GAGE News

• New Fellows have been announced! Click to read (PDF) about the new class of Miller Center Fellows (2011).




• Alumni Fellow Robert Saldin has published his book, War, the American State, and Politics since 1898, through Cambridge University Press (2010). Robert also published a journal article, "Foreign Affairs and Party Ideology: The Case of Democrats and World War II," in the Journal of Policy History (22:4; Fall 2010), and another article, "World War I and the 'System of 1896,'" in the Journal of Politics (72:4; July 2010). Additionally, his editorial, "Don’t Ask Don't Tell Needs to Be Addressed During Lame Duck Session", appeared in The Huffington Post on November 12, 2010.



• New in hardcover: Alumni Fellow Shelley Hurt, Asst. Politics Professor at California Polytechnic State University, "The Military's Hidden Hand: Examining the Dual-Use Origins of Biotechnology in the American Context, 1969-1972," in Fred Block and Matthew R. Keller, eds., State of Innovation: The U.S. Government's Role in Technology Development (Boulder and London: Paradigm Publishers, 2011).


• Alumni Fellow Walter Ladwig, Ph.D. candidate at Merton College, Oxford, recently published an op-ed in Wall Street Journal Asia on David Cameron’s attempt to build a special relationship with India. The piece in its entirety can be found here.


• 2005-2006 Miller Center fellow Dan Galvin and his recent book, Presidential Party Building, were featured in the January 2010 Washington Monthly.


• 2008-2009 Miller Center fellow Walter Ladwig was interviewed about Indo-U.S. relations on the BBC's World News Today. Click to watch the video.


• On May 6 and 7th the Miller Center's National Fellowship Program held a special conference to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Fellowship Program. Click here to learn more or to watch video from all the panels.


• 2006-2007 Miller Center Fellow Derek Webb, recently had his dissertation referenced in an article on liberalism at Salon.com. Derek is a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University.


• 2007-2008 Miller Center Fellow Nicole Kazee has received the inaugural Christopher Z. Mooney Dissertation Award for her dissertation "Wal-Mart Welfare?: The Role of Low-Wage Employers in American Antipoverty Policy." The Mooney award is for the best dissertation in state politics and policy for 2009.


• 2007-2008 Miller Center fellow Saladin Ambar and his remarkable family were featured in the February 2010 Inside Higher Ed.


• 2008-2009 Miller Center fellow Walter Ladwig co-authored an article with Anit Mukherjee on Indo-U.S. relations in the Wall Street Journal.


• 2008-2009 Miller Center fellow Walter Ladwig co-authored an article with Anit Mukherjee on Indo-U.S. relations in the Indian Express.


• The APSA Task Force on U.S. Standing in World Affairs, chaired by GAGE Faculty Associate Jeff Legro, has released its Final Report. Legro also co-authored an article on the subject in the current FP.


• Current Miller Center fellow Aaron Rapport was featured in a Reuters report on the difficult military situation in Afghanistan.


• Brian Balogh will discuss A Government Out of Sight on WMRA’s Virginia Insight with Tom Graham, on Monday, August 24 from 3-4pm.


• 2009-2010 Miller Center fellow Christy Chapin discussed health care reform on Charlottesville—Right Now! with Coy Barefoot on Monday, August 17.


• An article by the Jeffrey Young of the Chronicle of Higher Education titled "Drive-Time History, With a Dry Sense of Humor" and published on July 13, 2009 gives the backstory on the BackStory public-radio show.


• An op-ed by former Miller Center fellow Nicole Hemmer titled "Why the left misjudges GOP sex scandals" was published in the Christian Science Monitor on July 8, 2009.
• An op-ed by Ed Ayers, Brian Balogh, and Peter Onuf - hosts of BackStory with the American History Guys - titled "Independence: Jefferson's Declaration Was an Appeal to the Heart" was published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on July 4, 2009.


• An op-ed by Nicole Hemmer, a 2008 Miller Center Fellow, titled "Long live the Democrats? Not so fast." was published in the Christian Science Monitor on June 23, 2009.


