University of Virginia UVa

LAW SCHOOL?

The University of Virginia School of Law has partnered with the ⁠Charles Koch Foundation primarily to fund empirical data-driven research and criminal justice reform initiatives. [1, 2]

Key Projects and Connections

Criminal Justice Reform: The Charles Koch Foundation provided a $145,000 grant in 2017 to launch the Virginia Criminal Justice Policy Reform Project at the University of Virginia School of Law. Led by Professor Brandon Garrett alongside professors Richard Bonnie and John Monahan, the project studies the sentencing and diversion of non-violent offenders. [1, 2, 3]

Faculty & Fellowship Ties: ⁠Gerard Robinson, a resident faculty member at the University of Virginia School of Law, previously served as executive director of the Center for Advancing Opportunity. That D.C.-based initiative was established with an $11 million investment from the Charles Koch Foundation and Koch Industries. [1]

Internships: The University also administers the Charles H. Koch Jr. Award, which provides funding for undergraduate students pursuing internships in international affairs, public policy, or legal studies. [1, 2]

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...On May 2, 1982, the event was featured in The New York Times — an instance of high-profile coverage that foreshadowed the Federalist Society’s subsequent momentum and a new era of conservative thought on law school campuses, one defined by concentrated and organized representation, events and programming.

Within two years of its first referendum, the Federalist Society had officially filed for national nonprofit status and was operating on dozens of new elite law school campuses, including Harvard, Georgetown University, the University of Virginia and Stanford University. It hosted another symposium in 1983 at Harvard Law School and a third in 1984 at the University of Chicago. By the 1990s, the Federalist Society operated a branch at every law school in the country.

AN 10 25

The 27-page settlement proposal of demands sent by President Donald Trump to UCLA in exchange or $1.2 billion in funding, made public Friday, is being called a "gross federal overreach," according to anew report in Cal Matters.

The document was made public after public after the UCLA Faculty Association and the Council of University of California Faculty Associations sued the public university to disclose the information under the California Public Records Act.

The proposal outlines the administration’s vision for higher education that is free from efforts to promote diversity and transgender inclusion, according to Cal Matters.

While the university system argued that making the proposal public would cause it “irreparable harm” during ongoing negotiations with the Trump administration, it was released after a California superior court judge ordered it to do so, and the state Supreme Court rejected its appeal.

The list of demands was the result of the U.S. Department of Justice in July accusing the university of not doing enough to combat antisemitism during last year’s pro-Palestine protests, and for allegedly violating federal civil rights law.

IFrame Content

Governor Gavin Newsom has characterized the fine as “extortion,” and UC President James Milliken said that paying the settlement would “completely devastate” the university system.

So far, Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Arizona, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California (USC) and University of Virginia (UVA) have rejected Trump's compact due to concerns over academic freedom and institutional independence.

"In issuing the demands, the Trump administration initially withheld more than $500 million in research grants to UCLA. But its leverage remains unclear now after a federal judge ordered the administration to restore nearly all those grants in August and September," Cal Matters reports.

Among Trump's demands of UCLA:

*Hire a senior administrator to review UCLA’s policies related to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and eliminate “identity-based preferences” in faculty hiring and scholarship programs.

Prohibit the use of “personal statements, diversity narratives, or any applicant reference to racial identity as a means to introduce or justify discrimination” in its admissions process. (A 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling already prohibits race-based admissions, though students are free to submit essays that detail how race affected their lives.)

Prohibit the UCLA School of Medicine and its affiliated hospitals from performing gender affirming surgeries or hormone therapy for patients under 18.

Issue a public statement saying that it will comply with Trump’s executive order that recognizes male and female as the only two sexes.

Ban female transgender student athletes from participating in women’s sports.

Establish a process so that “foreign students likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment” are not admitted to UCLA. (That seems to be at odds with the letter’s goal of protecting UCLA “faculty and students from retaliation for expressing minority opinions or engaging in free expression.”)

Develop training materials to “socialize international students to the norms of a campus dedicated to free inquiry and open debate.”*

Cal Matters notes that some of these, including the elimination of diversity statements in faculty hiring and banning overnight demonstrations, are already UC policy.

