Why History Matters: Race and National Identity

Dr. Onuf will reflect on the importance of history in the era of partisan political polarization and 'fake news.' Through better understanding the past's complexity we can discover who we have been, who we are, and who we are becoming. Thomas Jefferson has served as a particularly controversial--and therefore particularly important--touchstone in the ongoing construction of American national identity. About the Lecturer: Peter S. Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History Emeritus, University of Virginia, was trained as a colonial American historian at Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with Jack P. Greene. He is an expert in the history of the American founding era and the early republic, with particular interest in democracy, federalism, political economy, geopolitics, and race. His most recent work focuses on the political thought of Thomas Jefferson.