Prof. Christa Dierksheide & Prof. Nick Guyatt, ‘Jefferson’s Wolf: A Founding Father’s Troubling Answer to the Problem of Slavery’ (Harvard University Press, 2026)
About this episode
Professors Christa Dierksheide and Nick Guyatt discuss their book on Thomas Jefferson's views on slavery in the context of America's founding.
“The wolf is a metaphor for race war, and we mean race war on a genocidal scale.” We release this episode at a historic moment. This Saturday, 4 July 2026, marks the semiquincentennial of America's founding. Few historians are better placed, with their complementary research expertise, to reassess the legacy of what is commemorated each year—and especially this year—as Independence Day. Our guests are Professor Christa Dierksheide (Brockman Foundation Jefferson Scholars Foundation Professor of History; Director, Center for the Study of the Age of Jefferson, University of Virginia) & Professor Nick Guyatt (Professor of History, Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge). They are the co-authors of Jefferson’s Wolf: A Founding Father’s Troubling Answer to the Problem of Slavery (Harvard University Press, 2026). Their book takes its title from a letter (1820) in which Thomas Jefferson famously described the nation as holding slavery like "a wolf by its ear....and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.” For Dierksheide and Guyatt, that metaphor points to something much larger than Jefferson's personal anxieties as an enslaver. It reveals a sustained effort…
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