Experts in the News | Miller Center

Fifty years of the Miller Center: Shaping history, policy and dialogue

David Leblang, Director of Policy Studies at the Miller Center, analyzes how the Center has remained a nonpartisan institution during a particularly divisive time in politics. He delves into the various programs, events and policy proposals associated with the Center, and how they are making an impact at UVA and beyond.

David Leblang

The campaign to make Richard Nixon great again

Kenneth Hughes Jr., a researcher at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, who is considered one of the foremost experts on the audiotapes from Nixon’s White House, said the recordings clearly demonstrate that Nixon was “the ring leader of the abuses of power that we group under the heading of Watergate.”

Ken Hughes

The Kennedy clan war transfixing America

“They are America’s royal family,” says Dr Barbara Perry, a director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, who has also written books on the Kennedys. “There’s sex, politics and tragedy, in almost Shakespearean quantities. Whether people like the family or hate them, these are compelling stories.”

Barbara Perry

What Robert F. Kennedy Jr. didn’t tell you about ‘Operation Northwoods,’ the false flag operation he loves to denounce

Kennedy Jr. omitted the most important part of the “Operation Northwoods” story: his father’s role. I learned of that role from documents declassified by the JFK Assassination Records Review Board, in the Kennedy Library and in other archives while researching a book I’m writing, “Clandestine Camelot.”

Ken Hughes

Independence and the executive branch

President Trump’s actions portend a sea change in judicial precedent and political norms that once protected federal agencies from partisan interference.

Barbara Perry and Sarah Wilson

The Pentagon's Confederate Cover-Up

Eric and Eliot discuss the Commission created by Congress in 2020 to replace Confederate commemorations with tributes that better reflect American values, the pushback it faced, and why renaming military bases does not “change history.” The conversation also explores the post-Reconstruction myths behind these commemorations, the enduring appeal of the Confederate battle flag in certain right-wing circles, and the current controversy over reverting base names following efforts by Trump and Hegseth to overturn the Commission’s work.

Eric Edelman