Over 400 students and faculty at the University of Virginia are asking the campus president to avoid quoting American Founding Father and U.S. President Thomas Jefferson in certain campus-wide emails. Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia.

Jefferson established the esteemed university in 1819, designing its curriculum, even its buildings, and remained involved with the school until his death seven years later. But apparently that, and authoring the Declaration of Independence and helping shape the U.S. Constitution, aren’t enough for some students and faculty.

According to The Cavalier Daily, Professor Noelle Hurd spearheaded the effort to stifle the words of Jefferson in response to President Teresa Sullivan’s November 9 letter about last week’s elections, which read in part:

“Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend that University of Virginia students ‘are not of ordinary significance only: they are exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country, and to rule its future enmities, its friendships and fortunes,’” Sullivan said in the email. “I encourage today’s U.Va. students to embrace that responsibility.”

Hurd, a black professor of psychology whose “overarching research interest is the promotion of healthy adolescent development among marginalized youth,” took issue with Jefferson being quoted because of his ownership of slaves.

“We would like for our administration to understand that although some members of this community may have come to this university because of Thomas Jefferson’s legacy, others of us came here in spite of it,” the letter read. “For many of us, the inclusion of Jefferson quotations in these e-mails undermines the message of unity, equality and civility that you are attempting to convey.”

The letter garnered 469 signatures — from both students and professors — before being sent out via email Nov. 11….

“The intention of the email was to start a conversation with our administration regarding ways to be more inclusive,” Hurd said in an email statement. “In the current climate, we must seize every opportunity to communicate that this university welcomes individuals from all backgrounds.”

The University President Responds

Sullivan issued a statement on Monday in response to the letter, according to The Cavalier Daily:

“I fully endorse their right to speak out on issues that matter to all of us, including the University’s complicated Jeffersonian legacy,” Sullivan said in a statement. “We remain true to our values and united in our respect for one another even as we engage in vigorous debate.”

Sullivan said quoting someone recognizes “the potency of that person’s words” and that she agrees with Jefferson’s message of University students helping to lead the country.

“Quoting Jefferson (or any historical figure) does not imply an endorsement of all the social structures and beliefs of his time,” she said.

Furthermore, said Sullivan, Jefferson endorsed a principle that helped the nation move past slavery. She noted that the university’s “founder’s most influential and most quoted words were ‘…all men are created equal,’’ she said. “Those words were inherently contradictory in an era of slavery, but because of their power, they became the fundamental expression of a more genuine equality today.”

The students and faculty appear to take issue with Jefferson because he owned hundreds of slaves in his lifetime. He also believed that blacks were inferior to whites, and that once slaves were freed they should be sent out of the newly created United States of America because of a likely war between blacks and whites.

Jefferson was an opponent of slavery who held that position throughout the Founding Fathers’ debate over the creation of the U.S. Constitution. An October 2012 article in Smithsonian Magazine, however, indicates that he changed that position in later years, as he realized the profitability of the slave trade.

Jefferson’s University of Virginia Today

Sullivan’s letter was sent one day after the university highlighted a black second-year English professor who is described by the university as a “scholar of 19^th and 20^th-century African-American literature and cultural studies…” Also on November 8, the university as a whole was recognized for its commitment to diversity, with a campus press release describing the university as “second among doctoral institutions in the area of ‘Diversity and Affordability.'”

On the same day that Sullivan’s letter was issued, the university highlighted the accomplishments of a black student-turned-NBA-star who is now the deputy executive director of the National Basketball Players Association.