Cord Jefferson ’04 arrived in Williamsburg, Virginia, from Tucson, Arizona, in fall 2000 without a good idea about what he would do at William & Mary.

“I was pretty adrift when I came to college,” he shared during a discussion with W&M President Katherine A. Rowe on Saturday. Held in the Sadler Center, the Presidential Conversation was part of Homecoming & Reunion Weekend at which Jefferson — an award-winning writer and director — served as the grand marshal and celebrated his 20th class reunion. Earlier this year, he won an Academy Award for his film “American Fiction.”

What set him on his path to being William & Mary’s first alumnus to win an Academy Award?
Sociology, he told Rowe.

“It was the first class that I was really excited about doing the work, really excited about doing the reading, really excited about having the conversations in class the next day,” Jefferson said.

The range of William & Mary’s liberal arts & sciences curriculum turned out to be exactly what Jefferson needed to propel him to future success.

“It allowed me to try a bunch of different things and see what spoke to me,” he said. “When I started taking all these sociology classes — women’s studies, criminal justice, the politics of immigration — I was confronted with all these ideas that helped me see how to look at the world. It gave me my worldview.”

Putting a dream into the world

During the wide-ranging conversation, Jefferson shared insights he’s collected over two decades working in journalism, television and film. Rowe said, partly because of Jefferson’s success, she’s amended her own nickname for the university she leads.

“I’m starting to say William & Mary is the cradle of coaches and comedians,” Rowe said, alluding to such alumni as Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott ’98, Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin ’95, L.H.D. ’08; former U.S. Women’s Soccer National Team head coach Jill Ellis ’88, L.H.D. ’16, P ’27; actor and comedian Patton Oswalt ’91, D.A. ’23; and former Daily Show host Jon Stewart ’84, D.A. ’04.

Jefferson’s star rose this year on critical acclaim for “American Fiction,” which he wrote and directed. His Oscar-winning screenplay was an adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel, “Erasure.” Jefferson began writing it after a major career setback — the sudden cancellation of a TV series he’d been hired to direct and produce. That was October 2020.

“I thought, this is just not going to happen for me, because it was the second time that I had come really close to getting a show on the air,” he said.

Two months later, he picked up “Erasure” for something to read over the holidays. Within 50 pages, he knew he wanted to adapt it for the screen. He wrote a script “on spec.”

“When you write something on spec, it’s like a wish. You’re putting a dream into the world,” he said. “I wanted to see it happen, but I did it while I was also working on TV stuff, too. You always have to have seven to ten irons in the fire, in the hopes that one of them will go somewhere, just because the failure rate is so high in the industry.”

“American Fiction” tells the story of Monk, a middle-aged Black author who chafes at the commercial success of other Black authors who write stereotypical stories about Black oppression and struggle that publishers enthusiastically embrace.

“For me, the huge step was realizing that the question isn’t, why is this artist making this art that I think is bad or beneath them? The better question is, why are the people atop all these institutions, the ones who have their hands on the purse strings, who buy movies, who buy novels, why are they so interested in telling the same stories about Black people over and over and over again?”

Accept the invitation

His own experience, Jefferson said, was vastly different than his father’s. Wilson C. “Jeff” Jefferson J.D. ’72 was the second Black person to graduate from W&M Law School. Jeff Jefferson attended the Presidential Conversation and listened from the front row, laughing along with his son at his description of his childhood.

“I grew up in an interesting household, where my father was a Black Republican, my mother was a white liberal,” Jefferson said. “I saw these people with different opinions speak to each other civilly and love each other, regardless of their different opinions. I saw that there were layers to people. Every dinner was like a didactic exercise. Every breakfast was very rigorous. It’s no surprise I came to William & Mary.”

Responding to a lightning round of audience questions that could be no longer than one sentence, Jefferson covered a lot of ground in his conversation with Rowe. He cautioned students to visualize what they would consider success but also to ask themselves, if that goal went unfulfilled, would they still want to write or act or direct?

“Envision what the pinnacle of success is for you — winning a certain award, earning a certain amount of money,” he advised. “Then imagine you will never achieve that. Do you still want to do the thing? And if you don’t, then you shouldn’t do it in the first place.”

Also, he advised to never discount the importance of luck. He won an Emmy for writing episode six of “Watchmen,” a job he got because he said yes to a dinner party invitation and was seated next to the show’s creator.

“So do it for the love of the game,” Rowe summarized. “But, also: Accept the dinner party invitation. That is the thing about William & Mary. We love hanging out with people.”

After the lightning round of audience questions, Rowe turned the tables on Jefferson and asked him to keep the rest of his answers to one sentence. He mostly complied, until the question about artificial intelligence.

• Favorite spot on campus? Sunken Garden
• Best float in the parade? Philosophy Club
• Most fun actor to work with? Sterling K. Brown
• Book you are currently reading? “The Oppermanns” by Lion Feuchtwanger
• Favorite joke? He couldn’t come up with one but expressed “a profound love for Mel Brooks’ work.”
• Will he ever write a movie about William & Mary? Very possibly

He closed with a plea to use artificial intelligence to solve problems and not replace creative people’s jobs.

“My question for the people who are making AI is why aren’t all the AI programs solving cancer or climate change? Why do you want it to write screenplays?” Jefferson said.

One thing AI will never replace, Jefferson said, is the joy of human connection.

“One of the things that William & Mary does is it builds strong relationships. There’s people I haven’t seen in 20 years that, it’s just like riding a bicycle. It’s a wonderful, extraordinary thing that I’ve made friends here that are going to stay for the rest of my life.”