I’m part of a group that keeps an eye on how our country’s history is being treated. Or sadly, more accurately, how it’s being abused. One area we monitor is Thomas Jefferson’s Legacy and how it’s treated at his home in Monticello. Too many of our historic sites have been hijacked by The Radical Left, often by some combination of having Radicals gradually take over their governing boards and receiving grants from Leftist foundations (such as The Mellon Foundation commissioning the defiling of Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms). So when I saw the story of a recent power struggle at Monticello, I was curious if this was some Disney-esque power struggle of the Radicals vs. the Normals.
When Harvard historian and renowned Thomas Jefferson scholar Annette Gordon-Reed abruptly resigned from the board of the nonprofit organization that owns and operates the Founding Father’s Monticello estate-turned-museum weeks ago, academics, donors, visitors, neighbors and the curious had one burning question:
Why?
Since then, sources have told The Daily Progress that Gordon-Reed left in protest over decisions made by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s new president, fellow Harvard professor Jane Kamensky.
Gordon-Reed — whose extensive list of credentials as a celebrated Jefferson scholar includes a Pulitzer Prize for one of her books, “The Hemingses of Monticello” — was concerned by personnel decisions made by the new leadership.
More specifically, sources say it had to do with Frank Cogliano, a University of Edinburgh professor and the interim director of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello.
“I think Cogliano is in a line of scholarship that probably Annette felt loyal to and supportive of,” one person said.
You can read the whole thing, but where I was interested was to see the backgrounds of the board members for their Leftist Bona Fides, so let’s look at all of the players mentioned in the article:
- Annette Gordon-Reed: Wrote The Hemingses of Monticello. Yes, she was lauded for writing a book perpetuating the Fractured Fairy Tale that Hemmings had children with Thomas Jefferson. Don’t feel bad if you fell for this myth, it was only fairly recently that I learned about the falsehood of this story. Next!
- Jane Kamensky – Nothing immediately jumps out, but I do see that she’s been supported by extremist organizations such as the Mellon Foundation and The Radcliffe Institute. And while she does not have a Twitter feed, her name gets mentioned in Leftist circles, including what Chris Plante brilliantly dubbed “The Pound Me Too Movement” (based on what we called the “#” on a phone dial). While there’s no smoking gun (at least not as far as I was interested in digging), safe to say she’s not hanging with the good guys.
- Frank Cogliano – Interim Director, and I see nothing woke in any of his feeds or bio. I also learned from his Twitter feed that he’s a baseball fan. Given that all I see is actual academic study, I’m assuming he’s what the usually uncool kids call “on the right side of history.”
As you read the article and from what I’ve seen, there is no smoking gun that makes for great drama. At the end of the day it looks like there was bad blood over the outcome of the race between Kamensky and Cogliano for permanent Director of the Center. We’ll probably never know exactly what happened behind the scenes, but given the importance of defending our history against the Radical Left’s collective Year Zero efforts to destroy American history, we should be concerned about lack of stability on the Monticello Board. Or maybe it’s an opportunity to get some Normals to backfill any departures?
Brother Bob is no longer on Facebook (although you can see his archives there), and is back on Twitter again, but is ramping up on Minds and Gab, and has his biggest presence on MeWe.
Cross posted at Flopping Aces
<!– Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog
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