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Jane Kamensky, Harvard History professor and director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, will be the next president of Monticello, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation announced on Oct. 17.
Monticello, the 2,500 acre plantation of President Thomas Jefferson turned museum, was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987 and is maintained by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Kamensky will begin as president on Jan. 15, 2024.
In an interview with The Crimson, Kamensky described the historical significance of her new position as the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary in 2026.
“The combination of celebration, commemoration, and reckoning that takes place at Monticello in 2026 will not only do all those things, but will show America how to do it,” she said.
Kamensky said she looks forward to engaging the American public, especially young people, in a “shifted tone of conversation about American ideals and imperfections and possibilities,” she said.
“There was probably no better place of leverage in that conversation than the presidency of Monticello,” she added.
Kamensky, who taught at Brandeis University and Brown University before joining Harvard’s History Department, described her time at Harvard as making her particularly well-positioned for a public-facing institution.
“I think the thing that I learned from students is that the present and the past are deeply connected in the minds of young Americans and that we need to think about how to make those connections authentic and fruitful,” Kamensky said.
She described Monticello as a nexus for “people who are attached to many different kinds of narratives about American beginnings — including the narrative that we were a nation founded in slavery, and the narrative that we were a nation founded in liberty.”
“It’s a place that has to confront that with every tour group, every guided group that goes through the house,” she added.
In particular, Kamensky said she sees Monticello as “a place that demonstrates that we can disagree fruitfully and that we can overcome our partisan divides.”
In order to do so, Kamensky believes that “we need multiple arguments from multiple sides on any issue to move forward to a more complete truth and a more perfect union.”
“I think universities need to be as careful about intellectual diversity as we are about economic, racial, ethnic, regional diversity. And I think on the whole we have not been,” she added.
As director of Schlesinger Library, Kamensky described the power of highly trusted institutions such as libraries and museums in shaping historical narratives.
“I think that a civil society organization like Monticello is going to be a more congenial place to do that kind of work than most corners of American higher ed at the moment,” she said.
Kamensky said she sees an opportunity for Monticello to use this trust for “frontline epistemology work with an incredibly diverse American public” and to present “even hard evidence fairly and in a way that is generous to the people who created it, but also rigorous and honest.”
According to Kamensky, Monticello — which encompasses the complex legacy of Thomas Jefferson — is an institution capable of exploring nuance.
“The core of what Monticello presents is the capacity to understand and empathize with somebody who was both great and profoundly flawed,” she said.
“I think reflective patriotism is the most historically authentic form of American patriotism,” Kamensky said. “America is born smashing idols, not creating them.”
