Experts in the News | Miller Center

Opinion/Editorial: Democracy institute welcomed

Incoming executive director Melody Barnes said she hopes the institute will become a center for complex political discussion and debate, as well as a place to brainstorm and work through solutions to major problems facing democracy, The Progress reports.

Melody Barnes

COVID-19 messages make emergency alerts just another text in the crowd on your home screen

On a spring day in 2020, residents of El Paso, Texas, saw their phones light up with a text message: “Avoid parks/family gatherings this Easter. Stay home, stay safe. Do it for your loved ones.” This message, sent via the federal Wireless Emergency Alert system, was one of many designed to deliver COVID-19-related guidance directly to people’s cellphones. COVID-19-related messages are a new use of this alert system. They indicate changing ideas about what constitutes an emergency and underscore the challenges of public messaging in a personalized media environment.

Elizabeth Ellcessor

In Meeting With Erdogan, Biden Holds the Power

On the margins of the June 14 NATO summit in Brussels, U.S. President Joe Biden is set to hold his first meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The encounter comes at a sensitive time for Erdogan, whose country is teetering on the edge of a potentially catastrophic economic and political crisis. And Biden should use that to the United States’ advantage as he seeks to support democracy in Turkey.

Eric Edelman

Race and Racism

Social fissures have thwarted a liberal coalition for 50 years

The fractures developing in American society in the 1960s ripped apart the diverse coalition that had sustained the Democratic Party since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Powerful social forces would make it difficult for any presidential candidate to forge a viable liberal coalition for decades to come.

Washington Post

Inside RFK's Funeral Train: How His Final Journey Helped a Nation Grieve

On June 8, 1968, a 21-car train carried the body of slain New York senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy from New York’s Penn Station to Washington D.C.’s Union Station. Before airplanes and the interstate highway system, the train was a defining feature of the burial proceedings for great leaders. Over a century earlier, a train transported the body of Abraham Lincoln from Washington to his Springfield, Illinois home. Other deceased presidents—Ulysses S. Grant, James Garfield, William McKinley, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower—took similar trips.

Steven M. Gillon

Around the halls: What to watch in Biden’s week of summits in Europe

President Biden’s trip is an opportunity for the U.S. and G-7 to develop a new mechanism that unites democratic governments with research institutions and the private sector to end this pandemic. This is a wake-up call for the G-7 to create more robust healthcare systems, resilient economies, and sustainable environments, all of which will prepare us better for the next pandemic, whose arrival is only a matter of time.

Syaru Shirley Lin