What is all thefuss about academicfreedom at BW? An on-campus observer gives a no-holds-barred reaction. "CLIPPEDAND CONTROLLED" A CONTEMPORARY LOOK AT BYU By Anonymous Over the lastfew years, BW has had well-documented conpicts On 8 February 1996, soon after taking office, BYU over academic freedom-Evenson's violent fiction, the Knowl ton, President Menill Bateman announced that: Fa1.t; and Houston firings. Many less-publicized stories of the The commissioner [of Church Education] will annu- policing of a theological correctness circulate around campw- ally write a letter to the ecclesiastical leader of each faithful, tenure-track candidates being rejectedfor a past period of Church member employed at BYU and all other Church inactivity or for using Marxist, feminist, or postmodern Church Educational System entities, asking whether methodologies; faculty being "called in" for statements made in the person is currently eligible for a recommend. As public; other respectedfaculty being encouraged to leave the univer- in the past, a reasonable but limited time may be al- sity because they don'tfit in with its direction. So it should come as lowed when needed to restore eligibility no surprise thatfaculty and staff morale is low-even the universi- SUNSTONErecently reported on the response to the most re- ty's sew-study and the Northwest Accreditation Association have re- cent change ("Annual Worthiness Review Now Required for cently commented on it. All BYU Faculty, SUNSTONE, June 1996). Along with these suc- People unfamiliar with these current conditions often ask ij cessive changes in contracts, there have been other new docu- things really are all that d#erent-after all, hasn't BYU always had ments codifying university procedures, including the academicfreedom problems? Well, while there have always been in- "Statement on Academic Freedom at BYU April 1, 1993" (the cidents offaculty censorship, the systematic nature of the current date struck some as ominous), one section of which lays out campaign is dgerent and does seem designed to change the overall things faculty are not free to do while employed at BYU: direction of the university-to one of super-orthodoxy without any REASONABLE LIMITATIONS: It follows that the exercise tolerancefor discussion ofdwering religious viewpoints. In the essay of individual and institutional academic freedom thatfollows, titled after the grounds crew mission statement charge must be a matter of reasonable limitations. In general, to keep the campus "clipped and controlled," one faculty member at BW a limitation is reasonable when the faculty be- shares herhis perspective of how BWis now doing the same to the havior or expression SERIOUSLY AND ADVERSELY af- faculty. fects the University mission or the Church. Examples would include expression with students or INTRODUCTION in public that: "When I leave BYLJ,1 wish to do so on my own terms." contradicts or opposes, rather than analyzes or dis- cusses, fundamental Church doctrine or policy; HREE TIMES IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS, FACULTY deliberately attacks or derides the Church or its at Brigham Young University have found unannounced general leaders; or T changes in their contracts: violates the Honor Code because the expression is 1992 contracts required for the first time that "Faculty dishonest, illegal, unchaste, profane, or unduly who are members of BYU'S sponsoring Church also ac- disrespectful of others. cept the spiritual and temporal expectations of whole- . The ultimate responsibility to determine harm to hearted Church membership." the University mission or the Church, however, re- 1993 contracts tightened the requirement: "LDSfaculty mains vested in the University's governing bodies- also accept as a condition of employment the standards including the University president and central admin- of conduct consistent with qualifying for temple privi- istration and, finally, the Board of Trustees. leges." These changes in documents governing faculty belief and be- SEPTEMBER 1996 PAGE 61 SUNSTONE havior at BYU are facts. Their positive and/or negative effect on In 1992 the administration refused to hire candi- the university is a matter of interpretation. What follows is a date Barbara Bishop for a faculty appointment in the sketchy, anecdotal chronicle and commentary, a countemeight English Department, although she was the choice of to the one-sided accounts BYU'S office of public relations pre- the section, [department] chair, and college dean for sents to the public. This by no means pretends to be an ex- the position and had the full support of her local ec- haustive chronicle of every incident, but it does provide a clesiastical leaders. At the time she even headed the sense of the on-going culture wars at BYU.It is drawn from Primary in her ward. The reason the administration many sources, each of which has its own context, both broader gave for not approving her hire was that 17 faculty and more specific than the one I provide. I am especially in- members in the English Department (of a faculty of debted to the work done by Bryan Waterman and Brian Kagel 75) did not vote in favor of hiring her. Bishop's schol- on BYU ("The Lord's University: Freedom and Authority at arship dealt with the works of African American Brigham Young University, 1985-1995," book manuscript), to writer Zora Neal Hurston and other American women the many documents available on the web site of the BYU writers. chapter of the American Association of University Professors In 1992, the LDS Church celebrated the sesquicen- (http://acsl.