• The June 2009 issue of the Journal of American History features articles by two former Miller Center Fellows: "The Free and Open People's Market': Political Ideology and Retail Brokerage at the New York Stock Exchange" by 2005 Fellow Julia Ott, and "Gray Matters: Social Scientists, Military Patronage, and Democracy in the Cold War" by 2006 Fellow Joy Rohde.


• The Charlottesville Daily Progress previewed the June 19 BackStory taping at the Miller Center.


• Brian Balogh's piece, "Americans Love Government – As Long as They Can't See It," headlines the History News Network on June 15.


• Barry Rabe's work on government and climate change, including the 2008 National Survey on American Public Opinion on Climate Change and Policy Options, was highlighted extensively in "Beyond Abstraction: Moving The Public on Climate Action," in Yale Environment 360 on May 28.


• The 2008–09 Fellows presented their work at the 2009 Spring Fellowship Conference May 7–8. The conference will also feature a manuscript review of Brian Balogh's A Government Out of Sight (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Dan Ernst's Legal History Blog takes notice.


• Brian Balogh was a guest on "Charlottesville Right Now" on WINA-1070AM on May 6, discussing Americans' attitudes toward big government.


• 2002–03 Miller Center Fellow Jamie Morin has been nominated by President Obama to be Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management.


• Public Service Fellow Casey Raymond has been accepted to the White House Internship Program.


• 2003–04 Miller Center fellow Kimberly Phillips-Fein's book, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan, was published by W.W. Norton this past winter.


• "The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right," a book by 2004–05 Miller Center Fellow Jon Shields, received a great review in the New York Times (April 24, 2009)


• BackStory is being featured as a "staff pick" on iTunes. The Mother's Day show was featured in a blog at Babble.com.


• Rob Rakove, a 2007–08 Miller Center Fellow, offers some historical perspective on President Obama's handshake with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in a Columbus Dispatch op-ed, Handshake sent message to potential allies (April 24, 2009)


• Brian Balogh talked about A Government Out of Sight on WMRA (103.5 Charlottesville), an NPR station in central Virginia, on April 16, 2009.


• Jeff Legro weighed in on how President Obama handled the crisis stemming from Somali pirates taking an American cargo ship captain hostage. (npr.org, April 13, 2009)


• The American Journal of Political Science (Vol. 53, Issue 2) has published an article, "Agency Problems, the 17th Amendment, and Representation in the Senate", by Jeffery A. Jenkins and Sean Gailmard of the University of California, Berkeley.


• Sidney Milkis, Assistant Director for Academic Programs, and Jesse H. Rhodes, 2007 Miller Center Fellow, have published an article, Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, and the Future of the "New American Party System", in The Forum, published by The Berkeley Electronic Press, Vol. 7, Issue 1, Article 7


• Brian Balogh's A Government Out of Sight is being published by Cambridge University Press. He discussed the book at an April 10 Forum. More information: Cambridge University Press release


• The H-Diplo discussion network posted a Roundtable Review (Vol. X, No. 9) of Jeff Legro and Mel Leffler's To Lead the World (Oxford University Press, 2008). H-Diplo roundtables are panel scholarly reviews on new and notable works in the field of foreign relations and international history. To Lead the World emerged from the Miller Center's After the Bush Doctrine conference in June 2007.


• Rachel Loeffler, a 2007–08 Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow at the Miller Center, argues in the March/April 2009 Foreign Affairs that financial sanctions against Iran and North Korea could be successful -- if global banks agree to share the risk.


• The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded BackStory a substantial development grant. Coverage: UVA Today (March 16, 2009); Daily Progress (March 19, 2009); Staunton News Leader (March 19, 2009)


• Brian Balogh presented a portion of his forthcoming book, A Government out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America, on March 5 Boston University. Christopher Capozzola, Associate Professor of History at MIT, wrote about the talk in his Legal History Blog (March 6, 2009).


