You Can’t Quote Jefferson at the College He Founded

The president of the University of Virginia is being asked by students and professors to stop quoting Thomas Jefferson — though Jefferson founded the University of Virginia.

A letter signed last Friday by 469 students and professors objected to President Theresa Sullivan’s quoting of Jefferson — the third president of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence — because Jefferson owned slaves, The Cavalier Daily reported. Sullivan has since defended her use of Jefferson’s quotes.

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The trouble started with a Nov. 9 email Sullivan sent to the campus community to urge unity after the presidential election.

“Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend that University of Virginia students ‘are not of ordinary significance only: They are exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country, and to rule its future enmities, its friendships and fortunes,'” Sullivan wrote. “I encourage today’s students to embrace that responsibility.”

Those unwilling to heed the words of Jefferson — or Sullivan — fired back. “I think that Jefferson is often celebrated for his accomplishments with little or no acknowledgment of the atrocities he committed against hundreds of human beings,” wrote Noelle Hurd, an assistant psychology professor. Hurd drafted the entire response to Sullivan.

Though Jefferson famously wrote, “All men are created equal,” Hurd said Jefferson’s words “communicated to me a message of exclusion.”

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The Nov. 11 letter to the president acknowledged that Jefferson’s legacy had drawn some students and faculty to the university, but “others of us came here in spite of it.”

Politics professor Lawrie Balfour, who signed the letter, said Jefferson’s words often bothered her during her long tenure at UVA.

American history cannot be erased or changed.

“I think we have an opportunity to think about the contradictions that Jefferson embodied,” Balfour told The Daily. “The point is not that he is never appropriate, but the point is that the move that says, he owned slaves, but he was a great man, is deeply problematic, and I think it will continue to prevent us from being the kind of inclusive, respectful community that President Sullivan and the rest of us envision.”

Sullivan responded to the criticism with another letter of her own, stating in part, “Quoting Jefferson (or any historical figure) does not imply an endorsement of all the social structures and beliefs of his time, such as slavery and the exclusion of women and people of color from the university … UVA is still producing leaders for our Republic, and from backgrounds that Mr. Jefferson could not have anticipated in 1825, when he wrote the words that I quoted.”

UVA students, if this battle goes in its likely direction, will miss and dismiss a great deal of wisdom in American history. A list of presidents who owned slaves, both while in office or at other times during their lives, has been compiled by Robert Lopresti, a librarian at Western Washington University. Based on his well-documented research, Lopresti says 12 of our presidents owned slaves and eight of them owned slaves while serving as president, according to Factcheck.org.

American history cannot be erased or changed, and that includes slave ownership. But in choosing to dismiss Jefferson, the University of Virginia community shows a lack of critical thinking skills — and no understanding of the nuanced past of America’s historical figures that reveal both good and bad and often reflect the times in which they lived.

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Jefferson, who also served as the vice president of the United States and as the first secretary of state, founded the University of Virginia in 1819 and was involved with the university until his death in 1826. Jefferson also advocated for free public education, made the Louisiana Purchase, launched the Lewis and Clark expedition, participated in the founding of the Library of Congress — and revolutionized gardening and sustainable agriculture.