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They burned flags at American University in Washington, D.C., after the presidential election. At the University of Virginia, the election ignited a distinctly UVA form of protest: an outbreak of civil discourse on the subject of Thomas Jefferson.
A week before the Nov. 8 election, and again the day after, UVA President Teresa A. Sullivan broadcast a pair of emails urging civility and a sense of community. Both invoked the words of Thomas Jefferson. With the first reference to the wisdom of Jefferson, assistant professor of psychology Noelle M. Hurd says she took exception. With the second, she took to her keyboard.
She set out to articulate why a hearkening to UVA’s founding father ill serves the goal of unifying a diverse community. “Thomas Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves and was deeply involved in the racist history of this University,” she wrote in a draft she circulated among her colleagues. Within 48 hours, and with the help of word of mouth, she amassed 469 signatures in all, at least 25 of them faculty or staff, the rest students. Together, in a public letter sent to Sullivan, they expressed disappointment in the “use of Thomas Jefferson as a moral compass.”
News of the petition quickly went global. The Cavalier Daily first reported it, and the national press snapped it up within 24 hours. Headlines about the faculty’s asking Mr. Jefferson’s University to shun Mr. Jefferson sprung up on news sites as far flung as The Seattle Times and London’s Daily Mail.
A convenient fit to a familiar narrative about campus correctness, UVA’s news dangled before rightward websites like a USDA prime bone-in ribeye seared rare. A link on the Drudge Report sent a stampede of readers to the Cavalier Daily, making coverage of the petition the student newspaper’s most-read story in 11 years of available data—289,000 online views vs. 181,000 for the previous record holder, reports newspaper CFO Grant Parker—impressive, considering it wasn’t UVA’s only high-profile headline in recent years.
Reaction soon streamed into the Alumni Association, universally decrying the notion that the University should tune out its founder. It’s a practice Sullivan tells Virginia Magazine she has no intention of following. Nor does she take the letter writers’ concerns lightly, she says.
“I plan to continue quoting Thomas Jefferson but will also defend the civil liberties” of those who disagree.
—UVA President Teresa A. Sullivan
The grievance goes to the much larger and long-running issue of how UVA comes to terms with the complex contradictions of its founder and its own history when it comes to slavery and matters of race. Those continue to be subjects of active University initiatives and study. In the pressurized aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, the University’s relationship to Thomas Jefferson underwent a stress test.
As it did, the civility of the discourse never wavered. At its most pitched, the discussion was most courteous. Throughout the very public back-and-forth, each party spoke of respect for the other and for their shared rights of expression and dissent. One free-speech advocate commends UVA on the civil tone, offering that Jefferson himself would be proud of the colloquy, even if it comes at his expense.
To put events in perspective, Virginia Magazine assembled a chronology of the public exchange and interviewed the principals along with other experts and observers around Grounds.
How Events Unfolded
Nov. 2, 2016
UVA President Teresa A. Sullivan issues a University-wide email urging civility after the following week’s election. She notes Jefferson’s bitter 1800 presidential election, which accomplished the country’s first transfer of power from one political party to another, and quotes from his inaugural address: “Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind.” She adds a line from a subsequent Jefferson letter: “The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people.”
Nov. 9
The day after the election, Sullivan sends a follow-up message to urge civility and coming together as a community. Encouraging students to stay engaged in the political process, she cites an 1825 Jefferson letter, irresistibly, also written on Nov. 9. Writing to a British friend, he calls UVA students “exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country.”
Nov. 11
Assistant professor of psychology Noelle M. Hurd submits her letter with 469 signatures to Sullivan, offering “to provide you with some constructive and respectful feedback regarding your messages.” It goes on to say, “In the spirit of inclusivity, we would like for our administration to understand that although some members of this community may have come to this university because of Thomas Jefferson’s legacy, others of us came here in spite of it. For many of us, the inclusion of Jefferson quotes in these e-mails undermines the message of unity, equality, and civility that you are attempting to convey.”
