The old culture war politics is dying, but new culture wars are gathering force. The transformation of the battlefield will change our public life. The idea of a “culture war” was popularized by Pat Buchanan in his joyfully incendiary 1992 Republican National Convention speech, but it was introduced into the public argument a year earlier by James Davison Hunter, a thoughtful University of Virginia sociologist. In his 1991 book “Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America,” Hunter described a raging battle between the orthodox, committed to “an external, def...
(By Alec Horniman is Killgallon Ohio Art Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.) Some people seem to be naturally engaged in most of their activities. Other people seem to be engaged at times and not engaged at other times. Some people seem to be seldom engaged, and they go through their day-to-day activities as though they were on auto pilot. People who are not naturally engaged can choose to be engaged, and when they do, their competences and capabilities are taken to a higher level. There are four ways, found in all of us, to activate t...
Whether he is on a quest for a louder microphone or wants to “change the country,” U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina says he seriously is weighing a run for the White House in 2016. University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato suggested that Graham may figure, “If he’s ever gonna run, now’s the time to do it.” In Sabato’s estimation, Graham’s frequent criticism of Democrat Obama — on Benghazi, Syria, ISIS and a host of other subjects — could help him with GOP voters. But Graham’s support for immigration refor...
Mr. Obama cannot run for president again – U.S. presidents may serve only two terms. But some observers say his most recent State of the Union message sounded like a campaign speech. Larry Sabato directs the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “There was a direct connection between what President Obama said in the State of the Union address and&nb...
The wearable scanner concept was patented by Stan Majewski, a physicist currently at the University of Virginia. Brefczynski-Lewis was inspired by the idea, and got together with Majewski and others to build a prototype. The team received one of the first grants from the president's BRAIN Initiative (short for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) — an award of $1.5 million from the National Institutes of Health.
Martha Derthick, a former Brookings Institution scholar and University of Virginia professor who was a leading expert on Social Security and other public policy matters, died Jan. 12 at a hospital in Charlottesville, Va. She was 81.
( By Alan Taylor is a professor of history at the University of Virginia and the author, most recently, of “The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832.”) More than a century ago, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner asserted that the colonial frontier turned European emigrants into American democrats. Having crossed the Atlantic, colonists plunged into a wild world of dense forests and savage people. In braving the dangers and seizing new opportunities, the newcomers gradually shed their European heritage, which valued cohesion, tradition and hierarchy. Thes...
(By Bob Gibson, executive director of U.Va.’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership) When I arrived at the University of Virginia in 1968, the place had an all-male culture, a distinctively Southern flavor and a coat-and-tie uniform dress code. Today’s university has largely chucked the blue blazer code, ceded the all-male culture gig to Hampden-Sydney and quietly seceded from the Old South. The university has gone international in a big way. Last year, China sent 451 undergraduate students and 429 graduate students to Charlottesville to study at the university. China’s...
A study is being conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, to determine if an automated artificial pancreas could solve the problem of nocturnal hypoglycemia in people with type 1 diabetes. The study is conducted in collaboration with the University of Virginia and the Mayo Clinic. The researchers are exploring the capacity for the artificial pancreas system to maintain stable blood glucose levels overnight in people with type 1 diabetes.
After the account of a brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia was discredited, the campus could have tried to revert to the status quo. That it chose not to go back to business as usual is a credit to university officials and to students, who realized more needed to be done to improve safety. The result has been the implementation of sensible rules to crack down on the excessive drinking and other partying abuses that too often underlie sexual assaults.
Greek organizations at the University of Virginia kicked off rush season last week, the traditional recruiting period that brings thousands of hopefuls to fraternity and sorority houses across Grounds. The whirlwind that followed a Rolling Stone article detailing an alleged gang rape at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house has not put a damper on people joining Greek organizations this semester.
(By Robert Bruner, dean at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business) The big idea: No managerial assignment is more daunting than parachuting in to lead the turnaround of a busted operation. The situation is dire; morale is at rock-bottom; remedies are urgently needed; the CEO and board of directors are breathing down your neck; you are just a middle manager. What should you do?
(By James Kraska, a Senior Fellow in FPRI’s Program on National Security, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Oceans Law and Policy at the University of Virginia School of Law and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Law and National Security at the University of Virginia School of Law) Who “minds the gap” in the South China Sea? The gap, that is, created in international law concerning the use of coercion or aggressive force and the right of self-defense of victim states. China exploits this gap in the international law on the use of force to compel its neighbors to accept ...
Scientists are uncertain what role genetics and culture play in determining if someone has liberal or conservative political views. In a new study, researchers at the University of Virginia have found that liberals and conservatives tend to have different styles of thought. "We found in our study that liberals and conservatives think as if they were from completely different cultures — almost as different as East and West," said Thomas Talhelm, a doctoral candidate in cultural psychology and the leader of the study. "Liberals and conservatives categorize and perceive thing...
UVA Doctorial candidate, Thomas Talhelm talks with Les Sinclair about how Liberals and Conservatives think like they're from different cultures.
Whether he's arguing for the right to wear a half-inch beard or the right to sacrifice chickens and goats, UVA Law Professor Douglas Laycock is a champion of religious liberty. Soundboard's Nathan Moore talks to him about Holt v. Hobbs, his latest Supreme Court win.
Political conservatives in the United States are somewhat like East Asians in the way they think, categorize and perceive, while liberals in the U.S. are more extreme in thought, categorization and perception, according to a new cultural psychology analysis. "We found in our study that liberals and conservatives think as if they were from completely different cultures - almost as different as East and West," said lead author Thomas Talhelm, a University of Virginia doctoral candidate in cultural psychology. "Liberals and conservatives categorize and perceive things differently, ...
The Supreme Court rules 9-0 for Muslim inmate who wants to grow beard. U.Va. Professor Douglas Laycock argued the case before the court and Les Sinclair talks with him about it.
Hillary Clinton's biggest hurdle to the White House is its current resident.According to an analysis by the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, if President Barack Obama doesn’t reach a consistent 50 percent favorability rating by Election Day 2016, Clinton, should she decide to run for president, would have a difficult, if not impossible, chance of winning the race. "Even though he will not be on the ballot, however, evidence from past open-seat presidential contests indicates that the public’s evaluation of Obama’s performance in office will have...
Scientists are closer to finding a galactic 'skeleton' that they believe could be lurking inside the fabric of our galaxy. Discovering these 'bones' could help researchers get a better picture of the Milky Way looks like from the outside. A US team has already discovered one of the galactic bone while studying a dust cloud nicknamed 'Nessie'. Catherine Zucker, an undergraduate physics student at the University of Virginia, claims to have found six candidates for galactic bones in a new study. 'What I was trying to do was basically prove that the Nessie filament wasn...