• The 2009–10 Miller Center National Fellowship application process has closed. Applicants will be notified via e-mail regarding their status by late March. The Miller Center will announce recipients in April 2009.


• Brian Balogh on the Bush legacy (WCAV-TV, Jan. 15, 2009), Obama's inauguration (RTD, Jan. 17, 2009, and UAE's The National (Jan. 20, 2009), Obama's style (News-Virginian, Jan. 19, 2009), and the speech (Dow Jones Newswires, Jan. 20, 2009)


• 2008 Miller Center Fellow Nicole Hemmer, whose work is a history of the conservative media, wrote an op-ed, Liberals, too, should reject the Fairness Doctrine, published by the Christian Science Monitor on Nov. 25, 2008. She discussed the op-ed on Relevant Radio's "Morning Air" program on Dec. 3, 2008.


• GAGE Faculty Associate Vesla Weaver explained her research on politics and race in the context of Barack Obama's victory (C-Ville Weekly, Nov. 25, 2008)


• BackStory with the American History Guys, featuring GAGE Chair Brian Balogh has won a prize from the Federation of State Humanities Councils for being one of the nation's best humanities projects. The honor was picked up in the Daily Progress Nov. 19, 2008 and UVA Today Nov. 17, 2008. The History Guys were guests on WMRA's "Insight" (Audio) Nov. 17, 2008.


• Sid Milkis, Assistant Director for Academic Programs, was quoted in an article about President Bush's legacy (The National – United Arab Emirates, Nov. 19, 2008).


• Research Assistant Mark Nevin published an article called The Suburban Sunbelt and the Making and Unmaking of the Conservative Republican Majority on the History News Network Nov. 17, 2008.


• GAGE Faculty Associate Melvyn P. Leffler has won the 2008 AHA Beer Prize for his book, For the Soul of Mankind. News of his award was featured in C-Ville Weekly


• GAGE Chair Brian Balogh is quoted discussing the environmental politics, past and present, of nuclear power in a Cavalier Daily column on Nov. 6, 2008.


• On Election Day, Forbes' Jon Bruner asked Should We Pay Attention to Election Polls?, and found great insight and perspective about public opinion polling and its effect on democracy in GAGE's Has Polling Killed Democracy? conference in April.


• Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations reviewed To Lead the World: After the Bush Doctrine in the November/December 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs. GAGE Faculty Associates Melvyn P. Leffler and Jeffrey W. Legro edited the volume of 11 essays by the country's foremost foreign policy thinkers, which was published this summer by Oxford University Press.


• BackStory with the American History Guys has gained some national broadcast traction, picked up in Boston and Connecticut (UVA Today, Oct. 30, 2008)


• GAGE Chair Brian Balogh talked about a possible revival of nuclear power in the New York Times (reprinted in the International Herald Tribune) on Oct. 23, 2008.


• BackStory with the American History Guys, featuring GAGE Chair Brian Balogh, was profiled in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Oct. 19, 2008.


• GAGE Chair Brian Balogh helped Business Week compile a pre-convention look at how presidential candidates have used technology to get out the vote.


• 2007 Miller Center Fellow Nicole Kazee, with Michael Lipsky and Cathie Jo Martin, has written Outside the Big Box, a piece published in the July/August 2008 Boston Review. Their article argues that small business isn't well represented politically, particularly on the issue of health care.


• BackStory with the American History Guys was featured in C-Ville Weekly's July 15-21, 2008 issue


• To Lead the World: American Strategy after the Bush Doctrine (Oxford University Press, 2008) has been released. Edited by Mel Leffler and Jeff Legro, the book features essays from eleven of the nation's most prominent intellectuals, who offer concrete, historically grounded suggestions for how America can regain its standing in the world and use its power more wisely than it has during the Bush years. The volume is a product of the conference, After The Bush Doctrine: National Security Strategy For A New Administration, which took place at the Miller Center June 7–8, 2007.


