Most universities experience tense relationships among students, faculty, and administrators. Many schools welcome this conflict as an integral part of university life. Not so at Brigham Young University. The school's policies are approved by BYU's board of trustees, a panel that includes the president and other high-ranking officials of the school's sponsoring organization, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — men revered as prophets by church members (commonly known as LDS or Mormons).
How do students challenge the status quo in an environment shaped by their religious leaders? People who have grown up in the church are familiar with this statement from The Doctrine and Covenants, a standard Mormon book of scripture: "The glory of God is intelligence." The church encourages gaining knowledge, including spiritual knowledge attained through personal revelation. Thus many students arrive at BYU already thinking for themselves, only to encounter BYU's stifling policies on dissent and the expression of unorthodox opinions.
The Lord's University: Freedom and Authority at BYU offers a history of Mormon attitudes toward education, using BYU's past few decades as a case study. It traces the development of the school's positions on feminism, evolution, student appearance, the school newspaper, and other turbulent topics.
This book particularly interests me because several chapters focus on controversies that took place while I attended BYU, during the 1990-91 school year and again from 1994 through 1997. These include the firings of feminist English professors Cecelia Konchar Farr and Gail Turley Houston and anthropology professor David Knowlton, as well as the investigation and subsequent resignation of English teacher Brian Evenson.
Surrounding these high-profile dismissals were cases of censorship of the official student newspaper, The Daily Universe, and investigations of contributors to the unofficial, off-campus student newspaper, The Student Review. The Lord's University authors Bryan Waterman and Brian Kagel are particularly qualified to document conflict surrounding BYU's student media because they served as editors of the Review and the Universe, respectively.
I also worked for both of these papers in a variety of positions — the Review during my freshman year, 1990-91, and again in late 1996, and the Universe from 1994 through 1996. Despite my involvement in student journalism, I was unable to stand firmly on any side of the academic freedom controversies erupting around me. As an ardent supporter of the First Amendment and John Stuart Mill's concept of the marketplace of ideas, I favored free speech and the unrestricted flow of ideas, even though I often disagreed with some of the professors who were fired or were under investigation. On one hand, I didn't agree with the university's actions in firing and intimidating these teachers. But on the other hand, I believed private organizations have a fundamental right to hire or fire whoever they want, for any reason, whether the law allows them to or not. This put me in the awkward position of defending both the intellectual freedom of professors whose views I disagreed with, and the university's right to fire them, even though I disagreed with the university's doing so.
Waterman and Kagel begin their book with historical chapters on Mormon education, the development of feminism at BYU, the evolution of the student newspapers, and the student dress and grooming standards, providing essential background information for understanding later controversies at BYU. They point out that Mormon education is based on the church's rejection of Protestant authority in the 19th century, setting itself "in opposition to 'the world' in education, theology, government, economics, and eventually marriage patterns — and [this] opposition implied a Mormon superiority. . . . At the same time, however, Mormonism — and especially its founder Joseph Smith — yearned for recognition and legitimation from the very culture it so fiercely opposed." Waterman and Kagel view subsequent decades of BYU policy through this lens, portraying a university that "on one hand . . . pined for the approval of the American mainstream; on the other, it wants to maintain that legitimacy while preserving the authority of church leaders to maintain doctrinal purity."
This dichotomy is evident to students, who follow a set of dress and grooming standards primarily left over from the 1950s. As political unrest escalated throughout the 1960s, BYU's president, Ernest Wilkinson, gradually developed an appearance code that first discouraged, then forbade, long hair and beards for men, and short skirts, pants and the "no-bra look" for women. Wilkinson had a set idea of what he didn't want at the school. "Certain kinds of people who seemed to be oddballs and had no regard for the culture or responsibilities of a civilized people were first characterized as 'deadbeats' and are now referred to as 'beatniks.' There is no place at BYU for the grimy, sandaled, tight-fitted, ragged-levi beatnik. If any appear on campus, we intend to 'tick them off.'" Wilkinson also told students "we want no 'go-go girls' nor their pseudo-sophisticated friends, nor will we tolerate any 'surfers.'"
The authors note Wilkinson's evident anti-California cultural bias "that probably reflected the increase at BYU of California students (no doubt too highly represented, in Wilkinson's view, among troublemakers) as well as the increasingly notorious activities of Berkeley students." BYU sought to avoid even the appearance of political dissent.
BYU's appearance standards have changed over the years. Women were allowed to wear pants in recreational areas beginning in 1967, and universally in 1971, although denim privileges were still several years away. Perhaps they changed because so many students ignored them: "A BYU Survey Research Center study conducted in March [1971] revealed that almost 40 percent of the students violated dress and grooming standards in some way, and that over 85 percent of that group did so knowingly."