In regards to the Trump administration's use of "antisemitism" as an impetus for these demands, over 600 Jewish students, faculty and alumni publicly opposed the settlement in an open letter published in August titled, "Jews in defense of UC."

The UCLA Faculty Association agrees.

“It is not just today’s students and workers who will be harmed by this gross federal overreach — but generations of Californians," said association president Anna Markowitz.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/07/30/leading-scholars-quit-u-va-center-over-hiring-of-former-trump-official/

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Grade Point

Leading scholars quit U-Va. center over hiring of former Trump official

Former White House director of legislative affairs Marc Short, shown in January, accepted a position as a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By Susan Svrluga

July 30

Two leading historians resigned Monday from the University of Virginia’s Miller Center to protest the appointment of a former Trump administration official to a senior fellowship.

The selection of Marc Short, who served as President Trump’s legislative affairs director until earlier this month, has roiled the university, with a petition signed by more than 2,000 people demanding his appointment be revoked.

Last week, Short said it was ironic that professors at the university Thomas Jefferson founded were trying to silence debate, but his opponents saw it as a principled stand in favor of scholarship, democracy and civil discourse.

The professors who are stepping down, Melvyn P. Leffler and William I. Hitchcock, jointly announced their decision to leave the Miller Center, a nonpartisan affiliate of U-Va. focused on studying the presidency and public policy.

Leffler is a history professor, former dean of U-Va.’s College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and a recipient of the university’s most prestigious award for scholarship and service. Hitchcock is a history professor whose book about the liberation of Europe was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2009.

Leffler and Hitchcock wrote in their resignation letter that they would welcome Short to speak at the center. But granting him a senior fellowship position — one they learned of through a press release — runs “counter to the Center’s fundamental values of nonpartisanship, transparency, openness, a passion for truth and objectivity, and civility,” they wrote. The appointment comes almost a year after white supremacists marched at the school and in the city of Charlottesville, resulting in violent clashes with counterprotesters that the president blamed on “both sides,” events that seared the community.

“Democracy today in the United States is in peril,” they wrote. “… We must not normalize or rationalize hateful, cruel and demeaning behavior. When we see things to be wrong, we must speak out and take a stand.”

[Hire of departing Trump official draws ire of U-Va. professors and students]

Short did not respond to a request for comment Monday.

Short worked on Oliver North’s 1994 Senate campaign in Virginia and served as chief of staff for former senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.). He led Freedom Partners, a political nonprofit with ties to influential conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, and served in the Trump administration for the past year and a half.

William J. Antholis, director and chief executive of the Miller Center, said Monday he was saddened by the resignations. The work of the center’s scholars to understand the U.S. presidency is more important than ever, he said.

Antholis said Short would help keep Miller scholars on the cutting edge, joining a roster of former administration officials from both parties.

“One of the things that drives concern about this appointment and this presidency is that it’s not just a disruptive one but a dangerous one, dangerous to our democratic institutions,” Antholis said. At times, he said, he shares that concern about Trump’s presidency. But in appointing Short, Antholis said, he made a judgment about an individual, concluding Short falls well within the bounds of normal political debate.

Antholis served in the Clinton administration and knows there were conservative critics who felt Bill Clinton undermined democracy. “I feel an obligation to understand the Trump presidency in the best way we possibly can while still respecting legitimate debate,” Antholis said.

[‘Never has our work been more important than now’: U-Va. leader defends hiring of outgoing Trump official]

Hitchcock said some at U-Va. felt Short’s appointment was a big win for the center. But he said that he believes Short’s career as a political operative suggests he will not mesh with the Miller Center’s emphasis on nonpartisan inquiry and that faculty should have reviewed the appointment.

“We believe that scholars at think tanks should be allowed to do scholarly work,” he said, “that they should be trusted, that their experience and their knowledge should be put to use, rather than ignored in favor of the glittering attraction of powerful people. … It’s through scholarship we’re going to learn better about the nature of the Trump administration.”

Hitchcock will remain a tenured faculty member at U-Va. but said he is sad to be leaving the Miller Center and the opportunities it afforded him.

