Two UVA scientists have been named to the National Academy of Inventors. Dr. Boris Kovatchev and Dr. Robin Felder were inducted into the National Academy of Inventors for their work in health devices and testing that can save countless lives.
A group of UVA researchers are offering resources to help teachers address issues of racial injustice in the classroom. The initiative called “Educating for Democracy” uses the way U.S. history is taught to properly explain current events.
The University of Virginia’s Facilities Management’s historic masons, specializing in historic preservation, have been working on repointing University Chapel.
In 1826, months after Thomas Jefferson died, the Rotunda at the University of Virginia was completed. A memorial just east of the Rotunda was dedicated 194 years later in remembrance of the enslaved laborers who built it. On Tuesday, five names were added.
UVA says it is committed to offering in-person learning while taking precautions. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the University is going ahead with having in-person classes during the spring semester.
UVA is rolling out its spring semester plans, urging students to remain vigilant to prevent the spread of COVID-19. UVA President Jim Ryan said in a recent video that the university learned a lot during the fall semester, and while he feels ready to take on the spring semester, now is the time to act with more caution than ever before as the threat of growing case numbers and new variants of the virus loom.
Laura Morgan Roberts, professor of practice at UVA’s Darden School of Business, says remote work “may challenge people’s ability to compartmentalize”; the home is meant to be your sanctuary and when a worker is forced to code-switch in that environment, it may feel like that freedom is being constrained. As remote work blends the personal and the professional, this may have a negative effect on the well-being of workers who have relied on code-switching to get through their workdays.
(Commentary by Kyle Kondik, political analyst at UVA’s Center for Politics) Given Donald Trump’s ability to dominate the news both before and during his presidency, it is perhaps not surprising that he remains the subject of the most immediately pressing political question in Washington: Should Senate Republicans use the pending impeachment trial in the Senate to forbid the outgoing president from holding public office again?
“We were the canary in the coal mine,” said Jalane Schmidt, a UVA professor who was involved in the 2017 activism. She compared the current political moment to the aftermath of the Civil War, framing the choice for Biden’s administration as either committing to sweeping change akin to Reconstruction or going along with the type of compromise that brought its end.
The Justice investigation into U.S. Sen. Richard Burr's trading activities went quiet for nearly eight months before Burr's statement Tuesday. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said in May that "from the day this story broke, Burr’s case always seemed the most serious, and it was so treated by the press."
Writing reduces stress, affects mental and psychic health, and puts you in a better mood. According to Dr. Timothy D. Wilson, a psychology professor from the University of Virginia, this writing type can lead people to victorious thinking within the optimistic cycle that will only intensify.
Laurie Archbald-Pannone, a geriatric doctor at the University of Virginia, said staying home to take care of a loved one without much other help can be isolating. “What we’ve seen in the COVID era is the need for social distancing, which is an important part of infection preventing and decreasing our risk of COVID spread, but that evolving into social isolation,” she explained.
Death penalty cases have at least an error rate of 4.1%, says Jennifer Gibbons. The director of the University of Virginia’s Innocence Project, Gibbons pointed out that means one in 22 people sentenced to death are innocent. That adds up to at least 100 innocent men and women out of the roughly 2,500 inmates currently on death row across the country. “For every nine people executed in this country, one person on death row has been exonerated,” Gibbons said. “If we want to eliminate the risk of executing innocent people, the only way to do it is to pass this bill.”
(Commentary) According to proponents of the Lost Cause, the South was the victim of an invasion by “Yankee vandals,” as Caroline Janney, a University of Virginia historian, phrases it. In response, they framed themselves as occupying the moral high ground in the conflict — a class of honorable and loyal families who defended their soil and way of life in the face of undue Northern aggression. To make their case, they had to argue that slavery was not the real issue of the war, but rather a pretext for a political and economic power grab.
Three of the nine sitting U.S. Supreme Court judges were nominated by Trump. “Four years later, one-third of the Supreme Court has been appointed by Donald Trump. That’s something that could very much outlast him,” said J. Miles Coleman with the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
Some warn that funding for police departments isn't always used for its supposed "community-oriented" purposes. "Since the program started, billions of dollars have gone to encourage more policing, and far, far less has gone to more community-minded policing," Rachel Harmon, the director of the Center for Criminal Justice at the University of Virginia School of Law, told ABC News.
The president doesn't have the authority to mandate masks across all states and cities. But Biden intends to call on governors and mayors to create face mask mandates, and he has said that he will ask all Americans to wear a mask for the first 100 days after he takes office. "Having the White House publicly endorse mask-wearing on day one and asking Americans to protect themselves and their neighbors is a hugely important step," Dr. Michael Williams, director of the UVA Center for Health Policy, said.
Dr. William Petri, a professor of medicine at the University of Virginia, told Al Jazeera that the US is in the third wave of the pandemic “likely due to travel over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays here.” The flouting of public health guidelines, such as wearing masks and avoiding non-essential travel, has contributed to the high rates of infection, said Petri, who added that the COVID-19 vaccines provide some hope. “That’s what’s going to lead us out of the pandemic,” he said.
What does a vice-president do? Historically speaking, not a lot. It has been described as the least understood, most ridiculed and most often ignored constitutional role in the federal government, and for a long time it stayed that way. "The role of the vice-president was, frankly, to just be that heartbeat away from the president," said Barbara Perry, the director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Centre. Unless the president died, or was seriously ill, the vice-president's job was largely to sit around and wait.
This year’s ceremony will look very different compared to the past. “It’s very rare for an outgoing president not to attend the inauguration of his successor,” University of Virginia Miller Center Presidential Studies Director Barbara Perry said. It’s tradition in modern times for presidents to welcome their successor into Washington, Perry says. However, President Donald Trump is not expected to be in attendance Wednesday. “I had predicted he wouldn’t attend and he would leave before the Biden inauguration,” Perry said. “So that Trump, in his mind, officially would leave Washington still as p...