Nov. 14
In reply, Sullivan issues a comment. She prefaces it by reaffirming the free-speech rights of her critics, writing, “We remain … united in our respect for one another even as we engage in vigorous debate.” Taking as her theme that “Words have power,” she writes: “Quoting Jefferson (or any historical figure) does not imply an endorsement of all the social structures and beliefs of his time, such as slavery.” She goes on to discuss the diversity of the University community, none of which Jefferson would have imagined, and takes the opportunity to use his most famous quote of all, that “all men are created equal.” Sullivan explains, “Those words were inherently contradictory in an era of slavery, but because of their power, they became the fundamental expression of a more genuine equality today.”
Noelle M. Hurd
Assistant professor of psychology, who wrote the letter to Sullivan and gathered 468 additional signatures, commenting via email Dan Addison
On what her petition sought
“The e-mail did not ask for Jefferson to be erased from the history of this university. We were not asking for censorship. Rather, we were communicating to our administration that we take offense at attempts by our university leader to guide our moral behavior through Jefferson’s example.”
On Sullivan’s election messages
“It is generally a bad idea to quote or otherwise reference a historical figure when that person’s actions contradict the message one is attempting to communicate. At best, this seems terribly ineffective. At worst, this is downright offensive.”
On Jefferson’s legacy
“Our administration and broader university community need to take Jefferson off of the pedestal and be more critical of his life and legacy. Though some of his actions were instrumental in advancing our society, others were fundamental in holding back specific members of our society. His transgressions do not negate his accomplishments, and similarly, his accomplishments do not negate his transgressions.”
On why she came to UVA “in spite of” Jefferson
“The fact that Jefferson founded this university was not a selling point for me or for others with whom I have spoken about this issue. This is a reality our administration must contend with if it is serious about being a place where individuals from diverse backgrounds can feel welcomed and included.”
On why she went public instead of first talking to Sullivan, as others have suggested
“The two e-mails Sullivan sent were to the entire UVA community, so a collective/open response seemed entirely appropriate. … I did want the response to be timely and so an immediate e-mail seemed preferable to a scheduled meeting (I imagine it takes some time to get on her schedule). … [ I ] would love to have the opportunity to discuss this further with her and any other members of our administration.”
On all the attention
“Some members of the UVA community may be worried about [the] negative publicity this public exchange received beyond the university, but … there was a great deal of positive … response/reaction/reception. Many see this as a show of bravery and leadership by our university in that we are wrestling with a complicated legacy and willing to have difficult conversations in a space designed to foster learning and critical thinking.”
Teresa A. Sullivan
UVA President, whose election-related University-wide emails drew a letter from 469 faculty, students and staff asking her to refrain from quoting Thomas Jefferson (comments taken from a Jan. 13 interview and recent public remarks) Dan Addison
On whether she’ll think twice before quoting Thomas Jefferson
“I plan to continue quoting Thomas Jefferson but will also defend the civil liberties” of those who wish to express disagreement. “It’s the power of Jefferson’s words that lead us to continue to quote Jefferson.” She notes that Martin Luther King Jr. famously quoted Jefferson in the “I Have a Dream” speech and that President Barack Obama also did so in his Chicago farewell address in January. She also points to a recent Cavalier Daily report showing that, prior to the election, Sullivan had quoted Jefferson only three times in three years over the course of 51 community-wide emails.
On freedom of speech at UVA
“Our heritage is an entirely free-speech heritage.” UVA has no need to adopt a University of Chicago statement [sent to that school’s incoming freshmen last August reaffirming freedom of expression and rejecting policies of trigger warnings, safe spaces and the like] because UVA has always respected free speech, and will continue to do so, she says. “Free speech will continue to be a topic of discussion and debate at UVA and on other college campuses, because we want to protect and uphold the principles of free speech while also upholding civility in discourse, which is another UVA tradition. One of our best solutions is to have a sustained, candid dialogue about the free-speech issues that we face, and to continually recommit ourselves to the highest principles of free expression.”