• Brian Balogh commented on President Bush's legacy and his visit to Monticello in the Daily Progress on July 3, 2008.


• Sid Milkis weighed in on the lessons Obama can learn from the Clinton administration in The Huffington Post on July 2, 2008.


• The History News Network published "The Perils of Polling," a piece written by Benjamin Ginsberg, the David H. Bernstein Professor of Political Science at The Johns Hopkins University. Ginsberg participated in GAGE's Has Polling Killed Democracy? conference on April 25, 2008. More information.


• Sid Milkis was one of several historians who assessed McCain's chances in the Politico June 15, 2008.


• Brian Balogh discussed the historic precedent of Obama's candidacy in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette June 6, 2008.


• The Legal History Blog discusses the conservative legal movement and GAGE's 2008 Spring Fellowship conference, where Fellow Jefferson Decker, whom blogger Dan Ernst mentored, presented his work.


• BackStory, a weekly call-in radio show featuring Brian Balogh, Peter Onuf, and Edward Ayers, debuted on Virginia public radio stations June 1, 2008. The show is highlighted in the Summer 2008 issue of UVA Magazine, on UVA Today, and on Newswise, History News Network, AOL, and the Roanoke Times. It is also available on iTunes.


• Public Service Fellow Xiao Wang has won the pretigious Truman Scholarship, and was featured in the Summer 2008 issue of UVA Magazine.


• The San Francisco Chronicle published an op-ed, Now diplomacy is appeasement? by Miller Center Fellow Robert Rakove on May 22, 2008.


• Brian Balogh has won the prestigious Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award for service and dedication to his students and the U.Va. community.


• Brian Balogh weighed in on the relevance of presidential candidates' health records in U.S. News & World Report May 9, 2008.


• The State in Columbia, S.C. published an op-ed, Tax can help workers, employers, by Miller Center Fellow Nicole Kazee on May 7, 2008.


• The web site for GAGE's Has Polling Killed Democracy? panel has been featured on Intute, an online service linking to the very best Web resources for education and research, selected and evaluated by a network of subject specialists. It is sponsored by a consortium of UK universities and partners.


• The New York Times Magazine published a piece, Our First Black President? by 2002 Fellow Beverly Gage on April 6, 2008.


• GAGE Co-Chair Mel Leffler's book For the Soul of Mankind has been shortlisted for the Council on Foreign Affairs 2008 Arthur Ross Book Award. Winners will be announced in May.


• GAGE Co-Chair Mel Leffler's op-ed Keep Your Enemies Closer appeared in the Los Angeles Times on April 6, 2008.


• U.Va. Today highlighted digital learning and the University's Digital Media 'Groups Lab' on March 27, 2008.


• Mark Nevin, Ph.D. candidate in U.Va.'s Corcoran Department of History, published Those "Undemocratic" Party Conventions Were More Democratic Than You Think, an op-ed on polling and presidential selection on the History News Network web site.


• Public Service Fellow Xiao Wang has been awarded the 2008 Truman Scholarship, which is given by the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. The award goes to college juniors who exhibit exceptional leadership potential and who are committed to careers in government, the nonprofit or advocacy sectors, education or elsewhere in public service. Read more.


• BackStory ... With the American History Guys, a radio show featuring Brian Balogh, Prof. Peter Onuf, and University of Richmond President Edward Ayers, will debut on public radio stations in May, intending to go national by fall, the Charlottesville Daily Progress and Cavalier Daily report.


• The New York Times' Freakonomics blog on March 13, 2008 looked at the working paper by Barry Eichengreen and Doug Irwin, "International Economic Policy: Was there a Bush Doctrine?" created for the 2007 After the Bush Doctrine conference. The paper was published through the National Bureau of Economic Research.


• Public Service Fellow Katherine Klem discussed the youth vote and her support for Sen. Barack Obama in the Virginia Primary on MSNBC's "Hardball" on Feb. 11, 2008.


