Mr. Jefferson’s Salon Series

Explore the challenges, benefits and changing tenor of America’s journalistic landscape, from the establishment of a free press to the disparagement of “fake news”—issues that have vexed our nation’s leaders both in Jefferson’s time and today.

Join John Ragosta, award-winning author and visiting assistant professor of history at Randolph College, as he moderates our discussion with Dr. Jeffrey Herbst, president and CEO of the Newseum and the Newseum Institute, and Caroline Glickman, managing editor of The News & Advance in Lynchburg. Our guests will gather in the dining room of Mr. Jefferson’s retreat house for a lively conversation on the history and evolving nature of the often stormy, always intriguing relationship between America’s government and a free press.

A reception of wine and light appetizers will follow. Reservations are suggested due to limited space inside the house and can be made by purchasing tickets below or by calling the Museum Shop at 434.534.8120.

About the speakers

John Ragosta (Moderator), a visiting assistant professor of history at Randolph College, is a historian, lawyer, and award-winning author. He has taught law and history at the University of Virginia, George Washington University, Oberlin, Hamilton, and Randolph Colleges. Dr. Ragosta has held fellowships at the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello and is currently a fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

He authored Religious Freedom: Jefferson’s Legacy, America’s Creed, released in 2013 by the University of Virginia Press, and Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia’s Religious Dissenters Helped to Win the American Revolution & Secured Religious Liberty from Oxford University Press in 2010. His most recent book, Patrick Henry: Proclaiming a Revolution, will be released by Routledge Press in August 2016.

Before returning to academia, Dr. Ragosta was an international trade and litigation partner at Dewey Ballantine LLP. Ragosta is also a beekeeper.

Dr. Jeffrey Herbst is president and CEO of the Newseum and the Newseum Institute. From 2010 to 2015, he was president of Colgate University. Previously, he served as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and professor of political science at Miami University in Ohio. For eighteen years he taught at Princeton University, where he also earned his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in 1983. Herbst earned a master’s degree from Yale University in 1985 and a doctorate in 1987, also from Yale.

He is the author of the award-winning “States and Power in Africa” and, with co-author Greg Mills, “Africa’s Third Liberation” and the just-published “How South Africa Works and Must Do Better.” In addition to many books and articles, he has published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other papers across the world.

Caroline Glickman is the Managing Editor of The (Lynchburg) News & Advance. She has spent her career in newspapers since graduating from Syracuse University in 1981. She worked at The Charlotte Observer for 17 years before coming to The News & Advance in 2004 as the paper’s City Editor. She has been the Managing Editor since 2013.