Bill Clinton Concludes PrezFest

PrezFest is now over in Charlottesville. The three-day event focused on many topics related to the presidency, including race relations, foreign policy, and even social media and comedy. On its last day, as WMRA's Marguerite Gallorini reports, one of the panels focused on women in leadership and the glass ceiling. The festival then concluded with remarks by former president Bill Clinton.

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The United States still has not had a woman in the White House. The glass ceiling persists, but it is not unbreakable, and things are slowly changing. Here’s Jennifer Lawless, Commonwealth Professor of Politics at UVA, on the current presidential race.

(L to r) Barbara Perry, Gerald L. Baliles Professor at the Miller Center (moderator); Margaret Brennan, host of CBS News' Face the Nation; Anita McBride, former chief of staff under Laura Bush; and Jennifer Lawless, Commonwealth Professor of Politics UVA.

JENNIFER LAWLESS: What I do find heartening about this though is that the women who have decided to run are not all the Hillary Clintons of the world. They don't all have every single political background and experience and credential. Which suggests that women are getting to the point where they're throwing their hats into the ring because they think they're as qualified as similar men who also have not done every single thing out there. And I think that sends a really important message moving forward.

Former president Bill Clinton provided the final remarks 

to mark the end of this three-day Presidential Ideas Festival, 

in which he addressed issues such as the trade war, diversity,
immigration, and the need to continue striving for
"a more perfect union."

The Presidential Ideas Festival then concluded with remarks from former president Bill Clinton, who talked about the importance of diversity.

BILL CLINTON: Diverse groups committed to the rule of law and believing in growing 'We the People,' will make better decisions over any relevant amount of time than homogenous groups or even lone geniuses. We need the president to speak for a bigger 'We the People,' not a smaller one.

This story appeared on WMRA News.

Presidential Ideas Festival Tackles Race on Day 2

(L to r) Moderator and White Burkett Miller Professor of Politics Sidney Milkis; Rabbi and former U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom David Saperstein; UVA Department of Politics faculty, and Department of Religious Studies faculty fellow Larycia Hawkins; American University professor Ibram Kendi;
and Morgan State University professor Jason Johnson. / Picture: Marguerite Gallorini

The Presidential Ideas Festival continues in Charlottesville. On Wednesday [May 22nd], scholars from UVA and elsewhere formed a panel to talk about a pressing issue of our time: race in America and in U.S. politics. WMRA's Marguerite Gallorini reports.

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With events such as August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville and the conversation around racism and racial inequality raging nationally, the Presidential Ideas Festival had to address the issue of race in America. Here's Larycia Hawkins, who holds joint appointments in Politics and Religious Studies at UVA, talking about the focus on the Obama presidency.

LARYCIA HAWKINS: As a political scientist, I find it odd that I'm never asked, previously, about race relations during Bush's administration; or during Clinton's administration. Race and the presidency always collide, and coalesce. And so I think it's important to shift our questioning: how did Nixon's benign neglect affect race relations in the U.S., right?

The panel also discussed reparations for slavery. Here’s rabbi and former U.S. ambassador-at-large for religious freedom David Saperstein:

DAVID SAPERSTEIN: If you count the two million veterans at the end of World War II and their families, it is the same proportion of America that African Americans are today. And the GI bill and the FHA loan programs lifted to the middle class almost that entire segment of the country. It really can be done, if we have the moral vision and the political will to do it.

This story appeared on WMRA News.

Presidential Ideas Festival Kicks Off in Charlottesville

(L to r) CBS correspondent John Dickerson; former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; and former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley talk about foreign policy on the first day of the Presidential Ideas Festival in Charlottesville. /
Picture: Marguerite Gallorini

The Presidential Ideas Festival kicked off Tuesday [May 21st] in Charlottesville. Organized by the Miller Center and taking place on University of Virginia grounds, the three-day event aims to examine some of the most pressing challenges facing democracy around the world through the lens of the American presidency. WMRA will give you an overview of each day of this event – which will culminate on Thursday afternoon with a closing keynote from President Bill Clinton. Here’s Marguerite Gallorini reporting on the first day.

