Experts in the News | Miller Center

One bigly unindicted co-conspirator and other bunches of them, including some in Epstein files now

Trump's efforts to lean on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is reminiscent of the way Nixon created a team of secret investigators, known as "the plumbers," to find incriminating or embarrassing evidence about his enemies, said Ken Hughes, a leading Watergate authority and research specialist at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs.

Ken Hughes

America knows how to defeat Ebola

The United States knows how to defeat Ebola. A dozen years of bipartisan investment — spanning three administrations and billions of dollars — have built a formidable infrastructure of expertise, countermeasures, and rapid-response capability.

Elizabeth Cameron and J. Stephen Morrison

RNC chair’s quiet course correction

Ken Hughes, who has spent decades studying former President RICHARD NIXON and the White House tapes, told West Wing Playbook that Watergate might indeed play out differently today — but not for the reason Vance suggests.

Ken Hughes

What Are Presidential Libraries Actually For?

Men dominate the story behind John F. Kennedy’s rise to power, but researcher Barbara Perry found another important voice buried in the archives at the JFK Presidential Library and Museum: his mother’s.

Barbara Perry

The power of the purse: A symptom of a larger institutional decline

The phrase “the power of the purse” is an odd metaphor for what is in fact one of the most consequential authorities vested in the United States Congress. Its gendered connotations are particularly striking given that, for most of American history, control of federal spending rested exclusively with men.

Shalanda Young

When Questions Become Enemies

"Democracy depends upon independent institutions, courts, elections, Congress, civil society, and a free press. These institutions were never designed to make leaders comfortable. They were designed to make concentrated power accountable."

Bonnie Jenkins