• 2002 Fellow Beverly Gage was a guest on PBS's NewsHour on Feb. 5, 2008, discussing the history of Super Tuesday with fellow historians Michael Beschloss and Richard Norton Smith. (MP3, RealAudio)


• U.Va.'s Arts & Sciences magazine looks at Mel Leffler's For the Soul of Mankind – including a National Review Online interview with the author.


• C-Ville Weekly highlighted the research and new book on race in politics by Vesla Weaver (Jan.8–14, 2008 issue).


• The Washington Post reviewed Mel Leffler's For the Soul of All Mankind on Jan. 6, 2008.


• 2002 Fellow Beverly Gage was a guest on PBS's NewsHour on Jan. 3 and 4, 2008, discussing the Iowa Caucuses (transcript | MP3 | RealAudio) and the New Hampshire Primary (MP3, RealAudio), and is taking questions in the Insider Forum.


• The December 2007 American Historical Review features a great review of The Weight of Their Votes: Southern Women and Political Leverage in the 1920s, by 2000 Fellow Lorraine Gates Schuyler.


• GAGE Co-Director and Associate Professor of History Brian Balogh was interviewed for The Economist's Democracy in America podcast for the Democracy in America podcast on Dec. 13, 2007. In the interview, Professor Balogh discussed how voters respond to the life story of today's presidential candidates.


• "Frontlash: Race and the Development of Punitive Crime Policy" Studies in American Political Development, 21 (Fall 2007), 230–265 by Vesla M. Weaver


• 2004 Miller Center Fellow Nicole Kazee published an op-ed, "To win SCHIP battle, enlist employers," in the Baltimore Sun Nov. 9, 2007.


• 2004 Miller Center Fellow Jon Shields has published a new piece, "In Praise of the Values Voter," in the Autumn 2007 Wilson Quarterly.


• Congratulations to 2006 Fellow Joy Rohde, who has been named a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.


• Jonathan Zimmerman of New York University, an adviser to Miller Center Fellows on op-ed pieces and a former Fellow mentor, was named Top Young Historian on the History News Network. Zimmerman is Director of the history of education program, Professor of Education and History at the Steinhardt School of Education, and Professor of history in NYU's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.


• GAGE scholar Vesla Weaver was featured on UVA Today on Sept. 10, 2007, and in the Cavalier Daily, U.Va.'s student newspaper, on Sept. 13, 2007.


• September's Perspectives on Politics features "George W. Bush, the Republican Party, and the 'New' American Party System" by GAGE's Sidney Milkis and Jesse Rhodes, and "What China Will Want: The Future Intentions of a Rising Power" (PDF) by GAGE's Jeff Legro.


• The Economist and the Christian Science Monitor have reviewed the new book by GAGE co-Chair Mel Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War, published in September 2007 by Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Leffler's Miller Center Forum on the book was Sept. 28, 2007.


• Edmund P. Russell, who has mentored two Miller Center Fellows, is interviewed by the Daily Progress about his research on dog fighting.


• Former Treasury Secretary John W. Snow joins the Miller Center this fall (PDF) as the Newman Visiting Fellow, working with GAGE and advising on issues of international and fiscal governance.


• Gareth Davies, Oxford University historian and former Miller Center Visiting Scholar has published a new book on American education policy entitled, See Government Grow: Education Politics from Johnson to Reagan (Kansas University Press, September 2007).


• David Adesnik, a 2004 Miller Center Fellow, has published the following article, "Ignoring Nigeria: The election that wasn't and other disturbing portents" in the Weekly Standard.


• Caroline Lee, a 2005 Miller Center Fellow, has published "Is There a Place for Private Conversation in Public Dialogue? Comparing Stakeholder Assessments of Informal Communication in Collaborative Regional Planning" in the American Journal of Sociology.


• Conference: After the Bush Doctrine: National Security Strategy for a New Administration, June 7–8, 2007. GAGE invited eleven of the nation's most prominent intellectuals to think boldly and imaginatively about America's future role in the world, and how the Bush Doctrine's strategy of preemption, unilateralism, and assertive democratization is suited to U.S. foreign policy going forward. Full schedule.
  
