Miller Center Scholars and Experts

Gerald Baliles

Gerald L. Baliles

Phone: 434-924-6061

Governor Gerald L. Baliles, Director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, served as the 65th Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. His tenure as Governor capped a career in public service that included serving as Virginia's Attorney General (1982–85) and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates (1976–82). After leaving public office, he entered private law practice as a partner in the firm of Hunton & Williams, LLP, headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. Baliles holds a bachelor's degree from Wesleyan University and a J.D. from the University of Virginia Law School. He became the Miller Center's fifth director in April 2006.

Governor Baliles's specialties: Education; Transportation; Airline Industry; Trade; Government and Politics

Brian Balogh

E-mail: balogh@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-243-8971

Brian Balogh is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia, and co-chair of the Governing America in a Global Era Program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs.

Professor Balogh is the author of Chain Reaction: Expert Debate and Public Participation in American Commercial Nuclear Power, 1945–1975 (Cambridge University Press, 1991) and edited Integrating the Sixties: The Origins, Structures and Legitimacy of Public Policy in a Turbulent Decade (Pennsylvania University Press, 1996). He has published articles and essays about Progressive Era politics, the link between interest groups and public policy, and the legacy of Vietnam. He is currently completing A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth Century America (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Professor Balogh's specialties: 20th Century U.S. History; Political History; American Government and Politics; Environmental History; History of Science and Technology; Nuclear Politics; Policy History; Political Culture; Presidential Leadership; Public Administration; and Special Interest Groups

Jeff Chidester

E-mail: jchidester@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-924-7330

Jeff Chidester is Staff Director for the National Discussion and Debate Series. He received his B.A. in Political Science from Grove City College (Pa.) and his M.A. in International History from the London School of Economics. He is the co-author of The Reagan Years (2005), with Stephen F. Knott, and At Reagan's Side (forthcoming 2008), and has published articles on the American presidency and U.S. foreign policy.

Chidester's specialties: American Presidency; U.S. Foreign Policy; and Ronald Reagan

David Coleman

E-mail: dgcoleman@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-924-9575

David Coleman is Associate Professor and chair of the Presidential Recordings Program. Coleman specializes in foreign relations since 1945, nuclear history, and 20th century U.S. political history. His work for the Miller Center's Presidential Recordings Program focuses on the tapes of presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He is coordinator of the Kennedy project within the Program. He is also director of WhiteHouseTapes.org, a research site dedicated to the presidential recordings. He writes and teaches on U.S.-European relations during the Cold War, nuclear deterrence, and the politics of the 1960s, among other topics. His current work includes work on several manuscripts: an international history of the Berlin crisis; a study of American policy toward Vietnam from 1962 to 1964 (with Fredrik Logevall and Marc Selverstone) that uses newly declassified White House recordings; and a history of nuclear deterrence (with Joseph M. Siracusa).

Professor Coleman's specialties: 20th–Century U.S. Political History; Political History; American Government and Politics; Defense Strategy/Nuclear Strategy; International Relations; Nuclear Politics; Policy History; Presidential Recordings; U.S. Foreign Policy; U.S. History, Political; U.S. History, Science and Technology; White House Tapes

Andrew Dubill

E-mail: ajdubill@virginia.edu

Phone: 202-955-1935

Andrew Dubill is the Staff Director for the Miller Center's National War Powers Commission. He joined the Miller Center from Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP, where his specialties included securities enforcement and white collar criminal defense, and securities litigation. He clerked for U.S. District Judge Norman K. Moon of the Western District of Virginia and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia's School of Law and Princeton University.

Dubill's specialties: War Powers; Securities Law

Patrick J. Garrity

E-mail: pg3r@virginia.edu

Patrick J. Garrity is a research associate with the Presidential Recordings Program, where he focuses on the national security policy of the Nixon Administration. His research interests include the history of American foreign policy, U.S. nuclear strategy, and the threat of weapons of mass destruction. He is co-author of A Sacred Union of Citizens: George Washington's Farewell Address and the American Character; and co-editor of Nuclear Weapons in the Changing World: Perspectives from Europe, Asia, and North America.

Dr. Garrity's specialties: National Security Policy of the Nixon Administration; History of American Foreign Policy; U.S. Nuclear Strategy; Threat of WMDs

George Gilliam

E-mail: ghg4u@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-924-7613

George H. Gilliam is the Assistant Director for Public Programs and chair of the Forum Program. Before joining the Miller Center in 2003, he was an attorney in Charlottesville for more then twenty-five years. He teaches Virginia history at the University of Virginia, and has taught American history at Washington and Lee University and Piedmont Community College. He is the producer, writer and narrator of the series "The Ground Beneath Our Feet: Virginia's History Since the Civil War," broadcast on WCVE–TV 23 and other PBS affiliates. Gilliam is a 1965 graduate of Columbia University, a 1968 graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, and received his M.A. in history from the University of Virginia in 1997. He is a Ph.D. candidate at the Corcoran Department of History at U.Va.