Leffler, who will also retain his university post, said the decision to resign from the Miller Center was difficult because he values engaging policymakers across the political and ideological spectrum. But he felt compelled to step down “because I think that it is absolutely wrong to legitimize and normalize and reward and honor a person like Marc Short at the Miller Center.”

The professor said that he could have accepted Short as a guest at the center expressing his views but that the senior fellowship was not merited by Short’s career and violates the values of the center.

“Many people feel that Marc Short is a facilitator and a defender of an administration that assails truth and objectivity every day,” Leffler said.

The center has long represented informed dialogue, said Douglas Blackmon, a Miller Center faculty member and incoming senior fellow, but in this case, it didn’t follow its principles. “It was a highly unwise thing for the Miller Center to barrel ahead extending its imprimatur and its brand to a person whose record is really unknown other than his public commentary — which may have been what Marc Short really believed, may have been what he was directed to say, may be somewhere in between,” said Blackmon, who is remaining at the center.

L.F. Payne, a former Democratic congressman from Virginia with deep ties to the university and who serves on the Miller Center’s governing council, said he knows Short from when they were colleagues at the law firm McGuireWoods and has tremendous respect for him. Short, a graduate of U-Va.’s Darden School of Business, is someone whom Payne described as deeply thoughtful, with integrity, strong convictions and respect for other viewpoints.

Given the center’s study of the American presidency, Payne said, “the opportunity to have someone like Marc who had been in the Trump administration very close to the president to join us as a senior fellow is something I was very enthusiastic about and still am. I was surprised and saddened by the reaction and subsequent resignation by two of our really prized faculty members.”

Payne said the anniversary of last August’s Unite the Right rally is at the forefront of people’s minds in Charlottesville, and Trump’s comments about the clashes still rankle.

Antholis, who lives a couple of blocks from the statue of Robert E. Lee that drew white nationalists and others to Charlottesville a year ago, said it was important that someone who is a U-Va. graduate and cares about the university would join the center to foster understanding about the Trump administration.

It’s a difficult time for the country, he said, “and for that reason, it’s important to do the hard things.”

Read the resignation letter here:

july 2018

https://www.yaf.org/news/uva-yaf-denounces-uva-faculty-and-administrators-for-intolerance-regarding-marc-short/

community UVA petition calls for university to rollback decision to hire recent White House Legislative Director Marc Short

Charlottesville, VA—University of Virginia Young Americans for Freedom—UVA YAF—stands with Marc Short. We are extremely disappointed with the closemindedness and intolerance of leftists at UVA, including staff, professors, and administrators.

On Thursday, several petitions on change.org spread throughout the UVA community urging the university to reverse its decision to hire recent White House Legislative Director Marc Short. A few weeks ago, Short announced his July 20 departure from the White House, noting he had accepted the position of senior fellow at the school’s Miller Center—a nonpartisan center for study of the Presidency. He will also be teaching at UVA’s business school (of which he is an alumnus).

The University of Virginia is a community that prides itself on diversity, inclusion, and openness. This double standard regarding conservative viewpoints and conservative leaders is astonishing and very apparent.

Fellow UVA alumnus and 67th Governor of Virginia George Allen echoed UVA YAF’s concerns:

I suspect that many students at UVA would like to hear from a diversity of perspectives and experiences. Indeed, that was a benefit I appreciated when I was a freedom-loving student formulating my understanding of various subjects.

Students in the University of Virginia School of Business will be fortunate to learn from Marc Short. I know Marc as a courteous, knowledgeable and thoughtful person who will impart his valuable experiences and wisdom to his students and the Miller Centers scholarly research. A few loud, intolerant people won’t thwart this wise decision by Mr. Jefferson’s university to recruit respected Marc Short.

The sentiment that Marc Short should be run out of the UVA community is insulting to the conservative students of UVA YAF as well as those students who are too afraid to speak out for fear of enduring similar attacks from the Left.

Administrators and faculty members who have signed this petition are making a statement that conservative ideas and perspectives are not welcome in the UVA community.

Members of Young Americans for Freedom at UVA—the chapter affiliate of Young America’s Foundation—are not going to stand for such intolerance, which fosters animosity and hate.

