MACON – Mercer University's Thomas C. and Ramona E. McDonald Center for America's Founding Principles will welcome Dr. Peter Onuf for a lecture, titled “Jefferson's Democratic Constitutionalism,” Nov. 9 at 6 p.m.
The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place in the Presidents Dining Room inside the University Center on the Macon campus.
“We're really excited to be able to bring to campus one of the world's leading scholars of Thomas Jefferson,” said Dr. Will R. Jordan, associate professor of political science and co-director of the McDonald Center. “In these turbulent political times, it will be very interesting to consider Jefferson's wildly different vision of how a democracy should function.”
Dr. Onuf is Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History, Emeritus, at the University of Virginia, where he has taught for more than 20 years.
A leading scholar of Jefferson and the early American republic, Dr. Onuf has written extensively on sectionalism, federalism and political economy, with a particular emphasis on the political thought of Jefferson. He is author, co-author and editor of numerous books, including Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood, The Mind of Thomas Jefferson, and Jeffersonian Legacies.
Dr. Onuf is a senior fellow at Monticello's Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. He also co-hosts the weekly public radio program and podcast “Backstory with the American History Guys.”
The McDonald Center for America's Founding Principles supplements Mercer's liberal arts program with a redoubled commitment to the foundational texts and ideas that have shaped Western Civilization and the American political order.
The Center's programming includes the annual A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas, faculty-student reading groups, a general education course on America's Founding Principles, summer Great Books programs for high school teachers and students, and undergraduate research fellowships.