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The Presidential Ideas Festival is receiving big local and national figures in Charlottesville. And its first keynote conversation was moderated by CBS correspondent John Dickerson – who is also a UVA graduate. The theme of the discussion was national security and foreign policy, which naturally led to talks of U.S.-China relations. Here’s former national security advisor Stephen Hadley on the issue:

STEPHEN HADLEY: It is true we are going to compete with China. The question is: can we also be strategic cooperators? And we need to be because all those global issues – of terrorism, of environment, of climate change, of water resources – can't be solved by either China or the United States alone.

As for the presidency itself, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright offered insight into the various forces pulling a presidency – forces that can sometimes be at odds.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Foreign policy is not the only thing that a president does. For the most part, domestic policy issues dominate. The only problem is I can guarantee you that the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor never get along except when Henry Kissinger had the same job.

[Laughs from audience]

HADLEY: It's exactly right!

This story appeared on WMRA News.

German Scholars Visit UVa for Projects on Racism

Hannah Winnick is the Program Director for 

Transatlantic Dialogue on Democracy and 

Social Policy at the Heinrich Boll Foundation in D.C. /

Photo credit: Heinrich Boll Foundation

This week in Charlottesville, the University of Virginia, in partnership with the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Washington D.C., will host five visiting fellows from Germany to work with faculty and students on projects that deal with racism and history. WMRA's Marguerite Gallorini caught up with the foundation’s program director in Washington, D.C.

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Hannah Winnick, the Program Director for Transatlantic Dialogue on Democracy and Social Policy, explains how the partnership with UVa's Center for German Studies came to be, following the events of August 2017 in Charlottesville.

HANNAH WINNICK: As a German organization, when we saw Neo-Nazis marching through the streets of an American city, we really did a lot of soul-searching and we asked ourselves what is our role, when we see this happening; how we can we bring Germans and Americans together to confront this challenge?

So, through Tuesday, April 16th, UVa will host five German scholars for an intensive one-week residency. They will work with UVa faculty, students, and other community members on stage plays, films and other projects. Here is one:

WINNICK: The students that are working with Natasha Kelly, Afro-German filmmaker – what they are doing is they are using this idea of a Cabinet of Curiosities, which used to be these cabinets that were collected by White colonialists and that featured sort of these "exotic" – often very racist – objects that they had found on their exploits. And they're turning that on its head: they're going out and collecting and curating everyday objects from all around Charlottesville that reproduce racist ideas in some way.

The outcome of these projects will be open to the public beginning next week once they are finished.

This story was published on WMRA News.

UVa Hosts Teacher Retention Summit

The "Teacher Retention Summit" on October 23rd gathered education leaders, policymakers and academic researchers at the University of Virginia - including Virginia Secretary of Education Atif Qarni - to discuss strategies and policies to better retain - and recruit - teachers in Virginia. / Picture: Marguerite Gallorini

On Tuesday [Oct. 23], a day-long summit at the University of Virginia gathered education leaders, policymakers, and researchers to discuss teacher retention in Virginia. The summit was hosted by the Office of the Secretary of Education. WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini has been following this issue, and has this report.

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Here’s the Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction, Dr. James Lane, laying out the issue:

JAMES LANE: I heard that there were about 1,200 teacher vacancies when we started the school year. 90,000 of our 1.2 million students in the Commonwealth are potentially impacted by the teacher shortage.

So how can we retain teachers? One way is better teacher pay. Virginia still lags behind the U.S. average by $8,000. But it’s not just that, says Dr. Jeffrey Smith, President of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents:

JEFFREY SMITH: The other piece that I have heard as superintendent - and I know my colleagues have heard as well - is greater and more autonomy within the classroom, so that teachers can teach and young people can indeed learn. Another area where we need some help and assistance: that's when we look at the licensure program. We heard that today as well: greater flexibility in converting the provisional license to that of the collegiate license in the teaching profession.

Virginia did take a first step this year with House Bill 1125, signed into law in June, which makes it easier for out-of-state teachers to get license reciprocity in Virginia. But at the end of the day, the main problem often goes back to money. In the words of Jim Livingston, President of the Virginia Education Association:

JIM LIVINGSTON: We have to put our money where our mouth is.

This story appeared on WMRA News.

Can a Local Workshop Fight Fascism?