Gilliam's specialties: Virginia History and Politics; U.S. Political Economy

Janet E. Heininger

E-mail: jeh8r@virginia.edu

Janet E. Heininger, is Non-Resident Senior Fellow for the Edward M. Kennedy Oral History Project. She received her Ph.D. in American History from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has served in various capacities in the State Department (1982–1985) and as a staff member in the United States Congress (1986–1993). She was also Assistant Professor and Faculty Chair of American University's Washington Semester Program. Her writings include: Peacekeeping in Transition: The United Nations in Cambodia and From Chaos to Calm: Effective Parenting of Challenging Children with ADHD and Other Behavior Problems.

Professor Heininger's specialties: Congressional-Executive branch relations, particularly the Senate U.S foreign policy and regional foreign policy

Ken Hughes

E-mail: kh7h@virginia.edu

Phone: 703-908-0127

As a journalist and historian, Ken Hughes has written about the Kennedy and Nixon White House tapes for the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post op-ed page, Boston Globe Magazine and the online publication Salon. A 1986 graduate of Cornell University, Hughes has reported for newspapers, newsletters, cable television and radio.

Hughes's specialties: Politics of Ending the Vietnam War (Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy)

Jeffery Jenkins

E-mail: jajenkins@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-924-3192

Jeffery A. Jenkins is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia and Senior Scholar at the Miller Center. His research focuses on the origins and development of American political institutions – notably congressional and partisan institutions – as well as the use of historical data to test contemporary theories of legislative organization and behavior. He is an editorial board member of Legislative Studies Quarterly and Congress & the Presidency.

David Leblang

Jeffery Jenkins

E-mail: leblang@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-243-8193

David Leblang is a Faculty Associate in the GAGE program and J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance and Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. A specialist in political economy, Leblang has served as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, The Directorate of Finance and Economics of the European Commission, and the Department of Defense. He is co-author of Democratic Politics and Financial Markets: Pricing Politics (2006) and more twenty-five journal articles in publications including The American Journal of Politics, International Organization, Economics and Politics, and the Journal of International Money and Finance. He has received research support from the National Science Foundation. Leblang has written on the politics of economic growth, the determinants of exchange rate policy, the causes of currency crises and the link between elections and economic expectations. At present he is working on two large projects. The first examines the causes and consequences of international migration and the second explores the determinants of international housing policy.

Melvyn P. Leffler

E-mail: mpl4j@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-924-6422

Melvyn P. Leffler, co-chair of the Governing America in a Global Era Program, is Edward R. Stettinius professor in the Department of History at the University of Virginia. He has written extensively on the history of U.S. foreign economic relations and U.S. national security policy. He won the 1993 Bancroft Prize for his analysis of the early Cold War, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford University Press, 1992). His most recent book is For the Soul of Mankind: the United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (Hill and Wang, 2007). He is also the author of several articles and essays seeking to put contemporary developments after 9/11 in historical perspective.

Professor Leffler's specialties: Cold War, U.S. Foreign Relations, Diplomatic History, 20th Century Authoritarian & Totalitarian Governments

Jeffrey W. Legro

E-mail: legro@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-924-3958

Jeffrey W. Legro is Compton Professor of World Politics and Chair of the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. He is Co-Chair of the Governing America in a Global Era Program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs. A specialist on international relations, Legro has served as a consultant to foundations, think tanks, publishers, and government agencies. He is the author of Rethinking the World: Great Power Strategies and International Order (2005), Cooperation Under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint During World War II (1995), a contributor to Peter Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security (1996), and articles on topics such as American foreign policy, international cooperation and conflict, military doctrine and strategy, and the causes of foreign policy revolutions. In 2002–2003, Legro was a Fulbright professor at China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing.

Professor Legro's specialties: U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security Strategy; Great Power Politics; International Order and Instability; Comparative Strategy (particularly the European Union and China)

Paul Martin

E-mail: pmartin@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-924-6059

Paul Martin is Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia and a Research Fellow for the Miller Center's Oral History Program. Paul is working on both the William J. Clinton Presidential History Project and the Edward M. Kennedy Oral History Project. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and worked as assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma prior to joining the Miller Center in 2005. From 2003 to 2004 he was an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow in the office of Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), where he served as a legislative advisor on education, the judiciary, privacy, and civil liberties. His research has been published by the American Journal of Political Science and the American Political Science Review. His current project studies how members of Congress respond to citizen participation.