Despite the changes, the university designed appearance standards to make BYU an example to the rest of the world of how university students should look. This emphasis on surface factors like appearance is telling — BYU has always striven to maintain its image, even at the expense of the freedom of student inquiry: freedom of the press, academic freedom and even at times the right to assemble.
The biggest academic freedom conflicts at BYU have revolved around feminism. This is a little surprising in a historical context, since the church, in its early years, had a comparatively progressive attitude toward women in higher education. However, even though the church has encouraged women to attend college, it always insisted that "their divinely ordained role is that of mother," and couched its encouragement of women's education in the value it would hold for men. Former BYU president Dallin Oaks echoed the thoughts of the church's president when he said in 1975: "Some have observed that the mother's vital teaching responsibility makes it even more important to have educated mothers than to have educated fathers. 'When you teach a boy, you are just teaching another individual,' President Harold B. Lee declared, 'but when you teach a woman or a girl, you are teaching a whole family.'"
For decades, the church's policy of encouraging women to stay at home meant that most of the women hired were either unmarried or non-Mormon. When BYU started a new nursing school in 1954, "the school survived only because most of its posts were filled by non-Mormons; all of the graduate degree holders on its faculty were non-LDS. Over time the program was able to carry itself with Mormons gradually joining the faculty, but the school's initial message was clear: church leaders considered it more important for Mormon women to stay home than for BYU faculty to be LDS."
As the feminist movement grew stronger and more radical throughout the 1960s and '70s, BYU and the church maintained strident opposition to feminist-supported legislation like the Equal Rights Amendment and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. Despite counsel from church leaders "that in the employment and compensation of women — as in all other matters — you give careful observance to the requirements of the law," Dallin Oaks announced "BYU's unwillingness, to comply with six of Title IX's regulations" largely due to concerns about gender-separated housing and student appearance. The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare "assured BYU over the next four years that the government would not interfere with limitations imposed by private institutions for religious reasons."
Feminism at BYU was on shaky ground, and the authors note that "Mormon opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment . . . would drive feminism in Provo underground for nearly a decade." Feminism resurged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, largely starting with the formation of a feminist campus club in 1988, named VOICE in 1989. Cecelia Konchar Farr, who had earned her master's degree at BYU in the mid-1980s, became one of VOICE's faculty advisors in 1990. When BYU advised that women be accompanied by men while walking on campus at night because of recent violent incidents against women, VOICE ridiculed the advice. It gained media attention by posting satirical flyers all over campus, stating that men would no longer be allowed to walk on campus at night unless accompanied by at least two women, "to demonstrate that they are not threatening." Campus staff tore down the posters, triggering a protest by over 400 students.
Farr's activities generated increasing hostility at the school, including her participation in a pro-choice rally and VOICE's "Take Back the Night" demonstrations. She claimed, to the outrage of many conservative church members, that she was "a conservative and believing Mormon and also . . . a committed feminist." She was eventually dismissed, triggering more student protests.
Gail Houston, another feminist English professor, was warned before her third-year review to modify her "feminist orientation and advocacy," and was eventually placed on provisional status for a year until the school discontinued its provisional category, returning her to full status. The review cited several offenses, such as complaints from students that her classes were too politicized, with which she had not been confronted previously. She was fired, with much controversy, at her sixth-year review in 1996. According to BYU, Houston had "engaged in a pattern of publicly contradicting fundamental Church doctrine and deliberately attacking the Church." As with Farr, many of her students and colleagues were baffled by these claims, believing that the school fired her for her political views."
Others were investigated for different reasons. BYU fired anthropology instructor David Knowlton at the same time as Farr, following a controversy surrounding a paper by Knowlton on why Mormon missionaries made useful targets for Latin American guerrillas. Church leaders released a statement "warning against presentations that 'jeopardize the effectiveness or safety of our missionaries."' Despite the critical stance many in the church took toward Knowlton's study, he probably wouldn't have been fired for this alone had he not publicly disputed the critics of his paper.
Brian Evenson, another member of the English department, left BYU voluntarily after a lengthy investigation of a book of short stories he published before he was hired. I didn't know Evenson personally, but his harassment hit closest to home for me. I read his nationally-acclaimed book, Altmann's Tongue, months before the university expressed any concern about its content. Evenson was one of only two Mormon fiction writers whose work excited me and inspired my own attempts at writing — and now he was under attack for his fiction.