Charles presented his work on the wave of fascism that hit Europe in the mid-1970s, and the "Battle of Wood Green" where fascists and anti-fascists clashed in the streets of that London suburb. Charles then asked for feedback from the audience. / Photo: Marguerite Gallorini

After the deadly white supremacist rally last year in Charlottesville, two grad students in history at the University of Virginia are trying to bridge the divide between academia and the rest of the city by starting a monthly community conversation on far-right and fascist groups. WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini and 10 others sat in on the first workshop of the “Far Right and (Anti-)Fascism Group.”

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[CHARLES and NATASHA: Thanks for coming!]

How can we read current events such as August 12 in Charlottesville with a historical lens –more broadly, how can we create a safe and open space to talk about fascism and anti-fascism? Natasha Roth-Rowland and Charles Hamiltonare two doctoral students in history at UVa.  They have created a monthly workshop, open to all students and to the public, to discuss just that.

NATASHA ROTH-ROWLAND: It's a very common refrain that racism doesn't go away, it just adapts to the society that it's in. And I think failing to tease that out in public discourse and in education - I don't think it directly puts us where we are but it facilitates the gradual normalization of politics and social development where this kind of resurgence of fascism and authoritarianism becomes possible.

CHARLES HAMILTON: It’s certainly my hope – and I think I speak for Natasha as well – that we're providing the tools to understand this movement in a historical context. Because there are things that are new, but it's not fundamentally new: there is this history to it, and that's what we're trying to tease out, we're trying to see what, from history and from related disciplines, can we use to understand our current times and this situation better. 

Charles studies queer anti-fascism and the far right in twentieth-century Europe, with a focus on Britain, France, and Germany. He talked about the wave of fascism that hit Europe in the mid-1970s, following a lot of fear mongering aimed at immigrants and refugees – much like what they say is happening now in the U.S.

ROTH-ROWLAND: The elephant in the room which was discussed early on is what happened in Charlottesville last year, specifically: Neo-nazis bringing a tremendous amount of violence to the streets in Charlottesville, and lack of sufficient action on the part of the police.

[Far-right crowd chanting on August 12, 2017]

This inaction also rings a bell from the past. Here’s Charles talking about what came to be known as the Battle of Wood Green, in Britain, on April 23, 1977 – when fascists and anti-fascists clashed in the streets of this London suburb.

HAMILTON: 74 of the 81 people arrested are antifascists, and the police actually - similarly to what happened here - were not able to keep the groups separated. So there was just fights in the streets, and reports that the police actually defended the National Front in fights because they viewed them as the victims.

These workshops, which are funded by the Power and Violence Inequality Collective, will be held each month in various locations– either on UVa grounds or elsewhere in Charlottesville. The meetings will culminate in a conference next Spring.

HAMILTON: Soon, within the next few weeks, we're putting out a call for people who are interested in possibly being on those panels. We want to hear from them. That’ll be out soon.

ROTH-ROWLAND: I think that's also part of the emphasis in having somewhat of a public profile –is to try and open up access and visibility to what we're doing. Because you know, it can sometimes feel a little bit academic, ivory tower – but as much as we can, we want that to be able to, on some level, interface with a lot of the really, really incredible organizing and activism that's been going on here in the past year, by people of color, queer people, housing rights activists, etc, etc. So we want to try and develop contact in whatever way we can.

This story appeared on WMRA News.

Has UVa Found a Cure for Macular Degeneration?

Dr. Ambati and his team have worked on dry macular degeneration for over a decade.
Now, they might have found drugs to treat this disease - clinical trials will soon be underway. /
Picture: Marguerite Gallorini

Macular degeneration may not get as much attention as Alzheimer's disease or breast cancer, but nearly one-third of people over 80 are affected by it. One physician at the UVa School of Medicine says they may have found a cure. WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini reports.

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Macular degeneration is the leading cause of vision loss, affecting two million Americans over 40, with 7 million more at risk of developing the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Jayakrishna AMBATI: Actually if you look at the number of patients with macular degeneration just in the U.S., it dwarfs all the patients with Alzheimer's and most cancers combined.

That number is projected to double over the next 15 years, says Dr. Jayakrishna Ambati, the director of the Center for Advanced Vision Science at UVA.

