Thomas Jefferson remains America’s most enigmatic Founder and its essentially contested statesman. The Department of Political Science celebrated Constitution Day 2014 by hosting a presentation last September by two of the world’s most prominent Jefferson scholars, Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter Onuf, based on their forthcoming book, The Most Blessed of Patriarchs: The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson.
Constitution Day recognizes the adoption of the US Constitution and those who have become US citizens. It is widely observed September 17, the day the US Constitution was signed at the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
Annette Gordon-Reed is the winner of a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School, and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Peter Onuf is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History, Emeritus, at the University of Virginia, Senior Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, and co-host of the weekly public radio program and podcast Backstory with the American History Guys.
“Peter Onuf and Annette Gordon- Reed are among our nation's most brilliant and accomplished intellectuals,” said Alan Gibson, CSU Chico political science professor. “Through their writing and teaching, they have permanently changed the landscape of Jefferson studies, giving us a Jefferson who is flawed and finally approachable, but no less important to our national heritage.”
The Constitution Day event was sponsored by the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean Eddie Vela of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, the Department of Political Science, the Office of Civic Engagement, and the Pi Sigma Alpha Political Science Honor Society.