Rebuffed by the U.S. Navy in his quest to become a pilot on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, Parke F. Smith made a fairly bold move for a 21-year-old. He joined another team. The British Royal Air Force. Smith was the last American pilot accepted into an RAF program in which British pilots were trained in the United States while war raged on the other side of the Atlantic. As a student at the University of Virginia, Smith learned to fly through the school’s Civilian Pilot Training Program.
This Richmonder was a pilot for the Royal Air Force during WWII, and his family is sharing his story
(Commentary by Jason Oliver Evans, Ph.D. student in religious studies) The high-stakes U.S. Senate race in Georgia catapulted the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church back into the spotlight. For 135 years, the church played a vital role in the fight against racism and the civil rights movement. It was the spiritual home of the civil rights leader, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. It is now the home of the state’s first Black senator – the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor at the church.
That’s when she contacted Dr Jim Tucker, a child psychiatrist at the UVA School of Medicine. Tucker’s speciality is researching cases of children who claim to have memories of past lives. Tucker has been researching the phenomenon for 20 years and approaches each case from a “place of skepticism.”
The study results do, however, reinforce the critical need for initiating screening at age 45, said Dr. Andrew Wolf of the UVA School of Medicine. “If folks are reluctant to have a colonoscopy, stool-based screening is easy, can be done at home without any preparation, and can, like colonoscopy, definitely reduce the risk of dying needlessly from colorectal cancer,” Wolf, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.
Although some argue granting them loans under the program was appropriate, as churches are employers and service providers, UVA Law professor Micah Schwartzman says it’s not that simple. “What makes our PPP different [from] past funding programs is the direct financing of religious operations and religious institutions,” he said. “It changes the landscape of how the federal government [and] state governments relate to religious organizations.”
(Video) Twitter leaves U.S. President Donald Trump in the dark and the fallout from this story is global. Will leaders learn to watch their words? Among those interviewed is Siva Vaidyanathan, professor of media studies.
UVA Law professor Danielle Citron, a longtime Twitter adviser and free-speech expert, said the company should have suspended Trump “the minute” he tweeted about looting and shooting. “If they had properly applied their rules, he would have been gone.”
Saikrishna Prakash is a UVA Law professor focusing on constitutional law, foreign relations law and presidential powers. What’s Trump’s key legacy? “The last gasps of his administration are the most consequential, as he exerts a control over his most devoted followers and he’s talking about running again. He forced people to consider what the presidency has become in a way that wasn’t true I think either during the Bush or Obama administrations.”
Political practitioners and analysts said most institutions bent during Trump’s time in office, and some of them broke. Even before this month’s assault on Capitol Hill, the debate had been raging over what academics labeled shortcomings that Trump had exposed, and where blame should lie. “I give most of them in one way or another low grades,” said James W. Ceaser, a UVA political scientist. “I don’t know whether I’d flunk them, but low grades.”
Barbara Perry, the director of presidential studies at UVA’s Miller Center, said that a definite lasting impact will be Trump’s reshaping of the federal judiciary and US Supreme Court, by appointing three justices and giving America’s highest bench a 6-3 conservative-liberal majority. And time will tell whether Trump’s most lasting legacy was “the diminution of American democracy,” she said.
Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics, said: “If history is honest, it will remember Donald Trump as by far the worst president ever. No one else even comes close. Not Warren Harding, not James Buchanan, not Richard Nixon. Nobody comes close. “And beyond that he is, in my view, the most horrible human being who has ever sat in the Oval Office. In addition to being the worst president, he’s a terrible person. What a combination. I hope we’ve learned this lesson. This ought to remind all Americans what happens when you make a mistake with your vote.”
Airbnb is balancing some lost customers and revenue with preserving the trust and safety of the rest of the guests and hosts on its platform – issues it’s dealt with over and over and has since taken a stronger stance on. “These issues post a big risk in terms of safety of guests and safety of property and of hosts,” said Rajkumar Venkatesan, a UVA business professor. “It’s mission critical for their long-term survival and growth.”
Repealing the law could have the opposite effect, experts say, because it could open the companies up to more lawsuits and therefore they could be incentivized to take down more material to avoid legal battles and fees. If the companies really were disinclined to take any action, the Internet could quickly become overrun with objectionable posts, said Danielle Citron, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School. “No one would use that Internet,” she said. “It would be overrun by Nazis and spam.”
In July, a coalition of conservative scholars led by Brad Wilcox of the UVA-based Institute for Family Studies, a conservative think tank, sent a letter to Congress endorsing an expansion of the Child Tax Credit which, the authors argued, “reduces poverty while fostering some of our nation’s most critical investments: those that parents make for their children.” When I asked Wilcox if his endorsement extends to Biden’s plan, he indicated general support (though he could not commit without specifics).
According to Dr. Taison Bell, a physician at UVA Health who serves on its vaccination distribution committee, says that the hesitancy among some Black Americans and the vaccine is not monolithic. The nurses he spoke with are concerned it could damage their fertility. A Black co-worker questioned him on the Moderna vaccine’s safety, considering it was the company’s first round released to the market.
Vivian Riefberg, professor of practice at UVA’s Darden School of Business, said the new administration should enlist as many approaches to vaccination as possible: mass distribution centers, community health facilities, physician’s offices, pharmacies, schools. “You’ve got to provide an array of places that administer vaccines,” she said.
Dr. Cameron Webb has been tapped for a senior role in President-elect Biden’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Webb, a doctor at UVA Health and former candidate for 5th District representative, has been named the senior policy advisor for COVID-19 equity.
(Podcast) How will the new Biden Administration structure its own frameworks for regulatory oversight? What old and new tools will it keep? And what new innovations might it deliver? To discuss these and other issues, the Gray Center hosted a webinar conversation with experts including Michael Livermore of the UVA School of Law.
In 1910, it’s estimated that African Americans owned up to 16 million acres of land. Today, they own under 5 million acres, says historian Andrew Kahrl, a UVA professor who has extensively studied African American landownership.
It’s an inaugural week like no other – the Capitol is on lockdown, the Senate could begin an impeachment trial, and the nation is grappling with a pandemic and an economic crisis. This all falls onto soon-to-be President Joe Biden’s plate. “Joe Biden has his work cut out for him; that is a gross understatement,” said Barbara Perry, presidential studies director at UVA’s Miller Center.