On UVA’s slave past
“No school our age or older on the East Coast is not touched by slavery.” She points to the ongoing work of the President’s Commission on Slavery and the University, which she formed in 2013 with a charge to explore UVA’s historical relationship with slavery and highlight opportunities for recognition and commemoration.
On her public dialogue with the letter writers
“It was very civil. It was respectful. … I’m not seeking to silence anybody but I also don’t want to be silenced myself.”
Alan S. Taylor
Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a student of the Early Republic, and holder of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation chair in the UVA history department, writing from a year abroad at the University of Oxford Dan Addison
On quoting Jefferson
“If we decline to quote from all slaveholders of the past, we would renounce George Washington, John Marshall, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero as well. … Americans’ tendency either to heroicize or demonize past people limits our public discourse. Because Jefferson was put up on a pedestal for so long as nothing but a hero, many critics now want to tear him down as nothing but a hypocrite. … [W]e have to work with his contradictions rather than reject categorically everything he wrote.”
On Jefferson, the University and racial equality
“We do need to recognize Jefferson’s complicity with slavery and his rhetoric that at times demeaned African Americans. And we have to come to terms with the University’s foundational relationship with slavery and its continuing difficulties in addressing racial inequality at the University and beyond. But that accounting can coexist with attending to Jefferson’s contributions to promoting democracy, education, science, literature, etc. Indeed, we will more fully understand American society and history if we can recognize the good and bad as interwoven rather than found distinctly in separate people.”
On the complexities of Thomas Jefferson
“[Jefferson] was, like almost all humans, a complex person and very much of his own time and society. At the same time, he sometimes had a rare capacity to think beyond that time and society (while often falling short in promoting the changes that his insights demanded).”
On whether the letter was a case of “political correctness”
“We could usefully avoid the term ‘political correctness’ as it has become a shorthand for those who reject all expressions of social criticism. The letter signers address important social issues, which we would do well to consider carefully, even if we ultimately advocate different solutions to the very real problems posed by racism.”
On where we go from here
“We need honestly to see the past as a complex place full of contradictory people—and to deal honestly with ourselves in the present as equally complex and not nearly as improved over the past as we would like to believe.”
Marcus L. Martin
UVA Vice President and Chief Officer for Diversity and Equity, a physician and medical professor who co-chairs the President’s Commission on Slavery and the University
Dan Addison
On the letter to Sullivan
“People need to come to the table when there are disagreements and have a direct conversation. … Freedom of expression is good, but we can’t change the past. We can only educate ourselves so that we can move towards a better future.”
Maurice Apprey
Dean of the Office of African-American Affairs and professor of psychiatric medicine Dan Addison
On the letter to Sullivan
“I had the opportunity and chose not to sign it. … That does not mean that I am not sensitive to people who are so struggling with the sedimentations of history. I am, but the burden is on them to find appropriate ways to do that.” His recommendation: “Meeting with the president and talking to her. She’s very receptive.”
On the appropriateness of quoting Thomas Jefferson
“Every speaker has the ethical responsibility to be appropriate, and every listener has the ethical responsibility to assess what they’re hearing appropriately,” he says. Look at the pretext, the speaker’s intent, in this case Sullivan’s goal of reassuring the community; the text, the meaning of the quoted words themselves; and the context of what’s going on in the world. “The burden is on the speaker and on the listener to use the criteria … pretext, text and context. If you do that, then we have a conversation, rather than diatribe. … It takes the edge off if you have an organized way of thinking about anyone’s discourse.” Based on that analysis, he says Sullivan’s postelection message was completely appropriate.
J. Joshua Wheeler
(Law ’92), Director of the nonpartisan Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, Charlottesville Stacey Evans
On whether the letter amounted to censorship
“I think that [the petition] was the expressing of a viewpoint and it was an attempt at persuading President Sullivan that the quoting of Thomas Jefferson is not a good idea. It does not appear to be an attempt to force her to do that. I think they have every right to advocate their position, just as I think President Sullivan has every right to listen to it and engage in debate about it but continue to quote Jefferson if she so chooses.”
