Miller Centers marks 35 years of enhancing the public discourse

There is a place in Charlottesville where great minds ponder current events and scholars study presidential decisions for future use.

The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia is celebrating its 35th year as a non-partisan gathering place designed to promote and expand the discussion of public policy. It is here where thousands of hours of presidential recordings are being transcribed and coalitions are formed to discuss issues such as climate change, the strength of the media and the importance of higher education.

“[Our mission] is to be a national meeting place where members of the public, the press, government and the academy gather to research, reflect and report on national issues important to the governance of our country,” said former Virginia Gov. Gerald L. Baliles, director of the Miller Center.

In 1975, Tennessee businessman Burkett Miller, a 1914 graduate of UVa, approached the university with the idea to create a place where people could gather and discuss issues of national importance. He wanted the center to be tied to a university but outside the reach of its governance, Baliles said.

“[Miller] was dismayed with what he saw as the inability of people to talk nonpartisan about politics,” Baliles said. “He wanted a place where people could talk about the great issues of the day.”

The center has had a long history of bringing politicians, media, scholars and experts together to discuss political issues. There has also been work to study and document the history of the American presidency.

In recent years, the center has launched a debate series on PBS; created the Governing America in a Global Era program, which examines the roots of contemporary American foreign policy and domestic politics; and opened a satellite office in Washington for scholars and UVa staff to meet with policymakers.

“The Miller Center’s traditional focus on the central role of the history of the American presidency has been strengthened by focusing on subjects of governance that now confront every American president,” Baliles said.

The center has also expanded its Web site to provide information on its work and links to information on every president from George Washington to Barack Obama. Visitors to the site can download recent forums, meetings and the center’s other work, as well as find out biographical information, such as how many children President Zachary Taylor had. (Six.)

“The Miller Center’s Web site is now in the top 5 percent of all Web sites visited worldwide,” Baliles said. “That is a tribute to the impressive work of faculty and staff and the generous financial support of the friends and supporters of the Miller Center.”

David Alsobrook, former director of both the George Bush and Bill Clinton presidential libraries, said the Miller Center has a long history of serving as a nonpartisan public “think tank.” He said the center’s work is very similar to the work he did at the presidential libraries.

“We’re not supposed to be overly political,” Alsobrook said. “We allow groups of people to get together and peacefully talk about the issues.”

Over the years, Alsobrook worked with the Miller Center in its efforts to preserve the oral histories of the administrations of Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He was recently in Charlottesville to speak as part of a panel at a conference on presidential libraries.

Alsobrook, who retired as director of the Clinton Presidential Library in 2007, is now the director of the Museum of Mobile in Mobile, Ala. He said oral histories used to receive a lot of federal funding, but that ended about the time the Miller Center came into being.

“[Miller Center staff] do a lot of work the federal government no longer does,” Alsobrook said. “I think the Miller Center has preserved a lot of history that would have otherwise been lost. I hope they last another 1,500 years.”

The Miller Center is funded through an endowment and private donations and is near the end of a $39.5 million fundraising campaign that began in 2004. The center has raised more than $38 million and is still seeking donations, Baliles said.

Local residents know the Miller Center primarily as the host of weekly forums that bring speakers from across the country to talk on various national issues. The forums are recorded and broadcast on certain PBS affiliates or can be downloaded free online.

Remy Wheat, a rising third-year history and Chinese major from Richmond, started attending the forums last fall. She has since become a walking and talking advertisement for the center.

“It’s great to know I can drive three minutes and see people I see quoted in the news all of the time,” Wheat said. “I think a lot of students just don’t realize we have such a valuable resource here in Charlottesville.”

In the years to come, Baliles said the center’s focus is to continue providing a meeting place to discuss government issues, as well as the work to preserve presidential information.

“The focus must be on those questions that bedevil presidents and policymakers as they try to govern a country as vast, complex and challenging as ours,” Baliles said. “It may take the next 35 years to achieve that goal [and] we’ll have to reconvene this interview 35 years from now to measure our progress.”