  The New York Times' David Brooks examined the divergent opinions of G. John Ikenberry and Robert Kagan in his June 19, 2007 column, "A New Global Blueprint" (subscription required).
  
  Fareed Zakaria assessed the foreign policy landscape for the next administration in a piece in the June 11, 2007 Newsweek, "Beyond Bush: What the world needs is an open, confident America."
  
  Oxford University Press will publish a volume of the conference participants' essays in 2008, edited by Professors Mel Leffler and Jeff Legro.


• Shields on Falwell's legacy: Jon Shields, a 2004 Miller Center Fellow, has published "The Myth of the Falwell Insurgency" at First Things: The Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life.


• Milkis and Rhodes on Bush and the Party System: Publius: The Journal of Federalism has published an article by GAGE Co-Chair Sid Milkis: "George W. Bush, the Party System, and American Federalism" in their Spring 2007 issue. Milkis is the Miller Center's Assistant Director for Academic Programs. Jesse Rhodes is a Miller Center Fellow.


• Ciepley's book nominated for Pulitzer: Congratulations to U.Va. postdoctoral fellow David Ciepley, whose book, Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Watch Ciepley's Miller Center colloquium on the topic in our archives.


• Miller Center Fellowship Conference, May 10–11, 2007. GAGE's annual Fellowship Conference in American Politics, Foreign Policy and World Politics showcased the best work in politics, understood from an historical perspective. Eight Miller Center fellows and their "dream" mentors participated in four plenary sessions: The Tools of Diplomacy; Reshaping the Political System in War and Peace; Social Science and National Security; and New Forms of Activism. The conference also included a manuscript review of GAGE Co-Director Mel Leffler's forthcoming book on the underlying dynamics of the Cold War, tentatively titled For the Soul of Mankind: The U.S., the Soviet Union, and the Cold War. Political analyst Kevin Phillips, author of American Theocracy, gave a special Forum on May 10 at 11 AM.


• Former Fellow Joseph Crespino, and recent Forum speaker, Matthew Lassiter, are highlighted in a recent New York Times article, "Interpreting Some Overlooked Stories From the South."


• Indiana University Professor Nick Cullather's "The Foreign Policy of the Calorie" is the lead article in the April American Historical Review. Watch Professor Cullather's Miller Center colloquium on the topic in our archives.


• The Public Service Fellows Film Series hosted Cold Mountain with Professor Gary Gallagher on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at the Robertson Media Center. More information.


• Professor Jeff Legro, co-chair of GAGE's America in the World Program, recently had his book Rethinking the World: Great Power Strategies and International Order published in paperback.


• Former Miller Center Fellow Shelley Hurt has won the 2007 Carl Beck Award at the International Studies Association for her paper, "Patent Law, Biodefense, and the National Security State."


• Former Miller Center Fellow Christopher Loss was awarded the Award for Excellence in Scholarship in the Humanities & Social Sciences by the University of Virginia. This award recognizes excellence in original scholarship by Ph.D. students at the University.


• Miller Center Fellow Larycia Hawkins's op-ed "A challenge to Obama: Jump ship!" was published in the Chicago Tribune on Feb. 5, 2007.


• Former Miller Center Fellow Patrick McGuinn's book No Child Left Behind and the Transformation of Federal Education Policy has been named an "Outstanding Academic Title" by Choice Magazine.


• Miller Center fellow Rob Saldin's op-ed, "Democrats are Still an Endangered Species in the West," was syndicated by Writers on the Range, High Country News' opinion column service, and ran in numerous Mountain West newspapers (under different titles) from Dec. 12–16, 2006.


• Professor Sidney Milkis, co-chair of the Miller Center's GAGE Program, recently published "Reflections on a Polarized America: Partisan Rancor and Development in the U.S." in Clio, a newsletter of politics and history. He also published "George W. Bush and the 'New' American Party System" in Clio.