On the tone of the debate
“While there are sharp differences of opinion, what’s encouraging is the respect and the courtesy that both sides seem to have for one another in this discussion. There seems to be a remarkable amount of civility, and that’s something that seems to be diminishing in these public debates, particularly on college campuses in the last few years.”
On what Jefferson would make of his University’s debating his character
“In the end, Jefferson would like that.”
Comments (14)
Johnny Sheffield on 08/18/2017
Leave history alone
Marshall Buckles on 05/18/2017
“This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”
—Thomas Jefferson, 1820, in a letter to William Roscoe
Back in the late 1980s I was taking evening courses at a central Virginia university. A woman who was a University of Virginia graduate student was teaching courses as a part time professor at that university. When interviewed by the university student newspaper, she alleged that she had been “taught by Marxists” at a college in my native southwestern Virginia. Familiar with that college, I had never been aware of any Marxists teaching there. One of my professors, at the university I was attending, was an alumnus of that college and had been on the staff of the Governor of Virginia. I contacted both him and the then President of the college to share what the UVA graduate student professor had said. They both told me that they had never known of any Marxists teaching at the college in question. Subsequently I contacted the Rector of the University of Virginia, at the time, and informed him of what the UVA graduate student had alleged in the student newspaper, at the university I was attending, told him what the President of the college and my professor had said and asked if this UVA graduate student should be charged with an honor violation. He cordially replied, thanking me for my letter (we didn’t have email yet back then) and informed me that an honor violation charge would have to come from within the UVA student body. He provided the above quote, from Jefferson, and asked me to keep it in mind in this circumstance. Both then and now I felt that the UVA Rector responded wisely. I think that Jefferson’s wise words can be applied to himself, regarding the negative things about him such as slave ownership. “We are not afraid to…tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.“Despite any negatives about him, if it had not been for Jefferson and the other Founders of our nation, we likely would have continued to be some sort of colony or province of what is now known as the United Kingdom and probably all of us, both there and here and in other nations, would not have enjoyed the freedoms which we now have in our nation.
James Tyson Currie, GA&S, '69, 75 on 05/01/2017
If we cannot quote anyone who ever did things we consider inappropriate or wrong, then we probably will not be able to quote anyone. Maybe Mother Teresa would be okay, but I’m not even certain about her. It is always better, I think, to admire people for the good they do and not admire them for their bad works. If we decide not to quote every President who took actions with which we disagree, then we probably have to eliminate all of the Founders and most others among our country’s Presidents, not to mention every major contemporary political figure. I can’t come up with anyone whose life is so pure that they would meet Professor Hurd’s test. Thomas Jefferson was a man of his time in many ways and a man ahead of his time in so many others. Perhaps Professor Hurd would dismiss the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom and the Declaration of Independence, but they were both critical to our country’s founding. Our Founders were all flawed to one extent or another, but they produced a framework for government that was unlike anything that existed before them. Perhaps Professor Hurd could benefit from studying some U.S. history.
Jamal A Sa'd on 04/21/2017
Delighted to read this discussion which I take as reaffirming UVA,s spirit of free speech. I recall the many occasions I escorted distinguished VIPs to .monticello.. My respect and affection for president Jefferson are such that I chose to establish a family burial cite at Monticello memory gardens in line of sight of Monticello. Both my late mother and dear wife are reposing there and my daughters will fulfill my wish of joining them there.
Jamal A Sa’d,
Former visiting instructor and professor as well as 55 graduate in foreign affairs.
