Thomas Jefferson was a man of many accomplishments and
classical restraint, limiting the achievements he wished
engraved on his tombstone to just three and bypassing
his service as president of the United States.
Accordingly, he might have been
embarrassed to learn that each summer, a group of 50 or
more interested citizens and scholars convene on the
Lawn for four days to study his life, his times and his
thought. He would, no doubt, have approved of the spirit
in which they gather. The exchange of ideas and the
broadening of intellectual horizons that characterize
the yearly Jefferson Symposium on the Lawn are fully in
keeping with his vision for an Academical Village, the
description he chose to embody his goals for the
University of Virginia.
And certainly, this program
ranges widely. This year, the program’s twentieth, the
topic for discussion will be “Thomas Jefferson’s Friends
and Foes,” a subject chosen, the course organizers say,
to prove “that today’s candidates were not the only ones
to make political issues personal.” The founding fathers
were hardly unanimous in their vision for our fledgling
democracy—and their differences were soon expressed in
mutual antagonism and competing political parties.
Through lecture, debate and
lively discourse, the participants in the symposium
explore how these relationships shaped not only the men
involved—people like Alexander Hamilton, James Madison
and John Adams—but the young nation they were forming.
“The wonderful thing about
Jefferson,” says Peter Onuf, the Thomas Jefferson
Professor of History at the University
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of Virginia and the symposium’s longtime director, “is
that you can return to him repeatedly and continue to
find new things.” Earlier programs, for instance, have
looked at Jefferson and religion, Jefferson and the
institution of the presidency, and Jefferson and
slavery. As Joan Gore, director of travel programs for
SCPS, points out, “Jefferson continues to have relevance
because he grappled with the issues we still grapple
with today.”
From Onuf ’s point of view, this
continually changing thematic focus serves a number of
purposes. It keeps the program fresh and enables him to
bring in a changing selection of experts—on Jefferson
and on the period. It also gives participants who enjoy
the format and who respect Jefferson the opportunity to
return. Onuf estimates that one-third of the
participants each year have come to earlier symposiums.
In the Presence of
Jefferson’s Legacy
One of the advantages of holding
the symposium in Charlottesville, and indeed on the
Lawn, is that Jefferson’s presence resides here as it
does nowhere else. Many of the participants stay in
original Lawn rooms that were part of Jefferson’s
original design for the University of Virginia, and one
of the highlights of the program is dinner in the Dome
Room of the Rotunda, which Jefferson modeled after the
Pantheon in Rome.
Participants take a private
after-hours visit to Monticello, touring rooms that are
not open to the public. They also have the opportunity
to examine the University’s unsurpassed collection of
documents relating to the Declaration of Independence,
part of its superb library of rare books and
manuscripts.
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