{"id":487938,"date":"2022-08-26T05:24:40","date_gmt":"2022-08-26T02:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/uva-students-efforts-to-erase-jefferson-from-campus-more-than-just-tom-foolery\/"},"modified":"2022-08-26T05:24:40","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T02:24:40","slug":"uva-students-efforts-to-erase-jefferson-from-campus-more-than-just-tom-foolery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/uva-students-efforts-to-erase-jefferson-from-campus-more-than-just-tom-foolery\/","title":{"rendered":"#UVA students&#8217; efforts to erase Jefferson from campus more than just Tom-foolery"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2d6995a2383\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2d6995a2383\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/uva-students-efforts-to-erase-jefferson-from-campus-more-than-just-tom-foolery\/#%E2%80%9CUVA_students_efforts_to_erase_Jefferson_from_campus_more_than_just_Tom-foolery%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;UVA students&#8217; efforts to erase Jefferson from campus more than just Tom-foolery&#8221;<\/a><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-2' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/uva-students-efforts-to-erase-jefferson-from-campus-more-than-just-tom-foolery\/#An_insidious_trend\" >An insidious trend<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/uva-students-efforts-to-erase-jefferson-from-campus-more-than-just-tom-foolery\/#A_historical_fallacy\" >A historical fallacy<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CUVA_students_efforts_to_erase_Jefferson_from_campus_more_than_just_Tom-foolery%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;UVA students&#8217; efforts to erase Jefferson from campus more than just Tom-foolery&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignleft\">\n<div class=\"inline-module inline-module--columnist inline-module--author\">\n<div class=\"inline-module--author__img\">\n            <img decoding=\"async\" width=\"76\" height=\"69\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/09\/Douglas-Murray.png?w=76&amp;h=69&amp;crop=1\" class=\"attachment-nyp_columnist size-nyp_columnist\" alt=\"Douglas Murray\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/09\/Douglas-Murray.png 152w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/09\/Douglas-Murray.png?w=114 114w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/09\/Douglas-Murray.png?w=76 76w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/09\/Douglas-Murray.png?w=38 38w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 76px) 100vw, 76px\"\/>      <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Talk about ingratitude. Students at the University of Virginia have become the latest young Americans to try to saw off the branch of the tree that they are sitting on. In this case, the legacy of Thomas Jefferson.<\/p>\n<p>An article written by the editorial board of the university\u2019s student <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news<\/a>paper says that Thomas Jefferson\u2019s image and name should be removed from the university\u2019s buildings. The editorial tries to draw a link between Jefferson, the Ku Klux Klan and the people who marched in Charlottesville in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, plenty of people have pointed out that these students are committing an act of double patricide. They are not only waging war on one of the people who founded this country. They are waging war on the man who founded the university that they are sitting in. Who knows whether these students would have a university to go to if Thomas Jefferson had never lived? Who knows whether they would have a country?<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, some people dismiss such idiocy, pretending that they are mere student shenanigans. Students always say stupid things, goes this argument. Don\u2019t pay attention to them \u2014 they\u2019ll grow up. Other people claim that these are mere pockets of idiocy, and that although the Founding Fathers may be under assault, it does not signify anything wider.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"An_insidious_trend\"><\/span>An insidious trend<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Such complacent arguments are completely wrong. The outburst of statue-toppling and other iconoclasm in 2020 was not an isolated event. It was an eruption of a trend that is now going on all the time. Remember that it was only last fall that our own council members here in New York voted to remove Jefferson\u2019s statue from the City Hall because he <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>arently no longer represents \u201cour values.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"682\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/08\/thomas-jefferson-018.jpg?w=682\" alt=\"Thomas Jefferson\" class=\"wp-image-23620600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/08\/thomas-jefferson-018.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1023 1023w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/08\/thomas-jefferson-018.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=682 682w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/08\/thomas-jefferson-018.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=341 341w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/08\/thomas-jefferson-018.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 682px) 100vw, 682px\"\/><figcaption>Jefferson\u2019s affiliation with slavery has students clamoring for the Founding Father erasure from campus. <\/figcaption><figcaption><span class=\"credit\">Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Fresh examples come every week. Earlier this week, an elementary school in New Jersey announced that it was dropping Jefferson\u2019s name from the school. Jefferson Elementary School in South Orange is going to be renamed after students at the school started demanding the third president\u2019s name be removed from the school. The school will now be renamed after the first black woman to graduate from Columbia HS in Maplewood. As The Post reported earlier this week, the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education voted 6-3 to change the name, with board members criticizing Jefferson because of his slave ownership.