective was born. Based in Charlottesville, the startup is a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) consulting firm, offering organizations coaching, dialogue facilitation, workshops and training.
In honor of Black History Month, CNN Business asked three of the highest ranked Black women in corporate America to reflect on their career journeys and offer advice to those looking to follow in their footsteps, including Jasmin Allen, a UVA graduate and senior vice president at Moet Hennessy USA.
Anna Beecher, a Londoner currently doing an MFA at the University of Virginia, is a winner of the Henfield Prize for Fiction. Her debut recalls the lyrical exploration of loss in Max Porter’s “Grief Is a Thing with Feathers,” though structurally “Here Comes the Miracle” is less formally inventive.
Central to individualism is a belief in meritocracy, the idea that one succeeds by dint of ability, talent, and hard work, and therefore that every person is the master of their fate. This, too, is a popular lens through which to see the world in the States. But “it’s important to identify that this is a myth,” says Allison Pugh, a UVA professor of sociology. “We all are dependent on others.”
Kiki Petrosino, who teaches poetry at UVA, claimed the 10th anniversary Rilke Prize for poetry with an intimate study of her life as a biracial woman in America. The University of North Texas prize highlights her 2020 book, “White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia.”
The U.S. State Department has named a UVA professor as a trailblazer. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove is one of five Black women featured on the “ShareAmerica” platform in honor of Black History Month.
Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at UVA’s Miller Center, said Biden is “well-suited” to deal with the disaster because of his decades of service in the U.S. Senate and as a former vice president and because of “his genuine concern for people. … He’s got to show empathy right off the bat. It’s important for a president to go to a place that’s been battered, but be careful about the footprint. He doesn’t want to make things worse.”
“The country is facing a series of crises simultaneously,” said Jennifer Lawless, a UVA professor of politics. “In a lot of ways, she has to be the first lady times two just because the environment is so much more difficult than it has been for the last 100 years.”
“The experience of the past three administrations suggests that despite the relative speed and efficiency that the Biden transition demonstrated in identifying nominees, there are hurdles that will likely delay the confirmation of their carefully picked candidates,” Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a senior fellow at UVA’s Miller Center who has tracked Cabinet appointments across administrations, wrote earlier this month. “Such a delay amidst a pandemic, economic volatility and historically high levels of racial tension is a most unfortunate setback.”
Philip Zelikow, a UVA professor who served as the executive director of the 9/11 Commission and helped write its bestselling report, said the ongoing FBI investigations into Capitol rioters could create “lots of hindrances and potential delays” along with any investigations into Trump’s phone call with Georgia’s secretary of state.
(Commentary by Andrew Kahrl, professor of history and African American studies and is author of “Free the Beaches: The Story of Ned Coll and the Battle for America’s Most Exclusive Shoreline”) Recently, State Rep. Roland Lemar introduced a bill in the General Assembly that seeks to prevent coastal towns from using access and parking fees to exclude non-residents from public beaches. Critics charge that these exorbitant fees for non-residents are designed to prevent certain “undesirable” groups from being able to enjoy access to public outdoor spaces in towns they could otherwise not afford to ...
(Commentary by Bob Gibson, communications director and senior researcher at UVA’s Cooper Center for Public Service) Virginia and New Jersey are the first two states to elect governors in the Joe Biden presidency, but Virginia is the state to watch this year as nine Republicans running for governor define, or redefine, the party of Trump.
The conclusion of the 2021 ACC Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships on Saturday saw the University of Virginia clean up with a 169-point victory over their rivals from NC State. It’s no surprise, then that the Cavaliers’ top scorer Paige Madden was named the Most Valuable Swimmer by vote of the conference’s coaches for the second straight year.
UVA Health gave updates on COVID-19 and the vaccination process during a media briefing Friday.
UVA doctors are working to track down highly contagious variants of COVID-19 in the community, following reports of the UK variant on Grounds, as well as a confirmed case of the South African variant, B 1.351, from the Virginia Department of Health.
After studying near-death experiences for decades, Dr. Bruce Greyson, a UVA professor of psychiatric medicine, says that much of what he’s learned has been hard to square with prevailing notions of how the mind and brain work. “Our common assumption is that the mind, or consciousness, is just what the brain does,” he says. Paradoxically, NDEs often occur when the brain is heavily disabled or even measurably inactive. “The evidence we have from NDEs seems to suggest that the mind and brain can dissociate under extreme circumstances,” he says.