Steven T. Corneliussen on 03/31/2017
Thanks for this worthy article and discussion. On the subject of memory of Jefferson at U.Va., it seems worth noting that from time to time, when the fundamentally related subject of Sally Hemings comes up, a Hollywood-romanticized fake rendering of her image appears in university publications. I’ve seen the alumni people use it in their summer program materials, and it appeared recently in the Cavalier Daily: http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2017/02/monticello-restorations-to-better-contextualize-sally-hemings Today there’s a worthy effort to accord, insofar as possible retrospectively, what was denied to millions of enslaved Americans in centuries past: simple respect for their human dignity. I don’t see how anyone at the university or anywhere else can respect Hemings’s memory by depicting her falsely. Thanks.
June Uhler on 03/23/2017
This quote from an unknown source. Understanding the past requires pretending that you don’t know the present. It requires its own pressure on your pulse without any ex post facto illumination.
Richard Jacoby, M.D. B.E.E. 1964 on 03/18/2017
To quote or not to quote Thomas Jefferson, the most prolific writer of the founders, is a false dilemma demonstrating the frivolity of discourse to which academic institutions have descended. Although not the physical hedonism of the “Rot, Riot and Rebellion” (and even later years) which so distressed Jefferson after the University founding it is just as meaningless a pursuit of self-indulgence. It is reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges’ (U. Va. is the home of the largest collection of his manuscripts) Library of Babel describing an institution of books so vast that it contains every possible combination of letters which might have been written or might be written all equally presented. It (The library and the University) has become so diluted with drivel as to become useless.
John Huffaker on 03/17/2017
I detected a judging of earlier generations without attention to the conditions that then existed. I recall reading that one president purchased a slave when the skills he needed were otherwise unavailable. I think that focus should be on the treatment of a slave rather than status.
Dan Hallahan, Professor Emeritus on 03/14/2017
I’m probably missing something, but I’m puzzled about why President Sullivan thought it necessary to send out the emails in the first place. Why should the election results, one way or the other, have caused incivility and a diminished sense of community? Might the emails, themselves, possibly result in the “rule of expectations” taking effect?
Sheila Miller on 03/14/2017
I am so glad that this is being discussed so openly and with such civility. Universities and Colleges should be havens of exchanges of ideas. I’m happy that UVA’s past is not being swept under the rug and that we do not worship Mr Jefferson as an absolute hero but rather acknowledge him as a flawed human being who was still quite exceptional in many ways. I hope that this open discourse continues and that it spreads to the general population sooner rather than later!
Elizabeth A Trought on 03/14/2017
I enjoyed this article and leave it with this thought “We need honestly to see the past as a complex place full of contradictory people—and to deal honestly with ourselves in the present as equally complex and not nearly as improved over the past as we would like to believe.” So true.
Sara Howlett on 03/14/2017
I can only imagine Mr. Jefferson might be looking down, chuckling about all the debate over this issue and even urging it on. If we consider him and the times he lived in where it was necessary if one owned a sizable property to have slaves. Most of his contemporaries had slaves as well. Dr. James Jones of Nottoway County Va. may have been a contemporary of his and freed his slaves around that time period. I think if Mr. Jefferson had lived longer, he most likely would have freed his slaves as well. He was I think very evolved for his time, but not yet there on the slave issue. There was a lot of wisdom in this man, so evident in some of his ideas and quotes, his architecture, his debating open mind. Had formal counseling been around then he might have sought that as well, perhaps even from Professor Hurd. Doing things that draw us all together instead of separating us helps us have a more compassionate view of history. Debate On UVA!
wally mook, Engr '69, '78 on 03/14/2017
I believe this discussion aptly covers the topic. To paraphrase the words of the author Evelyn Hall, “I may totally disagree with what you say, but I will completely defend your right to say it”.
Howard B Marsteller on 03/14/2017
I have a question. Were Prof. Hurd’s petitions passed around her class (or classes) for signatures? Was there implicit pressure exerted by the professor upon students to sign and to obtain signatures in support of her petition? How many of her students and graduate students signed her petition?
Is she quashing the free speech of her students who fear impact upon their grades?