Professor Martin's specialties: Congress and Representation; Political Participation; Negative Advertising (in Campaigns); Political Disagreement (amongst citizens); Social Capital

Rob Martin

E-mail: ram8a@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-924-3309

As Research Director for the Edward M. Kennedy Oral History Project, Rob Martin supervises the graduate student research staff in the preparation of briefing materials for interviews conducted with leading political figures. He also serves as research liaison with Senator Edward Kennedy's Senate office staff and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. He received his master's degree in political science at the College of William and Mary and is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. His dissertation examines how different countries respond to humanitarian atrocities around the world.

Martin's specialties: U.S. foreign policy, international relations theory, human rights, Congress and Edward Kennedy.

Guian McKee

E-mail: gam2n@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-243-8856

Guian McKee joined the Miller Center's Presidential Recordings Program in August 2002. He received a Ph.D. in American history at the University of California, Berkeley in May 2002; prior to joining the Miller Center, McKee was a visiting scholar in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race, and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia, which will be published in Fall 2008 by the University of Chicago Press. He is also the author of Lyndon Johnson and the War on Poverty: How Policymakers Try to Deliver on Social Promises (tentative title), which will be published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. He has published articles in the Journal of Urban History, Journal of Policy History, Journal of Planning History, and the Boston Globe. In April 2007, he delivered the keynote address at the conference "In the Shadow of the Great Society: American Politics, Culture and Society Since 1964," hosted by the Rothermere American Institute and the American History Research Seminar, University of Oxford, U.K. At the Miller Center, McKee is the editor of Volumes 6 and 7 of PRP's The Presidential Recordings of Lyndon B. Johnson; he is also preparing a thematic volume of Johnson's recorded conversations about the War on Poverty, which will be published by the University of Virginia Press through its Rotunda electronic imprint. McKee teaches courses on American social policy history and urban history.

Professor McKee's specialties: Urban Policy; Urban Renewal; Economic Development; Urban History, Anti-Poverty Policy; Social Policy, Deindustrialization; The War on Poverty and Great Society; Johnson Administration Domestic Policy, Civil Rights Movement (especially in the Urban North), Liberalism, Philadelphia

Sidney Milkis

E-mail: smm8e@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-924-6052

Sidney M. Milkis is the White Burkett Miller Professor of Politics and Assistant Director for Academic Programs at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

His books include The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System Since the New Deal (1993); The Politics of Regulatory Change: A Tale of Two Agencies, with Richard A. Harris (1996); Political Parties and Constitutional Government: Remaking American Democracy (1999); Presidential Greatness (2000), co-authored with Marc Landy; and The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776–2007 (2007), 5th edition, co-authored with Michael Nelson; and American Government: Balancing Rights and Democracy (2007), 2nd edition, with Marc Landy. He is the co-editor, with Jerome Mileur, of three volumes on twentieth-century political reform: Progressivism and the New Democracy (1999); The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism (2002); and The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism (2005). He is completing The Progressive Party Campaign of 1912 and the Rise of Mass Democracy (forthcoming, Kansas University Press). During the 2005–2006 academic year, he served as the president of the American Political Science Association's Politics and History Section.

Professor Milkis's specialties: American Government and Politics; American Political History; American Political Thought; Elections; Political Parties and Social Movements; Presidency; Progressivism; Regulatory Politics

William Lee Miller

E-mail: wlm5w@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-924-7383

William Lee Miller is a Scholar in Ethics and Institutions at the Miller Center of Public Affairs. He has recently been working on the follow-up to his book Lincoln's Virtues, which looks at Lincoln the president and the moral problems he faced in office. He has also written many books and articles on topics including James Madison and the Constitutional Convention, religion and politics, Reinhold Niebuhr, Church and State, the American tradition of religious liberty, urban affairs and contemporary public affairs.

Professor Miller's specialties: Religion and Politics; Political Ethics; Abraham Lincoln; James Madison; American Tradition of Religious Liberty

J. Michael Mullen

E-mail: jmm3f@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-243-8978

Mike Mullen joined the Miller Center in April 2006, where he serves as the Assistant Director for Finance and Program Analysis. In his extensive career in higher education, Mike has served as the Interim Director of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia ("SCHEV" — the state government's coordinating body for all of higher education in Virginia) and served as the Chancellor of SCHEV's analog in West Virginia, the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission. He has also served as the Vice President for Administration of Northern Arizona University. Mike received a BS in psychology from George Washington University, an MBA from West Virginia University, and a Ph.D. in higher education from the University of Virginia.

Dr. Mullen's specialties: Education Policy and Administration

Taylor Reveley

E-mail: wtr2b@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-924-6051

Taylor Reveley joined the Miller Center in April 2006, where he serves as Assistant Director for Policy Programs and Planning. He oversees the Policy Programs of the Miller Center, including the National Commission on the War Powers of the President and Congress, and has responsibility for the Center's strategic planning and coordinated operations. Mr. Reveley is also an attorney with Hunton & Williams, on secondment to the Miller Center. His national corporate practice has focused on mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, nonprofit organizations, and higher education. He has been an active civic leader as well, with notable service especially to Princeton University and in Richmond.