~~~.edu/-rushforths/aaup.html),to thoughtful tennial of the Relief Society In conjunction with that analyses of the directions BYU is taking by Omar Kadar ("Free celebration, Professor Marie Comwall, then the head Expression: The LDS Church and Brigham Young University," of the BYU Women's Research Institute, organized a Dialogue: A journal of Mormon Thought, 26:3 [fall 1993]),Scott scholarly conference on the Relief Society Because Abbott ("One Lord, One Faith, Two Universities: Tensions speakers at that conference criticized as well as Between Religion' and Thought' at BYU," SUNSTONE,Sept. praised the Relief Society, Professor Comwall was 1992), Paul Richards ("Academic Freedom at BYU: An called in and censured by University Provost Bruce Administrator's Perspective," remarks delivered 16 September Hafen for planning this conference and canylng it 1993 at a B. H. Roberts Society meeting in Salt Lake City), and out. others in the pages of SUNSTONE,Dialogue, Student Review, and In 1992, the organizing committee of the BYU elsewhere, and to interviews with many members of the BYU Women's Conference chose as the keynote speaker for faculty and administration. I, too, am an employee of BYU. I the 1993 conference Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, faithful write this critique out of a sense of loyalty and while feeling a Mormon woman, recent Pulitzer Prize-winning au- profound loss. As late as four or five years ago, BYU was still thor of A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, and moving steadily to fulfill its unique promise as a Mormon uni- winner of a MacArthur Grant. Brigham Young versity That momentum has been squandered. Because Bw's University's board of trustees did not approve Ulrich administration has been active in punishing the messengers to be a speaker for the women's conference. Although who point out stages of the university's demise, I write anony- both she and her ecclesiastical leaders tried to find out mously, feeling both cowardly and wise as I do so (cowardly, why she was not approved, she was never given a because others at equal risk have spoken out publicly; wise, reason. Nonetheless, the Church Museum of Art and because when I leave BYU I wish to do so on my own terms). History continued to display a copy of Ulrich's Pulitzer Prize in its display on the Relief Society A BIAS AGAINST WOMEN'S STUDIES In 1993, the board of trustees fired the chair of the It's okay to teach aboutfeminism but not to advocate it. Bw women's conference, Carol Lee Hawkins, from her position, even though during the six years she di- UNIVERSITY is complex, and it is difficult to know rected the conference, attendance almost doubled where to begin this story. Perhaps the following docu- and the conference received an approval rating from ment on the treatment of women at BYU,prepared by participants who completed the exit questionnaire of a committee of the BYU chapter of the AAUP during the winter over 90 percent. To explain the firing, the Board sug- semester of 1996 and available on its web site, presents the gested only that a change of assignment was a good range of problems as well as anything else. thing from time to time, as if this position were a Church assignment rather than a paid university ad- March 1996 ministrative position and Hawkins's employment. Just LIMITATIONS ON THE ACADEMIC FREEDOM OF after Carol Lee Hawkins was fired, a group of wom- WOMEN AT BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY en's studies faculty from across the university met Brigham Young University has a history of sup- with University Provost Bruce Hafen and asked him pressing scholarship and artistic expressions repre- about that action. He answered that Hawkins had not senting the experience of women. The following list been fired, that she had indicated that she wanted a provides examples of some of the ways in which uni- change in assignment, and that she was just moving versity officials have acted over the past several years to another position in the university Hafen did to silence women faculty and staff and suppress their nothing to help Hawkins secure another position. scholarship. In the summer of 1993 Provost Bruce Hafen tried PAGE 62 SEPTEMBER 1996 SUNSTONE to keep faithful Mormon woman and historian Brigham Young University under those circum- Claudia Bushman from speaking in a week-long fac- stances.