Andrew O'Shaughnessy - Thomas Jefferson's Idea of a University

Thomas Jefferson was intimately involved in every aspect of the creation of the University of Virginia.  It represented what he regarded as one of the three greatest achievements of his life to be listed on his tombstone. It revealed his talents as a lawyer who drafted the legislation for the assembly; as a surveyor who personally mapped the grounds; as a politician who masterminded the strategy to win approval in the assembly and to deflect intense opposition; as an architect who designed the layout, chose the building materials, and corresponded with the craftsman; and as an intellectual who developed an innovative curriculum, suggested the books for the library and the criteria for selecting the faculty. Jefferson was concerned with what remains a perennial issue which is the importance of education in the success of the republican democratic experiment. It was integral to his political philosophy in which he regarded public education as essential for the functioning of government by the people. He was part of what he regarded as the moral revolution that should accompany the political revolution of 1776. Although dismissed in higher education histories as a “finishing school for southern aristocrats” which trained many of the future leaders of the Confederacy, the lecture will argue that his vision of public education was as revolutionary as the other achievements on his tombstone and that it still has the potential to stimulate discussion about the role of universities. Furthermore, his vision of a university anticipated the idea of a modern university more than any other college in America.

Andrew O’Shaughnessy is Professor of History at the University of Virginia.  Between 2003 and 2022, he served as Vice President of The Thomas Jefferson Foundation (Monticello), and the Saunders Director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. His book The Men Who Lost America. British Leadership, the American Revolution and the Fate of the Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013) received eight national awards including the New York Historical Society American History Book Prize, the George Washington Book Prize, The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution Excellence in American History Book Award and The Society of Military History Book Prize. He is also the author of An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). His most recent book books are The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind: Thomas Jefferson’s Idea of a University (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2021) and, co-authored with Trevor Burnard, Republic and Empire: Crisis, Revolution, and America’s Early Independence to be published by Yale University Press in September 2025. He is an editor of the Jeffersonian America series published by the University of Virginia Press. He coedited Old World, New World: America and Europe in the Age of Jefferson (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010) and The Founding of Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press: 2019), and The European Friends of the American Revolution (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2023).