UVA YAF Chairman Kevin McMahon stated,

It is clear there are some members of the UVA community that have no interest in intellectual diversity. Marc Short is a stand-up man, a patriot, and a fantastic conservative leader.

Having previously served in the White House, as a senior Capitol Hill staffer, and executive director of Young America’s Foundation, Marc Short represents the conservative principles and ideas of the students of UVA Young Americans for Freedom, who are also students of the University of Virginia. We look forward to welcoming Marc Short and his ideas on UVA grounds.

UVA YAF calls on President Sullivan and President-Elect Ryan to support intellectual diversity on campus, starting by publicly supporting their decision to hire Marc Short.

The bias at UVA is evident, and UVA YAF is no stranger to leftist hostility and obstruction.

Just last winter, after threatening a lawsuit, UVA YAF was finally approved as an official campus organization.

It is our hope that UVA will become a community more open to conservative ideas, and it is our mission to pursue the principles of limited government, individual liberty, strong national defense, free markets, and traditional values.

For further information or to request an interview contact YAF Spokesman Spencer Brown via email (sbrown@yaf.org) or phone (800-872-1776).yaf bs

https://www.alternet.org/timeline-racism-charlottesville-1607-through-2017s-unite-right-rally

old dominin va

It wasn’t enough to save him. In her opinion, Robinson described “a pattern and practice by Defendant [Kobach] of flaunting disclosure and discovery rules.” As she put it, “it is not clear to the Court whether Defendant repeatedly failed to meet his disclosure obligations intentionally or due to his unfamiliarity with the federal rules.” She ordered Kobach to attend the equivalent of after-school tutoring: six hours of extra legal education on the rules of civil procedure or the rules of evidence (and to present the court with a certificate of completion).

It’s always a bad idea for a lawyer to try the patience of a judge — and that’s doubly true during a bench trial, when the judge will decide not only the law, but also the facts. Kobach repeatedly annoyed Robinson with his procedural mistakes. But that was nothing next to what the judge viewed as Kobach’s intentional bad faith.

This view emerged in writing right after the trial — that’s when Robinson issued her ruling finding Kobach in contempt — but before the verdict. And the conduct that inspired the contempt finding had persisted over several years. Robinson concluded that Kobach had intentionally failed to follow a ruling she issued in 2016 that ordered him to restore the privileges of 17,000 suspended Kansas voters.

In her contempt ruling, the judge cited Kobach’s “history of noncompliance” with the order and characterized his explanations for not abiding by it as “nonsensical” and “disingenuous.” She wrote that she was “troubled” by Kobach’s “failure to take responsibility for violating this Court’s orders, and for failing to ensure compliance over an issue that he explicitly represented to the Court had been accomplished.” Robinson ordered Kobach to pay the ACLU’s legal fees for the contempt proceeding.

That contempt ruling was actually the second time Kobach was singled out for punishment in the case. Before the trial, a federal magistrate judge deputized to oversee the discovery portion of the suit fined him $1,000 for making “patently misleading representations” about a voting fraud document Kobach had prepared for Trump. Kobachpaid the fine with a state credit card.

More than any procedural bumbling, the collapse of Kobach’s case traced back to the disintegration of a single witness.

The witness was Jesse Richman, a political scientist from Old Dominion University, who has written studies on voter fraud. For this trial, Richman was paid $5,000 by the taxpayers of Kansas to measure non-citizen registration in the state. Richman was the man who had to deliver the goods for Kobach.

With his gray-flecked beard and mustache, Richman looked the part of an academic, albeit one who seemed a bit too tall for his suit and who showed his discomfort in a series of awkward, sudden movements on the witness stand. At moments, Richman’s testimony turned combative, devolving into something resembling an episode of The Jerry Springer Show. By the time he left the stand, Richman had testified for more than five punishing hours. He’d bickered with the ACLU’s lawyer, raised his voice as he defended his studies and repeatedly sparred with the judge.

“Wait, wait, wait!” shouted Robinson at one point, silencing a verbal free-for-all that had erupted among Richman, the ACLU’s Ho, and Kobach, who were all speaking at the same time. “Especially you,” she said, turning her stare to Richman. “You are not here to be an advocate. You are not here to trash the plaintiff. And you are not here to argue with me.”

