Election 2020 Aftermath: Turbulence, transition, or tranquility? (Thursday discussion)

William Antholis serves as director and CEO of the Miller Center. Immediately prior, he was managing director at The Brookings Institution, and from 1995 to 1999 he served in government. At the White House, he was director of international economic affairs on the staff of the National Security Council and National Economic Council, where he served as the chief staff person for the G8 Summits in 1997 and 1998. Antholis is the author of Inside Out India and China: Local Politics Go Global and, with Strobe Talbot,Fast Forward: Ethics and Politics in the Age of Global Warming.

Melody Barnes is co-director for policy and public affairs for the Democracy Initiative, an interdisciplinary teaching, research, and engagement effort led by the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia. She is also a professor of practice at the Miller Center and distinguished fellow at the UVA School of Law. During the administration of President Barack Obama, Barnes was assistant to the president and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. She was also executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress and chief counsel to the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Paul Freedman (Ph.D. University of Michigan) is associate professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, where he serves as Associate Department Chair. Freedman teaches courses in public opinion, media and politics, voting behavior, research methods and the politics of food. He is a founding member of the UVA Food Collaborative, the recipient of the University of Virginia Alumni Board of Trustees Teaching Award, and served as the first Edward L. Ayers Advising Fellow. Freedman is co-author of Campaign Advertising and American Democracy (Temple University Press), and his work has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Communication, Campaigns and Elections, Hedgehog Review, and Slate. Freedman served as research director for the Pew Project on Campaign Conduct at the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, and was a senior scholar at the Pew Partnership for Civic Change

Kevin K. Gaines is a Miller Center faculty senior fellow and the Julian Bond Professor of Civil Rights and Social Justice at the University of Virginia. He received his BA degree from Harvard University and his PhD degree from Brown University in the Department of American Civilization. He is author of Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 1996), which was awarded the John Hope Franklin book prize of the American Studies Association.

Caroline Janney is the John L. Nau Professor in History of American Civil War and the director of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History in the University of Virginia’s department of history. Her specialties include the U.S. Civil War, 19th-century U.S. history, women and gender history, and memory. Having also earned her PhD and BA from UVA, Janney is the author of Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation, Volume 16 of the Littlefield History of the Civil War Era Series; Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause; and dozens of articles and book chapters.