An anonymous student note triggered the investigation, decrying the book's ostensible graphic violence and amorality. Evenson acknowledged "that Altmann's Tongue is one of the most difficult books ever written by a Mormon . . . but I also think it is one of the most uncompromisingly moral books as well, and many people have agreed." He saw his fiction as a realistic portrayal of evil and violence that countered glamorized depictions seen elsewhere. School officials disagreed. After continual pressure, Evenson announced in 1995 that "he was taking a year's leave from school for a position at Oklahoma State University. A year later he resigned when the position there became permanent." Anonymous notes to church leaders have become a fairly common occurrence at BYU, leading to the fear among some faculty members that they may be attacked for misunderstandings without having an adequate opportunity to defend themselves.
Waterman's and Kagel's account of censorship on the campus newspaper in The Lord's University is true to my own experience. In addition to administrative intervention, the Universe practices intense self-censorship, excising most controversial opinions (and sometimes entire topics) before going to press, often due to fear of reprisal:
The ever-present issue for the Universe . . . is censorship. Lorin Wheelright, overseeing the Universe under Dallin Oaks, once commented that "we control so much of the environment [at BYU] . . . that the temptation to manipulate the news is beyond human capacity to resist." He added, though, that administrators needed to exercise patience with young journalists, unless the school was openly willing to sponsor "a house-organ polyana [sic] sheet in which sweetness and light will be so glaring that we will die of ennui if not from blind staggers or a sour stomach."
On the other hand, the off-campus Student Review, because of its student ownership, was not subject to official censorship. But it is banned from campus distribution. BYU also forbids campus-owned organizations, such as the BYU Bookstore, from advertising in the Review. This, combined with an adversarial relationship with the Universe, has caused the independent paper editorial and financial strains over the years, leading students almost to the point of abandoning production several times. The authors' coverage of BYU's newspapers is the topic they are most qualified to discuss, but here they also show a bias. For example, here is a paragraph discussing a student who was fired by the Universe after covertly working for both newspapers simultaneously:
Political science student Russell Fox . . . had been involved with the Review and the Universe before accepting a paid position with the latter in the summer of 1992. He did a good job as city editor, and that fall the position of political editor was created for him. What the Universe did not know was that at the same time Fox was also a volunteer editor at the Review — under the pseudonym Michael Ho. While faculty advisors and Fox had had a few mild run-ins during the semester, it was not until election day itself — as Fox was organizing the complicated network of reporters, photographers, and copy editors who would be putting together the Universe's coverage — that [Universe faculty advisor John] Gholdston learned of Fox's secret identity. Fox was fired on the spot and Universe editor-in-chief David Farnworth and others assumed control of the effort.
Waterman and Kagel fail to mention that Gholdston learned of Fox's dual affiliation on election night because Fox left the Universe newsroom to attend a Review staff meeting that evening — arguably the most important evening of the semester for a political editor. In that instance, a conflict of interest was clear — but the authors' view of Fox as a good guy causes them to leave out his responsibility for the situation.
But in all, Waterman and Kagel have captured the essence of the BYU experience for those students and faculty members who don't maintain as strict an orthodoxy as the administration would prefer. In a church of ten million people, views differing from the norm will always pose a problem:
John M. Armstrong, a philosophy student, wrote that one serious problem with the academic freedom document was that it assumed there is a set of values that all LDS people have in common. The list of fundamental LDS values and doctrines is shorter for some people than it is for others, he argued. "It seems inevitable that, in the coming years, those with the long lists will want all others to adhere to their lists." Armstrong wrote that when others "do not adhere, and the peer review process upholds the opinions of the so-called 'rebel,' there is nothing to stop those people with the long lists from contacting their General Authority friends as they have done historically in an effort to squelch the infidel."
Most BYU students don't share these concerns, content instead to follow the administration's cues and at times ridicule those who question school policy. Even so, the church's attitude of maintaining such strict orthodoxy at its college is somewhat perplexing, considering that church leaders encourage students to attend college all over the world. In the early 1990s particularly, church leaders emphasized that college-age Mormons shouldn't set their hearts on attending BYU, instead encouraging them to attend other schools, particularly local colleges and universities, while maintaining church activity and attending church-sponsored Institute courses (the equivalent of the religion classes taught at BYU).
This acknowledgment that Mormon students can enjoy successful, faithful educational experiences at secular schools stands in sharp contrast to BYU policies. If it's OK for Mormon students to gain exposure to controversial and secular ideas and environments elsewhere, why are church leaders so apprehensive about students' exposure to these things if they happen to attend school in Provo? One of the most important functions of a university is to expose students to new ideas and concepts, to challenge and stimulate, to provoke and sometimes disturb. With such a large support base in place, Provo seems to me to be the safest place for Mormon students to confront the unfamiliar. At any rate, surely the church is strong enough to manage campus tension without squelching dissent. After all, many other universities do, even those that don't claim to be "the Lord's University."