“Philip Zelikow, the former director of the 9/11 Commission to lead COVID Commission Planning Group”

On Tuesday, the University of Virginia announced that its Miller Center for Public Affairs will serve as a base for a COVID Commission Planning Group, led by UVA professor Philip Zelikow, the former executive director of the 9/11 Commission.

The planning group hopes to prepare the way for a potential National COVID Commission set up to help America and the world learn from this pandemic and safeguard against future threats.

“This is perhaps the greatest crisis suffered by America, if not the world, since 1945,” said Zelikow, the White Burkett Miller Professor of History and J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance, who also led the earlier, privately organized Carter-Ford Commission on Federal Election Reform. “It is vital to take stock, in a massive way, of what happened and why.

“These sorts of civilizational challenges may become more common in the 21st century, and we need to learn from this crisis to strengthen our society,” he continued. “Scholars and journalists will do their jobs, but there is also a role for the kind of massive investigation and research effort that only a large-scale commission can provide.”

The nonpartisan group includes more than two dozen virologists, public health experts, clinicians and former officials, backed by four of America’s leading charitable foundations: Schmidt Futures, the Skoll Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and Stand Together. The Miller Center will also work with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Organizers hope the work will feed into a future National COVID Commission, set up either by the White House or Congress, or by an independent organization.