In The News

The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Dr. Michael Oren, made a special visit to the Miller Center at the University of Virginia on Thursday. Oren shared a brief history of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, and how it continues to grow.

Larry Sabato, a political science professor and director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, said Boehner's Republican majority includes many House members who are fiercely opposed to new gun laws. The Manchin-Toomey background check proposal "could be watered down to pass the House, but it would be a pale shadow of the original universal background check proposal,'' Sabato said. "It's possible that for PR reasons, the House will pass something, but it would be incremental compared to what was initially proposed.'' 

"Jumping from a moving vehicle is dangerous," said Dr. William Brady at the U.Va. Health System's Emergency Department. "No matter what you're going to land on, no matter how you're going to land, and frankly, no matter what the speed."

The second annual Tom Tom Founders Festival kicked off Thursday night with $10,000 in prizes rewarding the best ideas from the Charlottesville area’s creative artists and entrepreneurs. Pitches were made to a crowd of more than 100 by UVa students, artists, start-up businesses and a nonprofit organization. A first-year Darden student took the top prize with his project to develop a market place connecting local residents willing to show tourists their favorite parts of the community.

In his first Crystal Ball column on the 2016 race, University of Virginia political scholar Larry Sabato listed O’Malley as only a fourth-tier candidate, citing his small-state roots, his lack of name recognition, and the fact that he has a limited appeal outside of the liberal base of the party. “He is clearly running if he possibly can. The timing is perfect—this is likely the only chance he will ever have,” Sabato said in an interview. “But there is really nothing special about his candidacy. He is a generic liberal in a blue state, and this is a party that loo...

On Thursday evening, the University of Virginia Department of Drama will say goodbye to its current season -- and hello to a brand-new performance space. "You Can't Take It With You," a classic 1936 comedy by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, will be the first production in the 300-seat Ruth Caplin Theatre, a state-of-the-art thrust-style theater named for Ruth Caplin.

A poll released earlier this week by Vanity Fair and “60 Minutes” found that 32 percent of respondents said they could name the current president of their alma mater.

Saturday's Tom Talks lineup starts with education speakers Bob Pianta, Pam Moran and Paul C. Harris at 3 p.m., followed by leadership speakers Teresa Sullivan, Oliver Kuttner, Toan Nguyen and Ridge Schuyler at 4 p.m.; technology speakers Dr. Neal Kassell, Waldo Jaquith, Shayn Peirce-Cottler and Adam Healey at 5 p.m.; and entrepreneurship speakers Paul Perrone and Caesar Layton at 6 p.m. Coy Barefoot is master of ceremonies. Sunday's Tom Talks tackle spirituality and the law at 3 p.m., featuring Brandon Garrett, Greg Thompson, David Germano and Sahar Akhtar. Social capitalism is the top...

Perhaps the most notable statistic to emerge from this endeavor is just how few "crossover" districts there now are – that is to say, seats represented by a Democrat in the House but carried by Mitt Romney on the presidential level, and vice versa for Republicans sitting in seats won by Barack Obama. There are just nine of the former variety and 17 of the latter, for 26 crossover seats in total. Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics says that this is the smallest number since 1920, which underscores how polarized elections have become in recent yea...

DNA profiling and larger databases of profiles are more cost effective in preventing serious offences, such as murder or rape, than hiring more police officers or imposing longer prison sentences, a survey shows. The study by the University of Virginia concluded that the use of large databases is up to 1,000 times more cost effective than other law enforcement tools.

It's a moment of transition for Nathan Broaddus. Only a few years out of college, the man behind Evenings currently resides in his home state of Virginia, having recently lived in New York for a spell. Right now, he's contemplating another change of scenery. It's unclear what the next chapter will hold, but with the release of Yore – an album-length compilation of previously (mostly) digital-only Evenings tracks – he's closing the first chapter of an accidental career that's just beginning to bloom. 

(Commentary) Researchers, such as Dr. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia, and Dr. George Akerlof, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of California Berkeley, have documented the role of the sexual revolution in declining marriage rates, increased premarital sex, and a host of consequences. The sexual revolution has been an unmitigated disaster for the American family, increasing the poverty rate.

With the gubernatorial election less than seven months away, polling data suggests nearly two thirds of Virginians do not know enough about Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe to form an opinion of him. McAuliffe took steps to change that Wednesday during a pilgrimage to Larry Sabato's Introduction to American Politics class at the University of Virginia, opening up about his formative experiences and the attitude that saw him through a failed bid to become the democratic nominee for governor in 2009.

The festival will kick off at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 11, with the $10K Pitch Competition at the new iLab at UVA. In partnership with the Batten Institute at UVA’s Darden School of Business, the event will feature 10 local competitors with ideas that need funding. UVA has taken on the role as one of the festival’s main sponsors, which Beyer said has attracted and made partners of people, young and old, amateurs and professionals, from every corner of the community.

Manuscripts and personal letters of the late William Faulkner, whose original writings are a rarity in the literary marketplace, can be viewed Wednesday at Sotheby's in New York – an event to whet the appetites of scholars ahead of a June auction. Other manuscripts came from the University of Virginia, where Faulkner was writer-in-residence in 1957-58. All the items were on loan, university officials say, and were always property of the family.

Carol Tomlinson, who taught in Virginia public schools for 21 years and is now a professor of educational leadership at the University of Virginia, makes the case against competition, even while arguing that schools have taken it to an extreme. Middle school is “the last time we have to get kids from low-income families to buy into school,” she told me. The surest way to “incorporate and affiliate” those kids is to show them they can succeed; the surest way to lose them to indifference is to hand them proof of their own failure. And what could be clearer proof than to b...

Those accounts don’t match the recollection of Philip Zelikow, a National Security Council staffer under Bush, or of Bush’s national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, who spoke about it in 1996. Both were part of the Aspen trip. "The ‘wobbly’ comment has indeed been widely misunderstood and long ago became a factoid," Zelikow told PolitiFact. Zelikow, now a history professor and associate dean at the University of Virginia, recalled the encounter as part of an oral history project for the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

Wednesday, a group of Albemarle County students got out of the classroom and spent the day down by the river. The group teamed up with the University of Virginia to clean up the Rivanna River.

Researchers at the University of Virginia are developing a new drug that could help treat potentially deadly infections. The new antibiotic will treat serious gastrointestinal infections, which kills 14,000 Americans each year.

The meeting brought hundreds of policy and decision-makers together to talk about how to transform health care systems in the future to make them better, more efficient and less costly. Dr. Arthur Garson, director of the Center for Health Policy at the University of Virginia, was another panelist on changing the health care workforce. He says one way to do that is to allow nurse practitioners to take on more primary care responsibilities. To train more aides who can interact with patients, both over the phone and in their homes.