About the policy program
The Miller Center’s policy program brings together scholars and practitioners from around the Commonwealth and the country to enrich scholarly research and public programming. The policy program emerged out of three distinct yet connected activities: The Governing America in a Global Era (GAGE) program that brought together scholars focusing primarily on United States national security, the Miller Center Pre-Doctoral Fellows Program which paired pre-doctoral students from around the country with UVA and non-UVA scholars who served as “Dream Mentors,” and a small cohort of practitioner fellows who were involved in Miller Center programming.
That beginning provided the pieces for today’s policy program: a group of scholars from across the University of Virginia, a score of other universities, and dozen non-resident practitioner fellows. This group of experts, combined with the Miller Center’s in-house scholars, provides deep expertise across a wide range of presidency-related policy issues. The policy program also provides an intellectual home for the seven named/endowed professorships housed at the Miller Center.
A decade ago, the Miller Center focused on large convenings such as the Caplin Conference on the world economy and the Goode Conference on transportation. The policy program today continues to support large, signature events such as the Battle and Stevenson Conferences on U.S. Foreign Policy. These conferences are part of a larger menu of public and private forums that allow Miller Center experts to engage with the public and with each other.
In 2020, the Miller Center, in collaboration with the UVA Karsh Institute of Democracy, launched an election blog to bring together expertise focusing on the campaign and outcome of the 2020 presidential election, a collaboration that continued for the 2024 election. Meanwhile, foreign policy experts have met weekly in a webinar forum to better understand the conflict in Ukraine.
Because the American presidency is so multifaceted, our scholars and practitioners contribute to a wide range of research projects. Core groups of scholars work on health care policy, national defense, bipartisanship, democracy and capitalism, civil rights and civil liberties, immigration policy, and other issues. The policy program provides the Center with the ability to be flexible and generate public programming and writing in response to a rapidly moving political context.