A&S Marks Bicentennial Anniversary of UVA's First Classes with Rotunda Lecture

The bicentennial anniversary of the first classes taught at the University of Virginia has inspired a number of celebrations on Grounds this month. Kicking off a year-long series of events commemorating 200 years of classes, the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences hosted a lecture on the founding of UVA by professor Andrew O’Shaughnessy, an award-winning author and internationally acclaimed expert on early American history.  

On March 7, 200 years to the day from when the University opened for that inaugural class, an audience of current students, faculty and community members nearly filled Rotunda’s Dome Room for an evening lecture on the founding of UVA by professor Andrew O’Shaughnessy, an award-winning author and internationally acclaimed expert on early American history. 

The lecture was spearheaded by the student-led UVA History Club in cooperation with the College. In addition to serving as the first of Arts & Sciences’ bicentennial events, it provided an opportunity to reflect on what lies ahead, said Christa Acampora, Buckner W. Clay Professor of Philosophy and dean of Arts & Sciences. 

“This is how I think about being good stewards of our cultural and historical endowments,” Acampora said in her introductory remarks. “We will seize this bicentennial year as an opportunity for reflection on our many legacies and our opportunities for the future, taking a leadership position on why the liberal arts and sciences matter and why human intelligence matters even more today at a time when artificial intelligence is increasingly more capable of augmenting and directing human activity.” 

Earlier in her remarks, Acampora acknowledged how Jefferson’s affirmation of the “illimitable freedom of the human mind” can be both inspiring and humbling. Inspiring because it calls to mind boundless possibility and humbling, Acampora said, “because if it is truly illimitable, then whenever we think we’ve achieved something great, reached some significant goal ... then there will always be something more waiting ahead of us.” 

That’s also true of the conception of the Academical Village, Acampora said.  

“To regard the mind as ‘illimitable’ challenges us to expand our thinking, to expand our understanding of who is included in that community,” she said. “The legacies of this vision and the generations of those who have walked and worked these Grounds before us and made life at the University possible serve as sources of constant inspiration.”  

An Engaged and Inspired Creator 

The subject of O’Shaughnessy’s lecture, which inspired his most recent book, Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind: Thomas Jefferson’s Idea of a University, was Jefferson’s conception of the “illimitable” at the heart of his vision for the University.   

Among the most notable things about the creation of the University of Virginia said O’Shaughnessy, a history professor who has also served as vice president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and the Saunders Director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, was the amount of energy and attention Jefferson devoted to its founding, from its architectural design and construction to its curriculum and recruitment of top faculty. 

“The revelation for me writing this book was that I cannot think of any head of state in history who spent so long conceiving what a university should be and developing that idea, implementing that idea, and creating a university and then micromanaging every aspect of it,” O’Shaughnessy began.  

One could point also to the keen interest of Frederick the Great in developing university education, but ultimately, O'Shaughnessy said, the Prussian monarch's interest was in creating university graduates who would serve to strengthen the state and make it that much more powerful.  

Jefferson, on the other hand, "was looking for graduates who would question the state and participate in the positive role in the system of government,” O’Shaughnessy said.  

At the same time, Jefferson recognized that the University could not extricate itself from what he termed “the deplorable entanglement” of slavery, a significant part of its story, O'Shaughnessy added. Crediting the work of UVA vice provost Louis P. Nelson, student researchers and others who helped to unearth that part of the University’s story, O’Shaughnessy discussed the academic innovations to higher education introduced by Jefferson. 

From the beginning, Jefferson intended for UVA to be a secular university, O’Shaughnessy said. According to the final report for its creation, a dedicated room in the Rotunda could be used occasionally for religious meetings by a rotating selection of non-denominational groups, but Jefferson saw to it that that was not implemented while he was alive, as he insisted that any church activities should be off Grounds. 

From the French system of education, Jefferson took the idea of offering elective courses that allow students to choose their subjects of study. As an avowed bibliophile, Jefferson took great care in designing a curriculum featuring technical subjects in what would now be called STEM fields, O’Shaughnessy said, but not to the exclusion of the study of Anglo-Saxon and art subjects. 

“This was one of the first universities to teach science, to teach economics and to offer a broad series of disciplines,” O’Shaughnessy said. “And Jefferson was clever in calling it a university. Most [schools at that time] were called “colleges.” He chose “university” deliberately because they were going to teach everything available. … This notion of having ‘electives’ has become one of the leading features of American higher education.” 

O’Shaughnessy also lauded Jefferson’s intention to build a scholarly community.  

“A key part of the concept of the university was the Academical Village. It should be a community where intellectual exchanges thrive between faculty and students,” said O’Shaughnessy, mentioning that too many universities today view their students as clients, with the focus on teaching getting lost. 

“This university seems to me, like Oxford and like Princeton, exists among a small group that still do major research and graduate work while also taking undergraduate teaching very seriously,” O’Shaughnessy said. 

O’Shaughnessy concluded by saying Jefferson understood, in a way that many do not today, that future generations would be critical of him and the limitations of what he created in UVA.  

“Jefferson understood that every generation after a while does not meet with the approval of their grandchildren and great grandchildren because they seem to have got it wrong,” O’Shaughnessy said. “But [Jefferson] said, as long as you have universities in which people use reason and rationality and facts and truth, the main purpose is to improve our society.  

“And when we criticize him and our predecessors as we should do," O’Shaughnessy added, “We should also criticize ourselves and ask, 'How do we make changes for the better?'”