Richman had played a small but significant part in the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump and others had cited his work to claim that illegal votes had robbed Trump of the popular vote. At an October 2016 rally in Wisconsin, the candidate cited Richman’s work to bolster his predictions that the election would be rigged. “You don’t read about this, right?” Trump told the crowd, before reading from an op-ed Richman had written for The Washington Post: “‘We find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in various close elections.’ Okay? All right?”

Richman’s 2014 study of non-citizen registration used data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study — an online survey of more than 32,000 people. Of those, fewer than 40 individuals indicated they were non-citizens registered to vote. Based on that sample, Richman concluded that up to 2.8 million illegal votes had been cast in 2008 by non-citizens. In fact, he put the illegal votes at somewhere between 38,000 and 2.8 million — a preposterously large range — and then Trump and others simply used the highest figure.

Academics pilloried Richman’s conclusions. Two hundred political scientists signed an open letter criticizing the study, saying it should “not be cited or used in any debate over fraudulent voting.” Harvard’s Stephen Ansolabehere, who administered the CCES, published his own peer-reviewed paper lambasting Richman’s work. Indeed, by the time Trump read Richman’s article onstage in 2016, The Washington Post had already appended a note to the op-ed linking to three rebuttals and a peer-reviewed study debunking the research.

None of that discouraged Kobach or Trump from repeating Richman’s conclusions. They then went a few steps further. They took the top end of the range for the 2008 election, assumed that it applied to the 2016 election, too, and further assumed that all of the fraudulent ballots had been cast for Clinton.

Some of those statements found their way into the courtroom, when Ho pressed play on a video shot by The Kansas City Star on Nov. 30, 2016. Kobach had met with Trump 10 days earlier and had brought with him a paper decrying non-citizen registration and voter fraud. Two days later, Trump tweeted that he would have won the popular vote if not for “millions of people who voted illegally.”

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On the courtroom’s televisions, Kobach appeared, saying Trump’s tweet was “absolutely correct.” Without naming Richman, Kobach referred to his study: The number of non-citizens who said they’d voted in 2008 was far larger than the popular vote margin, Kobach said on the video. The same number likely voted again in 2016.

In the courtroom, Ho asked Richman if he believed his research supported such a claim. Richman stammered. He repeatedly looked at Kobach, seemingly searching for a way out. Ho persisted and finally, Richman gave his answer: “I do not believe my study provides strong support for that notion.”

To estimate the number of non-citizens voting in Kansas, Richman had used the same methodology he employed in his much-criticized 2014 study. Using samples as small as a single voter, he’d produced surveys with wildly different estimates of non-citizen registration in the state. The multiple iterations confused everyone in the courtroom.

“For the record, how many different data sources have you provided?” Robinson interjected in the middle of one Richman answer. “You provide a range of, like, zero to 18,000 or more.”

“I sense the frustration,” Richman responded, before offering a winding explanation of the multiple data sources and surveys he’d used to arrive at a half-dozen different estimates. Robinson cut him off. “Maybe we need to stop here,” she said.

“Your honor, let me finish answering your question,” he said.

“No, no. I’m done,” she responded, as he continued to protest. “No. Dr. Richman, I’m done.”

To refute Richman’s numbers, the ACLU called on Harvard’s Ansolabehere, whose data Richman had relied on in the past. Ansolabehere testified that Richman’s sample sizes were so small that it was just as possible that there were no non-citizens registered to vote in Kansas as 18,000. “There’s just a great deal of uncertainty with these estimates,” he said.

Ho asked if it would be accurate to say that Richman’s data “shows a rate of non-citizen registration in Kansas that is not statistically distinct from zero?”

“Correct.”

The judge was harsher than Ansolabehere in her description of Richman’s testimony. In her opinion, Robinson unloaded a fusillade of dismissive adjectives, calling Richman’s conclusions “confusing, inconsistent and methodologically flawed,” and adding that they were “credibly dismantled” by Ansolabehere. She labeled elements of Richman’s testimony “disingenuous” and “misleading,” and stated that she gave his research “no weight” in her decision.

