Experts in the News

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Perry in Washington Times

Jefferson and the First Amendment’s religion clauses

Just up the mountain from where I sit at the UVA’s Miller Center lies the final resting place of the university’s founder, Thomas Jefferson.The obelisk that he designed to mark his gravesite at Monticello lists the three accomplishments of which he was proudest: authoring the Declaration of Independence, establishing the University of Virginia, and drafting the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. His collaboration with neighbor and friend, James Madison, to implement the religious freedom law in 1786 provided part of the foundation for the First Amendment’s guarantees that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Barbara Perry
US News

Don't miss the Carrier clue

It's now been three weeks since Donald Trump surprised pundits and voters by winning the 2016 presidential election. Since then, acres of pixels have been spilled as analysts attempt to divine the nature and direction of the pending Trump administration. This analysis has alternately focused on Trump's cabinet picks, on his tweets about Broadway musicals and flag burners and on adviser Steve Bannon's connections to white nationalists. Yet the most important clue to the nature of Trump's presidency may actually have come on Tuesday with the announcement that Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence had negotiated an agreement under which 1,000 jobs at the Carrier plant in Indianapolis will remain in the United States rather than moving to Mexico.
Guian McKee
Why hasn't the U.S. elected a woman POTUS?

Madam President: Why Hasn’t the U.S. Elected a Woman POTUS?

Last year I saw the film Suffragette about the early 20th century battle for women’s suffrage in Britain. At the end of the closing credits appeared a list of every country that had granted the vote to females and in what year, along with a dwindling group of nations that continue to deny access to the ballot box for half their population. Even more striking was the year in which some countries had elected a female president or prime minister. Such a list will continue to note that nearly a century has passed with women’s national suffrage in the U.S. but without a female president. Why?
Barbara Perry