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, there are many things to say against this. Not the least of which is to note that it was students at an elementary school who campaigned to rename the school.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignleft\">\n    <\/aside>\n<p>What do elementary students know about Thomas Jefferson? Only the same thing that the students at University of Virginia know about him. That he owned slaves. If they know anything else about him, it is probably that he had sexual relations with Sally Hemings, and that he fathered children by his slave. Even Monticello, where Jefferson\u2019s reputation should be being safeguarded, pushes the line on Sally Hemings, indicting their own founder on DNA evidence from the 1990s that is contested by many serious historians.<br \/>But this one-dimensional, one-note interpretation of the life of Jefferson appears to have taken hold everywhere, from Monticello and the University of Virginia to cities and streets across this country.<\/p>\n<p>There was a time when young Americans knew that Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, was the third president and one of the Founding Fathers. Today they know almost nothing about him except that he was a slaveholder, a racist and probably a rapist.<br \/>Ordinarily at such times, some of the adults would return to the room and try to wrest the American story back. They would explain to the elementary-school students and the university students that you cannot reduce such a heroic life to the one thing. Let alone the one thing \u2014 slave ownership \u2014 that everybody now agrees to be wrong.<br \/>The adults would educate students to know that if Thomas Jefferson had tried to push for abolition at the founding of the United States, then the United States would never have been founded. They would prove the fact that, for his day, Jefferson was a remarkably forward-thinking man. Though he did not think that slavery was a desirable thing, he thought that the creation of the United States was. And so he created it.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/08\/thomas-jefferson-016.jpg?w=1024\" alt=\"Jefferson Elementary School in Maplewood, NJ\" class=\"wp-image-23620598\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/08\/thomas-jefferson-016.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1535 1536w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/08\/thomas-jefferson-016.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all 1024w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/08\/thomas-jefferson-016.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=512 512w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\"\/><figcaption>Jefferson Elementary School will be renamed after the first black woman to graduate from Columbia HS in Maplewood, NJ.<\/figcaption><figcaption><span class=\"credit\">Christopher Sadowski<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"A_historical_fallacy\"><\/span>A historical fallacy<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Naturally, it is very easy for today\u2019s students to imagine that they would have done things differently. That they would have been magically anti-slavery in the late 1700s and have the most progressive views imaginable. They fancy that they would have held all of the views they hold in 2022 but would hold them while living in the 1770s. It is a silly historical fallacy. If these students had lived in Jefferson\u2019s time, then most of them would have held views that would have been far more embarrassing than anything Jefferson ever said or did.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignright\">\n    <\/aside>\n<p>But worse even than this repeated defamation of Jefferson is the destruction this simple-minded attitude causes in this country. It is a destruction that we have been warned about before.<\/p>\n<p>In his farewell address to the nation, Ronald Reagan warned about precisely this. Even then, in 1989, the 40th president used his last speech from the Oval Office to warn about the mis-teaching of American history. He told American adults that if they failed to communicate the American story, that was a great crime against the young. And he told the young that if their parents didn\u2019t teach them what it means to be an American, \u201clet \u2019em know and nail \u2019em on it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Most importantly, he warned, \u201cIf we forget what we did, we won\u2019t know who we are.\u201d Today this country is forgetting what we did, and so, of course, we are forgetting who we are. This, in turn, will lead, as Reagan warned, to \u201can erosion of the American spirit.\u201d That erosion is precisely what is going on today at schools and universities across this country. <\/p>\n<p>That is why it cannot be ignored. That is why it must be stopped.<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more News articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/news\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/08\/25\/uva-students-efforts-to-erase-jefferson-from-campus-more-than-just-tom-foolery\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;UVA students&#8217; efforts to erase Jefferson from campus more than just Tom-foolery&#8221; Talk about ingratitude. Students at the University of Virginia have become the latest young Americans to try to saw off the branch of the tree that they are sitting on. In this case, the legacy of Thomas Jefferson. An article written by the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":487939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/08\/thomas-jefferson-017.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[132617,69348,72860,48554,111069,101762],"class_list":["post-487938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-8-25-22","tag-city-hall","tag-ku-klux-klan","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-thomas-jefferson","tag-university-of-virginia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}