Past ten years and before that, he taught at the university of california davis and Boston University on topics ranging from the colonial period from the war of 1812 and beyond. In 1996 that went to the william coopers town to the establishment of the university of virginia, jefferson of course regarded the university of one of his signature achievements and ellen got interested in pursuing a book on the subject after coming across some correspondence in various ways which the revolution impacted society of politics in the early years of the country and the story of jeffersons attempts at educational reform through the founding of the university of virginia certainly fits the focus. But it also has particular relevance today in the context of command reform and controversy over the goals and funding for education. As recounted in the book, things didnt quite turn out as jefferson hoped for the university of virginia and envisions establishing the democratized system of education, one that would cultivate the group of the future leaders and rejects slavery and usher in a dallas area and society. Society. That meant the sons of wealthy families could afford to attend, and many of them proved to be unruly and abusive students. Far from embracing reforms that change virginia, these early graduates remain deeply conservative, continue to hold reviews and went on to serve in the confederate civil war. All in all, he presents a case of jeffersons noble intentions falling short amid the inequalities and injustices of the Virginia Society of the time. Ellen spoke alan spoke about the literature of jefferson and itthe book page called it in observing narrative that offers crucial insight into jeffersons thinking as he pursued his vision what he hoped would be a Better Future so ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming alan taylor. [applause] that was such a good introduction i have almost nothing to add to it. I do want to thank brad and also elizabeth and cody for their help in the event and all of you for turning out. I just want to make clear at the start i do like the university of virginia but i dont think i would have liked it in the 1820s. It didnt get off to the kind of start Thomas Jefferson had hoped for. So, in the book that i pretend i am trying to address i think three questions. First why is it the states suddenly decides to invest in Public Education and the team teams, no not sooner, not latert the teen teens because this was a complete new development which wasnt known for spending on anything public. Until that point. When it chose to invest in Public Education, why did they choose just to build a university and not say Primary School systems that would have benefited many more people. Why does it choose a relatively Small University that is very expensive and would educate only the sons of the wealthiest families . Third, why did it go so badly . This story is set in virginia but its a story that i would argue has national significance. Jefferson is the most influential figure in the United States in his lifetime other than washington. 1740s and the 1820s. Second, virginia is the largest, richest, most powerful state in the union of the time. Just about all the president s except for john adams come from virginia and has the largest congressional delegation. Virginia assumed they were going to be the leading element in the country and it turns out they were right. When that starts to shift in the eight team teams that plays into why they established the university of virginia when they do. Virginia is also home in 1792 halves of the enslaved people in the country in the one state that virgin. 40 of the population is held. A it is some troll to everything, to the economy, to the society, to the culture. It affects a threedimensional life in virginia including what is possible in terms of educational reform. Now the book is in part about the work jefferson receives. Doeas he learned, what does he l you, what was he like as a student. Thats primarily what kind of education does he think young men of the next generation should receive and we also pay a little bit of attention to what the young women should learn that his focus is on young white men. The people that he asked that are going to be the leaders in the next generation. And he focuses on them for a couple of reasons. One is he does want to change Virginia Society. There are things he doesnt like about it. He wants it to become a more Democratic Society for white men. He also does want to end slavery, but he wants to end it in a very peculiar way. His plan, and he lays out several times, is always linked to the deportation of free blacks. He cannot imagine a virginia which white and blacks can live as equals and as neighbors and that is the great small. It isnt unique to jefferson. This is the common thinking of the relatively liberal people in virginia of that generation is that blacks and whites cannot live together in safety in which both are free. That is a great small in his thinking but again not unique to jefferson. The first letter is from june of 1760. Hes a young man, 17yearsold, and its about education. Its about his education and hes writing to the executors of hihis fathers estate but fathero control his money, his inheritance because he isnt 21 yet. And hes asking them to free up the funds so he can go to the one college that then existed, the college of william and mary. The only place you can go for Higher Education in i the late colonial period. You might go off to princeton in the way James Madison did but if you are going to go to college during the colonial period, will you marry is your only option and there are no universities to the south of virginia to go to until after the revolution. And he writes as long as i stay on the mountain come and its what would later be monticello, he lives on the plantation which is at the foot of the mountain, but thats Cold Mountain sometimes. The loss of one fourth of my time is inevitable by companies coming here and detaining me. In other words, his social life is too rich if he stays and hes trying to justify to