AMBATI: Macular degeneration typically starts affecting people in their fifties and sixties. Up to a third of patients who are in their eighties and nineties have macular degeneration, so it's clearly an age-associated condition. And that's all the more alarming given the aging of our population.

The so-called wet form of the disease, in which abnormal blood vessels break and leak fluid near the retina, can be treated. But the more common dry form, characterized by small deposits forming on the retina, still has no cure – and overtime, it results in loss of vision. But Dr. Ambati and his team have worked on dry macular degeneration for the past 15 years – and it’s starting to pay off.

AMBATI: Over the last decade, our lab has actually made some very foundational discoveries, and we have identified what we believe are the culprits that cause the cells in the retina to die in dry macular degeneration. That’s the reason why people lose their vision. So we have found that there is an accumulation of toxic substances and those build up and kill the cells. So we have identified the precise mechanisms by which these toxic molecules are killing the cells and we have also identified drugs that, in various models, can prevent this death.

Clinical trials will begin soon, and if the drugs work, they should be approved within the next three to five years.

This story appeared on WMRA News.

Brett Kavanaugh: Outlook for SCOTUS from the Miller Center

At the Miller Center Tuesday, Sept. 11, Supreme Court expert Barbara Perry (l) interviewed UVA law professors Saikrishna Prakash (c) and Micah Schwartzman (r) about the makeup of the new court. /
Youtube Snapshot

The nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to take the place of Justice Anthony Kennedy was the subject of a forum at the Miller Center yesterday. Supreme Court expert Barbara Perry talked about the makeup of the new court with UVA law professors Saikrishna Prakash and Micah Schwartzman. WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini reports.

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Justice Kennedy was seen as a swing vote – or deciding vote – especially on social issues, as UVa Law professor Micah Schwartzman explains.

MICAH SCHWARTZMAN: He was a conservative centrist: on a range of cases, he really was the deciding vote. You might have expected him to side with a conservative majority to reject abortion rights in Roe v. Wade, but he didn't do that; you might have expected that he would side with a conservative block too to eliminate affirmative action, but he didn't quite do that. Justice Kennedy voted with the liberals on the Court to narrow the scope of those rights but not to reverse them outright. The question will be: What happens to those rights after he is gone?

The balance of the Court will shift with a new member. So could that affect what we call "settled" laws?

SAIKRISHNA PRAKASH: The idea that everything that we have now will be with us forever, I think, is not borne out by any experience.

This is Saikrishna Prakash, another UVa Law professor and Miller Center senior fellow.

PRAKASH: Micah mentioned one case last term: the controversial case of union fees, where they overturned a case involving the First Amendment. That's going to happen on both the Left and the Right. I think what people are most concerned about is Roe v. Wade, and they have reason to be concerned.

This story appeared on WMRA News.

Miller Center Talk: 1967 Riots and the Kerner Commission

Historian Steve Gillon spoke at the Miller Center in Charlottesville Thursday, Sept. 6 to discuss his new book about the Kerner Commission and the investigation into riots that swept the country in 1967./ Youtube Snapshot

More than 50 years ago, race riots swept across the United States during what became known as the “long, hot summer of 1967.” Historian Steve Gillon spoke at the Miller Center in Charlottesville Thursday to discuss his new book about the appointed by President Lyndon to investigate the unrest. WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini reports.

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In July 1967, race riots in Newark and Detroit lasted several days, and killed and injured hundreds of people. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders was set up, and a team of social scientists were stunned by what they saw on the field, says author Steve Gillon:

STEVE GILLON: These field reports are intensely critical of the police. They show that the one common thread that ran through all of the riots: that everybody who participated in the riots either was a victim of police brutality or had witnessed police brutality.

The commission issued its report in 1968. While its overall proposals were largely disregarded by President Johnson, some of its recommendations on law enforcement did have an impact.

GILLON: There is a real effort, after 1968: a number of police organizations meet with members of the commission, they take their recommendations seriously and they incorporate them. One of the central recommendations that the commission had was that the police not be militarized, and that when events take place, there are ways of controlling without bringing in tanks. There was a positive impact of the commission on policing; I think it’s – we’re going backwards in some ways.

This story appeared on WMRA News.