Reveley's specialties: War Powers; Church and State; Classical Influence on America; Governance; Higher Education; Strategic Planning

Russell Riley

E-mail: rlr2p@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-982-2740

Riley is an associate professor and chair of the Miller Center's Presidential Oral History Program. He currently heads the Clinton Presidential History Project, a comprehensive effort to conduct and compile scholarly oral history interviews with the senior members of the Clinton White House, as well as other important political figures of the Clinton era. He has also participated in similar efforts to document the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. Riley has taught a wide range of courses in American politics. He is the author of the book The Presidency and the Politics of Racial Inequality: Nation-keeping from 1831–1965, a comparative study of how presidents dealt with abolitionism and the later movement for black civil rights. His other published works include articles on race and politics, presidential leadership, Southern politics, and political parties. He is currently working on a book about post-war politics in the United States, examining comparatively the immediate aftermaths of the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Cold War. He also is interested in U.S.-European relations, and was for several years a resident academic program director with the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, in Austria.

Professor Riley's specialties: American Government and Politics; Presidential Leadership and Presidential Power; the Clinton Presidency; Presidential-Congressional Relations; Executive Branch Politics; U.S. Political History; Wartime and Post-wartime Politics; Political Parties; Oral History; U.S. Public Diplomacy

Marc J. Selverstone

E-mail: selverstone@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-243-8983

Marc Selverstone is an associate professor with the Presidential Recordings Program. He joined the Miller Center in November 2000 after receiving his Ph.D. in U.S. Foreign Relations from Ohio University. Previously, he received a master's degree in International Affairs from Columbia University. His interests include U.S. foreign relations post-1945, the culture of the Cold War, and the Vietnam War. He is author of the forthcoming Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945–1950 (Harvard University Press, 2009), and The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam (Harvard University Press, under contract)

At the Miller Center, his work focuses on the recordings of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, with a special emphasis on their foreign policy, particularly that involving Vietnam. He is the former executive editor of AmericanPresident.org and currently directs the PRP's Digital Classroom Initiative, a teacher-dedicated portal for the Miller Center's White House Tapes web site. He works regularly with secondary school teachers to incorporate the presidential recordings into their classroom activities.

Professor Selverstone's specialties: U.S. foreign relations, Cold War; Vietnam; John F. Kennedy; Lyndon B. Johnson

Kenneth W. Thompson

E-mail: kwt8b@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-924-6049

Kenneth W. Thompson is Professor Emeritus for the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics and Director Emeritus of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. He continues to teach a graduate and undergraduate seminar in the Department of Politics. He is the author of twenty-one major works and editor or contributor to some 250 additional works. His major interest is in normative approaches to international relations and in particular ethics and politics of foreign policy.

Professor Thompson's specialties: Cold War; Morality and Foreign Policy; Political Ethics; Normative Aspects of International Politics; War on Terror

Vesla Weaver

E-mail: vmweaver@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-982-2969

Vesla Mae Weaver received her doctorate from Harvard University in the joint programs of Government and Social Policy. Her program of scholarship ultimately aims to center race in political science debates. Weaver's research covers a range of areas including social policy, electoral politics, political psychology, American political development, and the politics of inequality. She is currently working on a book manuscript that aims to understand the political processes behind the transformation in American crime policy, uncovering a connection between the movement for civil rights and the development of punitive criminal justice. Weaver is also working on a collaborative book project on skin color, multiracialism, and immigration and their implications for racial politics (with Professors Jennifer Hochschild and Traci Burch). She is the principle investigator on an experiment through the Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences, which explores how white voters react to black and Latino political candidates of varying skin tones. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Brookings Institution. Weaver has also had several other pursuits, with positions at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and the Democratic National Committee.

James Sterling Young

E-mail: jsy@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-982-2763

James Sterling Young is Senior Director of the Edward M. Kennedy Oral History Project and Randolph P. Compton Scholar at the Miller Center. He joined the University of Virginia in 1978 as professor in the Department of Government and Foreign Affairs and as director of the Program on the Presidency at the Miller Center. He is also formerly a professor and vice president of Columbia University, and founding member and past president of the Presidency Research Group. In his capacity as director of the Program on the Presidency at the Miller Center, Young launched the Center's basic research program on presidential oral history. The oral history interview project on the Carter presidency, which Young designed and directed, broke new ground in presidential research and became the prototype for the Center's continuing program in oral history. Young's writings include "The Washington Community, 1800–1828," which was awarded the Bancroft Prize.

Professor Young's specialties: American Government and Politics; Political History; Presidential Leadership; U.S. Political History

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