the executors he will learn more if he goes away to school, so hes an unusual young man, the first and probably the last that will claim he will party less if he goes to college. It turns out he got into some hijinks, he did go to college but in the end, he is about the most studious person to go to the college of william and mary. In 1808 looking back on it 40 years later and hes writing today. Code about a grandsons education and he says that he credits education from saving him from the society of horse races, foxhunters and if he hadnt been saved from the company he would become as worthless to the society as th they. So, this goes to jeffersons mixed feelings about virginians. He thought of them as gregario gregarious, sociable, generous, not intellectual, not particularly hardworking. Again, hes talking about the elite class of gentlemen who prided themselves. There is plenty of hard work going on in virginia that they arbut theyare not the ones doin. They are the beneficiaries of it. So, jefferson really wanted to change virginia and make them more like himself, disciplined, hardworking, cosmopolitan, benefiting from education. He wants to change them but this is one of the keys to jefferson, he doesnt want to come front of them. Jefferson has a very thin skin. He doesnt like contention. His favorite philosopher preachers moderation, serenity, just having a life with as little agitation as possible. This usually isnt a good philosophy for a politician. Jefferson is a complex guy, very brilliant and capable of being a close critic of the society he lives in the slavery, but he does not want to contention which means he isnt going to push the changes he. Thats for the next generation. So, for jefferson it is important the next generation must be prepared to do the things he wasnt able to achieve which is a more Democratic Society and also a society that has lightened itself by getting rid of slavery and also getting rid of black people. So, it isnt entirely admirable what he would like to pull off and it by the virginia standards of that time, he is considered a dangerous radical as those thatt do know his thinking. Jefferson is famous for a plan he put out for comprehensive Education System that would have been Primary Schools, it would have been what we call high schools now, the academy is. Primary schools would have been for girls and boys. Academies would have been just for adolescent boys and then the third level of the system would be the university. Initially reformed by william and mary but then he decided william and mary was hopeless and doomed and he would like to help kill it and create a new university of preferably you could see it from the top of monticello. And hes a very good politician. He has some very powerful friends and they end up making it happen. A key moment comes 1718 det 18 when the state has a windfall amounts of money that its gotten from the federal government but its not enough for jeffersons full system, all three tiers. Another politician says lets build a Primary School system first and jefferson says no. Lets build a university first. Theres only a limited amount of money. I want to spend it on the university to educate many fewer people. This clashes with our usual thinking of him being a democratic figure, and in many ways he is, but again, it goes to the peculiarities of a man who wants to democratize society that once the next generation to do it. He thinks that the way you get there is not why uplifting the entire population, but by educating the future leaders from the elite families and they will do it. I think you can probably imagine what is going to go wrong in this scenario. Now also, jefferson is getting to be elderly and he wants to see a payoff before he dies, and its reasonable to think that if he could build a university, one university to educate approximately 200 young men faster than you could set up a whole educational system for the state with fewer complications. And plus he likes architecture. He liked designing things. Hes not going to design a lovd one room school houses. He would much rather designing neoclassical campus for a university. He thinks by designing the right kind of architecture he can reengineer young men to be the kind of young and who will do the kind of good deeds he wants the next generation to do. But the problem is the young men who show up at the university of virginia, they are the foxhunters and horse racers and theyve been conditioned by a society theyve grown up in that sense if you are to be the future masters of plantations, you must be very prickly about your honor and you need to make a show of your ability to practice leisure and generosity to prove you are not one of these yankees have the north and that you are not some sort of poor white that might have to actually work hard and get your hands dirty and certainly you are not an enslaved person. So this class is brought together. Its the most expensive institution of Higher Education in the 1820s in the United States so the only people that cannot afford them ocan afford g from the plantations. It turns out they are not capable of transforming them in the way jefferson thought that it was. Its about their noble intentions, noble in most ways, not all that the compulsory deportation of africanamericans is certainly the least attractive element of the sche scheme. But how it falls short. And in part it falls short because why jefferson is able to pitch this in the eight team tens they are nervous finding out virginia isnt the largest state anymore. Its not the richest state anymore and they are fearful it isnt going to be the most politically powerful anymore because its skipping relative to the state of new york and pennsylvania and they are nervous that ohio is coming up very fast, too in other words population and wealth is shifting towards the north. They decided they do not trust a union in which they are not the most powerful state. They will be able to win arguments in congress and send off a, so jefferson has created a university in partnership with the other leaders in virginia you that has two