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Douglas Blackmon leaving the Miller Center, citing directional differences
NEWS
Douglas Blackmon leaving the Miller Center, citing directional differences
Blackmon, the outgoing director of public programs, declined an offer to stay on as a senior fellow
By Jake Gold | 10/03/2018
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Blackmon — who formerly served as the Miller Center’s director of public programs — is leaving the nonpartisan think tank after six years. ... His contract as director of public programs expired last week and he declined an offer to stay on as a senior fellow, writing in an email to Center CEO William Antholis on Sept. 30 that “our ships are traveling on very different bearings.” ... “Where the Center is headed, and the kind of work that I'm doing independently, was no longer a natural fit for an ongoing relationship,” Blackmon said in an interview with The Cavalier Daily.
Blackmon won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for his book, “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II,” and was previously The Wall Street Journal’s Atlanta bureau chief and the paper’s senior national correspondent. He was the executive producer of the Miller Center’s nationally-distributed public policy television program, American Forum, until the three-year-old show was discontinued in March due to a lack of funding.
In the email to Antholis — obtained by The Cavalier Daily the day after it was sent — Blackmon details his concerns with the present direction of the Miller Center. ... “Your direction for the Center appears to be one that departs substantially from the founding doctrines of problem-solving on great national problems, encouraging public engagement and discourse, and financial independence designed to preserve ‘maximum autonomy’ within the structure of the University of Virginia,” he wrote.
....
In his letter, Blackmon also criticized the Center for hiring Marc Short — a former legislative affairs director under President Donald Trump and current Miller Center senior fellow — and told Antholis that he must stop the Center from “inadvertently becoming a platform for damaging partisanship.” ... Short’s appointment led to widespread protests, with thousands signing petitions in opposition and two Center-affiliated professors resigning in protest. ... “I bear no personal ill will toward [Marc Short],” Blackmon wrote in his letter to Antholis. “But I have been unable to resolve my concerns about the selection of a Fellow with a history of employing lack of candor on crucial national issues as a frequent strategy, who remains a de facto spokesperson for an active administration, and whose career remorselessly embodied approaches that the Miller Center’s own work has long concluded to be damaging to our democracy.”
....
Douglas Blackmon leaving the Miller Center, citing directional differences
Blackmon, the outgoing director of public programs, declined an offer to stay on as a senior fellow
By Jake Gold | 10/03/2018
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Blackmon — who formerly served as the Miller Center’s director of public programs — is leaving the nonpartisan think tank after six years. ... His contract as director of public programs expired last week and he declined an offer to stay on as a senior fellow, writing in an email to Center CEO William Antholis on Sept. 30 that “our ships are traveling on very different bearings.” ... “Where the Center is headed, and the kind of work that I'm doing independently, was no longer a natural fit for an ongoing relationship,” Blackmon said in an interview with The Cavalier Daily.
Blackmon won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for his book, “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II,” and was previously The Wall Street Journal’s Atlanta bureau chief and the paper’s senior national correspondent. He was the executive producer of the Miller Center’s nationally-distributed public policy television program, American Forum, until the three-year-old show was discontinued in March due to a lack of funding.
In the email to Antholis — obtained by The Cavalier Daily the day after it was sent — Blackmon details his concerns with the present direction of the Miller Center. ... “Your direction for the Center appears to be one that departs substantially from the founding doctrines of problem-solving on great national problems, encouraging public engagement and discourse, and financial independence designed to preserve ‘maximum autonomy’ within the structure of the University of Virginia,” he wrote.
....
In his letter, Blackmon also criticized the Center for hiring Marc Short — a former legislative affairs director under President Donald Trump and current Miller Center senior fellow — and told Antholis that he must stop the Center from “inadvertently becoming a platform for damaging partisanship.” ... Short’s appointment led to widespread protests, with thousands signing petitions in opposition and two Center-affiliated professors resigning in protest. ... “I bear no personal ill will toward [Marc Short],” Blackmon wrote in his letter to Antholis. “But I have been unable to resolve my concerns about the selection of a Fellow with a history of employing lack of candor on crucial national issues as a frequent strategy, who remains a de facto spokesperson for an active administration, and whose career remorselessly embodied approaches that the Miller Center’s own work has long concluded to be damaging to our democracy.”
....
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