Experts in the News | Miller Center

Republicans on House science panel suggest top environmental health scientist broke antilobbying law

A former senior government official shares the view that Birnbaum’s editorial probably didn’t constitute lobbying. The Anti-Lobbying Act “is really aimed at Congress” and preventing advocacy for specific pieces of legislation, says attorney Chris Lu, who served as deputy secretary of labor under former President Barack Obama and is now at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs in Charlottesville. The committee’s letter “in my mind is more broadly an attack on science and evidence,” he says.

Chris Lu

UVA Miller Center School Panel Weighs in President Trump's First Year

"We know about Roosevelt figuring out how to use radio as a leadership took, JFK on television, Trump certainly has innovated successfully in taking social media, Twitter in particular, as a way of getting his thoughts right into telephones and experience of the tens of millions of people who follow him,” Michael Nelson said.

Michael Nelson

The secret history of America’s ailing presidents and the doctors who covered up for them

"There’s a huge gulf between how we look at medicine now and in, say, the 1950s,” says William Hitchcock, a University of Virginia history professor and author of a forthcoming Eisenhower biography. “Then, when a doctor, a figure of authority, said the president’s going to be all right, it was the end of discussion.”

William Hitchcock

The secret history of America’s ailing presidents and the doctors who covered up for them

The 25th Amendment — codifying protocols for when a president dies or is unable to serve — wasn’t even ratified until 1967. That was after Dwight D. Eisenhower had suffered a major heart attack, which left him recuperating in Denver for several weeks in 1955. (His press secretary first reported it as indigestion before coming clean). It was also after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, a sharp reminder of presidential mortality. In life, Kennedy presented an image of healthful vigor, but “his ailments were legion,” says Barbara Perry of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, which studies the American presidency. Among them: Addison’s disease, crippling back pain, colitis — not to mention a physician nicknamed “Dr. Feelgood” who prescribed the president amphetamines.

Barbara Perry

Trump sets his Cabinet free to shape an agenda

“The challenge at a place like the Department of Labor is that significant cuts would have changed direction of the agency, but under some version of a continuing resolution, the Labor Department has not been able to act on those cuts,” said Chris Lu, former deputy secretary of labor and former White House Cabinet secretary to President Barack Obama.

Chris Lu

Journalist offers advice to divided nation in MLK celebration's keynote address

Moderator Douglas Blackmon, director of public programs at UVA’s Miller Center and executive producer of “American Forum,” led a lively conversation with Reid after her address, calling her “the smartest woman in television.”

Douglas Blackmon