Experts in the News | Miller Center

News Analysis: ‘Something’s got to give’: Trump stirs old racial hatred, but this time feels different

Russell Riley, a historian at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, said that since the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and ’70s, Americans have come to expect something different from what Trump has offered so far — at the very least, a show of common cause with those demonstrating for racial progress. “When Lyndon Johnson — a Texan — went before Congress and said, ‘We shall overcome,’ that changed the job description of every president since,” said Riley, who co-chairs the Miller Center Presidential Oral History Program at UVA. “Even with Nixon and Reagan, who trafficked in the seamier side of politics, there was some acknowledgement of the need for racial equality.”

Russell Riley

Episode 175 Professor Barbara Perry

Director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, Professor Barbara Perry, discusses PBS documentary highlighting the foreign policy legacy of George H.W. Bush

Barbara Perry

Don’t Count Trump Out

If they choose, presidents can exploit the office for reelection purposes with brutal efficiency. They can push policies that matter most to prized constituencies, and fly to swing states for campaign stops masquerading as official visits. Trump can no longer hold rallies whenever and wherever he wants, but even during a pandemic, he can capitalize on his surroundings in ways that a challenger can’t. “Most presidents want to be reelected, and so they take full advantage of all those benefits of incumbency,” Barbara Perry, the presidential-studies director at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, told me.

Barbara Perry

Democracy and the Pandemic: Faculty op-eds raise, and answer, urgent questions

In one article for USA Today, associate professor Guian McKee of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs takes a close look at the history of U.S. hospitals as businesses, explaining some of the unique challenges this model faces in a pandemic.

Guian McKee

Hollywood gets a little boost from China … but it might come at a price

Especially with most movie theaters in America shut down indefinitely. Aynne Kokas, author of “Hollywood Made in China,” said the tables have turned dramatically. “In March, it looked like the U.S. was actually poised to dramatically overtake the Chinese film market for 2020,” Kokas said. “Now it looks like we’re seeing the reverse.”

Aynne Kokas

AOC Gave The Most Important Feminist Speech In A Generation

“I think it is the most important feminist speech in a generation,” said Jennifer Lawless, a politics professor at the University of Virginia. She compared it to then-first lady Hillary Clinton’s groundbreaking “women’s rights are human rights” speech before the United Nations in 1995.

Jennifer Lawless