As you begin a new year of studies, I have you very much on my mind and in my heart. This moment in our history is challenging us to search our souls and to choose between justice and prejudice, violence and peace, reason and emotion. The media have recently been flashing before our eyes the images of angry protests across our nation. When the city officials of Charlottesville, Va., the hometown of Thomas Jefferson, decided to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a downtown park, they ignited a nationwide argument about the propriety of honoring heroes of the South’s confederate past. As a result of this controversy, a statue of Lee no longer towers over the city of New Orleans. And the limestone, almost life-size image of Lee no longer graces the entrance to the Chapel of Duke University in Durham, N.C.