contradictory missions. Theres jeffersons preferred admission that his reform the state from within, and the other mission that hes also bought an too which is to defend off the influence including antislavery activist so it will do so on its own terms at an undetermined date in the future. It turns out that these young men from the plantations are much more prepared for the fact to defend their institutions and to preserve in a conservative way the virginia theyve grown up in rather than to fulfill jeffersons vision to transform virginia into Something Else so that is what the book is about. Thank you. Happy to take any questions that you have. [applause] if you have a question if you would please go to the microphone. Im just trying to think about how to frame this. Throughout your talk i heard you say he was kind of waiting for the next generation to take over. Was that clearly stated or was that something he kind of looked back on an and said i didnt fot my generation, i was looking at the next generation. He starts saying it in the 1780s when hes 43yearsold. Is there any indication on why he didnt want to change the current . When he is a young legislator he one to introduce a piece of legislation that in a very small ways going to improve the conditions. He does it as a young legislator so one of the most senior respective legislators emphasized while you present this and he says okay i will do it and he gets attacked by all the other legislators saying we dont talk about that kind of stuff. Then an enslaved people will get ideas we are setting up a dynamic that will lead to their freedom and they may want to rise up in rebellion to accelerate that so shut it completely down. Jefferson never, ever wants to take an unpopular stance. My very shallow understanding is that he was quite effective at getting what he wanted and im kind of surprised to hear he was thinskinned. The different fights between all of those revolutionaries it seemed like he was out there pushing pretty hard for what he wanted. Is a very good competition. One of the things is he figures out the majority leaders around him and what they want. And how he can nudge them in just a bit in the direction he wants to go but he also knows when he can push them too far when there will be a major push back. Also because he doesnt like contention and he says in his letters criticism or contention is ten times more painful than any praise is positive for him so somebody like Alexander Hamilton thinks of jefferson as a conniving backstabbing kind of guy that will smile in your face and in wireless working behind the scenes with other people to achieve the political and. He is an in your face that i didnt see conference of the coe people who dont want to do it. That is a jefferson style. I dont say that in the book but i couldnt understand saying that. [inaudible] since then we havent actually produced any. What is the great competition, i live across the river so the reason i ask the first question is during the summer i took my children to visit monticello and the only attractive thing is perhaps Thomas Jeffersons monticello and the university of virginia. I didnt know this until my children mention. I have zero clue to help me understand. No other experts i talked to. Virginia isnt the largest state in the union. Its kind of a middle states now and thats why the political influence has diminished over time. But virginia is also a changing state right now in part because the suburbs of washington are the vibrant growing and economically part of the state and they are becoming much more influential in the state of virginia. The question about charlottesville, and it very much goes to the politics of the city council and is also goes to the racial politics of the city. Historically the Africanamerican Community has been marginalized. Their sensitivities havent been considered by the city council and this particular vote was as in so many things that go on in politics these days it is about the symbols of who is considered legitimate and who is not and those are shifting all the time and contest it. You can think of examples in other places other than charlottesville. There is a long tradition of africanamericans feeling that their feelings have been ignored and this is an effort by the city council to say if i can finish what im saying here is i understand the sentiment behind it but i dont think that it was the right way to go because it plays out in the country but they are rejecting Thomas Jefferson and everything about him and ive found it difficult in talking about the book with people today because the question everybody keeps coming back from both ends of the political spectrum its basically is jefferson a good guy or not. Its a terrible question i believe. The question is why was jefferson so important in the time he lived in. What influence did he have over his time and in what ways does that influence survives today. Earlier in the 20th century it was like he is just the greatest thing ever because hes got the declaration of independence, creator of democracy, separation of church and state, louisiana purchase, it is a pretty winning record. People just didnt talk about slavery. People are writing the history is and it just wasnt part of the story. Now we shift to the early 21st and then people are suddenly paying catchup. He is talking about all men are created equal yet he owns all these people. It doesnt free more than a handful of them in contrast to George Washington who freed up just about all of the people that he had on so whats going on here and then again, my position is you swing to the other extreme and say that he is just purely evil and there are people i on the city council who are just part of the loop and what i am saying is we ought to be able to think about jefferson and all his complexity we can think about the things that we can still admire like separation of church and state, seeking democracy, american independence and then also acknowledged that he could not free himself from slavery in the and and say why is it somebody could be capable of these extraordinary ac