After UVA president quotes Thomas Jefferson, faculty, students show their distaste for school’s slave-owner founder

University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan quoted the school’s founder Thomas Jefferson in calling for unity and civility following one of the ugliest presidential battles in recent history, but it didn’t quite go over the way she intended.

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The quote she used from the third president was a message to a friend saying that the institution’s students are not of “ordinary significance,” that they are exactly the type of people who will one day guide the government of the Republic.

However, faculty and students at the university no longer view Jefferson as a figure to be ultimately admired as the former leader of the U.S. and founder of their school. They view him as a slave owner and believe he should be treated as one, therefore unfit to be quoted, particularly after an election period in which race was such a heated issue.

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According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, a letter was signed by 469 faculty and students asking Sullivan not to use Jefferson as a “moral compass.”

But Sullivan defended using the quote Monday, saying in an online letter: “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.”

She also acknowledged the right of those who disagree to voice their opinion because Jefferson’s legacy is indeed complicated.

Here is what she wrote last week that brought about the uproar:

“By coincidence, on this exact day 191 years ago — November 9, 1825, in the first year of classes at U.Va. — 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.’ I encourage today’s U.Va. students to embrace that responsibility.”

[graphiq id=”8zzT2ccNDwh” title=”President Thomas Jefferson” width=”600″ height=”465″ url=”https://w.graphiq.com/w/8zzT2ccNDwh” link=”http://us-presidents.insidegov.com/l/8/Thomas-Jefferson” link_text=”InsideGov | Graphiq” ]

In her response to the letter signed by faculty and students, Sullivan said that “words have power” and “quoting any person is to acknowledge the potency of that person’s words.” She said: “In my message last week, I agreed with Mr. Jefferson’s words expressing the idea that U.Va. students would help to lead our Republic. He believed that 200 years ago, and I believe it today.”

Debate has raged ever since about how to view Jefferson and if it is even appropriate to quote him at all.

Lawrie Balfour, a politics professor who signed the letter, told the school’s newspaper, The Cavalier Daily that they appreciated that Sullivan responded to anxiety of students and faculty following the election, but believed it was the wrong time to use Jefferson’s words considering the charged racial rhetoric used by Trump’s campaign.

“I’ve been here 15 years,” Balfour told the student newspaper. “Again and again, I have found that at moments when the community needs reassurance and Jefferson appears, it undoes I think the really important work that administrators and others are trying to do.”

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