De-Icing Chemicals, the Environment and Your Water

The white lines you may see on the road during winter is what is called brining, which is a mix of salt and water applied
prior to a storm to prevent the snow from bonding with the road. / Creative Commons / Wikipedia

A recent study focused on a water pollutant that we all know very well: salt. In particular, de-icing salts used during the winter. Over the years, the pH level of many streams across Virginia – and the nation – have become more and more basic, endangering aquatic life. WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini reports.

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This is the first study to assess long-term changes in freshwater salinity and pH at the continental scale. And its results show a significant increase in the amount of salt in 232 streams across the country, leading to a basic pH of the water – a phenomenon called alkalinization, which is caused by different factors.

MICHAEL PACE: Road salts, agricultural runoff, municipal land use change, and the presence of more and more paved surfaces and things like that that contribute to runoff. Because, instead of the water infiltrating into the soil, it tends to shoot down on concrete and pathways and get into a ditch or a drain and then out into the stream, so it increases the rate of runoff.

That’s Michael Pace, an aquatic ecologist and a professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at UVa. He is one of the co-authors of this national study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

PACE: Freshwater life, the organisms that live in streams and rivers, can't withstand really alkaline conditions. If it's really alkaline, some of the chemicals in the water become toxic and organisms just can't survive under those conditions.

And what consequences would that have for us?

PACE: For human health, there are two issues there: one is that, if your fresh water is more salty, it may be problematic for people that have certain dietary restrictions, people that have diseases where they have to regulate their chemistry very carefully, then you don't want to drink water that's really rich in chemical content. And a second context is that if you pull salty alkaline water into your pipes, that can be hard on the plumbing and create a variety of problems either for the individual homeowner who might have a well, or for the water management agency that might be managing large infrastructure pipes.

Flint, Michigan is a notorious example of a city changing its water source, and then discovering that without treatment, the extra alkalinity degraded the pipes and increased the levels of lead in the water. While this is an extreme case, it shows the kind of cascade of issues water management agencies can face with alkaline water. And not just them: it takes a common effort to address this issue. Here’s Will Isenberg, who works on water quality assessment at the Department of Environmental Quality in Richmond.

WILL ISENBERG: We've been trying to engage a number of different stakeholders that we don't normally work with - we're working with public safety officials, we have the State Police involved, we're working with public water supply purveyors because once this stuff makes it downstream, to where they pull water into then deliver drinking water to the public, they have to deal with the issues that come downstream to them as well. We're really trying to balance all the competing - and in many places, complementary - needs of the stakeholders so that we can try and develop the best strategy for Northern Virginia to reduce these salt loads and of course maintain public safety.

To this end, some practices have changed already. The Virginia Department of Transportation is constantly trying to improve their de-icing strategies: staff training, weather monitoring and now pre-treatment are all part of the equation. They are also testing blue salt – salt died in blue which makes it is easier to spot which zones have been treated and to avoid over-salting. Another thing is a liquid form of deicing salt, called brining.

BRANCO VLACICH: Salt only works when it's in basically liquid form, that's when it's most effective, that's why the brining is so effective.

That’s Branco Vlacich, the State maintenance division administrator at VDOT.

VLACICH: Prior to 2008, we didn't do a lot of brining. But after that, we have found that before every event - plus, brining is only 23% salt so we really get a big bang for the buck.  The other thing that we're doing, and this has been significant too: we're installing speed controls on our spreaders. Right now, if you don't have speed controls on your spreaders, it means that you're going to put the same amount of salt on the road whether you're traveling at 5 mph or 50. What this does, basically, if you're at a stop light, it stops: the driver doesn't have to do anything. 5 mph, it puts a little salt, if you're going 50, it's going to put a little more. This makes sure that we're putting the appropriate amount whether we're traveling 5 mph or 35mph, so that we're not over-salting.

VDOT is not the only player though: a lot of deicing salt runoff comes from big shopping centers and airports, for instance, which are more concerned about liability issues from customers slipping on the ice or other related hazards, and so they will tend to over-apply salt. The main issue remains that of communication and awareness to all parties involved, public and private.

ISENBERG: So, beyond just identifying what best practices can allow us to more efficiently, effectively apply salts, there's also a huge education outreach component we're going to need to consider, so we can get the word out on better practices for homeowners to use as well as acknowledgement of what VDOT recommends, and things like that.

This story appeared on WMRA News.