One of the paradoxes of Kobach is that he has become a star in circles that focus on illegal immigration and voting fraud despite poor results in the courtroom. By ProPublica’s count, Kobach chalked up a 2–6 won-lost record in federal cases in which he was played a major role, and which reached a final disposition before the Kansas case.

Those results occurred when Kobach was an attorney for the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform from 2004 to 2011, when he became secretary of state in Kansas. In his FAIR role (in which he continued to moonlight till about 2014), Kobach traveled to places like Fremont, Nebraska, Hazleton, Pennsylvania, Farmers Branch, Texas, and Valley Park, Missouri, to help local governments write laws that attempted to hamper illegal immigration, and then defend them in court. Kobach won in Nebraska, but lost in Texas and Pennsylvania, and only a watered down version of the law remains in Missouri.

The best-known law that Kobach helped shape before joining the Kansas government in 2011 was Arizona’s “show me your papers” law. That statute allowed police to demand citizenship documents for any reason from anyone they thought might be in the country illegally. After it passed, the state paid Kobach $300 an hour to train law enforcement on how to legally arrest suspected illegal immigrants. The Supreme Court gutted key provisions of the law in 2012.

Kobach also struggled in two forays into political campaigning. In 2004, he lost a race for Congress. He also drew criticism for his stint as an informal adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. Kobach was the man responsible for Romney’s much-maligned proposal that illegal immigrants “self-deport,” one reason Romney attracted little support among Latinos. Romney disavowed Kobach even before the campaign was over, telling media outlets that he was a “supporter,” not an adviser.

Trump’s election meant Kobach’s positions on immigration would be welcome in the White House. Kobach lobbied for, but didn’t receive, an appointment as Secretary of Homeland Security. He was, however, placed in charge of the voter fraud commission, a pet project of Trump’s. Facing a raft of lawsuits and bad publicity, the commission was disbanded little more than six months after it formally launched.

Back at home, Kobach expanded his power as secretary of state. Boasting of his experience as a law professor and scholar, Kobach convinced the state legislature to give him the authority to prosecute election crimes himself, a power wielded by no other secretary of state. In that role, he has obtained nine guilty pleas against individuals for election-related misdemeanors. Only one of those who pleaded guilty, as it happens, was a non-citizen.

ROLLING STONE OFFICIALLY WITHDRAWS UVA STORY, BLAMES RAPE VICTIMS

iccc Jason Johnston

Henry L. and Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation Professor of Law, University of Virginia

University of Virginia Gets an "F" in Tobacco Industry Studies

by Anne Landman — February 27, 2007 - 1:33pm

Topics: Public Relations, Science, Tobacco

Contact

U.Va. Dept. of Environmental Sciences

291 McCormick Rd

Charlottesville, VA

(434) 924-7761

Articles and Resources

References

↑ Testimony of Prof. S. Fred Singer before the Senate Commerce Committee on Climate Change. National Center for Public Policy Research (2000-07-18). Retrieved on 2010-07-08. “My name is Fred Singer. I am Professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia”
↑ Brad Johnson (2010-02-18). Refuting Cuccinelli Denier Petition, Virginia Climate Scientists See ‘Great Risk’ From Greenhouse Gases. ThinkProgress Wonk Room. Retrieved on 2010-02-22. “In email interviews with the Wonk Room, several scientists at the University of Virginia Department of Environmental Sciences, which runs the Virginia Climatology Office, made it clear that they believe [Virginia attorney general] Cuccinelli’s extreme claims are without merit.”

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law aluni: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:University_of_Virginia_School_of_Law_alumni

rfk and thurgood marshall

john bridgeman:

Previously, Bridgeland served as Assistant to the President of the United States and the first Director of the USA Freedom Corps. In that role, he coordinated more than $1 billion in domestic and international service initiatives and worked with non-profits, corporations and schools to foster a culture of service in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Prior to that, Bridgeland served as Director of the Domestic Policy Council at the White House, where he coordinated policy on more than 100 issues. Bridgeland began his professional career by practicing law in the New York and Paris, France offices of Davis Polk & Wardwell. He also served as Chief of Staff and Counsel to former U.S. Congressman Rob Portman. Bridgeland graduated with honors in government from Harvard University and received his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.