Dr Sara Patterson discusses the tension between academic freedom and professors denied BYU tenure. While many focus on just the September Six, Dr Sara Patterson thinks some others should be included in the story. She discusses the dismissal of several BYU professors who were let go for from BYU not being orthodox enough. We’ll discuss the stories of David Wright, Ceclia Conchar Farr, David Knowlton, and others. It can be difficult to get BYU tenure. Check out our conversation…
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Untold Story of David Wright/BYU Tenure
Interview
GT 15:53 Okay, so it’s interesting. I always wonder, Lynne Whitesides is another one. She was disfellowshipped, never excommunicated.
Sara 16:02 Yeah.
GT 16:03 And I even asked her I’m like, they went after Margaret, seven years later. Why are you still a member? I mean, she doesn’t go to church.
Sara 16:12 Right.
GT 16:12 She’s not, I wouldn’t even call her believer at all.
Sara 16:15 Right.
GT 16:15 Whereas, Margaret still is.
Sara 16:17 Well, I think Lynne’s a different type of believer. You know, she’s moved away from the church totally.
GT 16:21 Yeah, well she’s moved away from Christianity.
Sara 16:23 Yeah. And I think she fairly quickly came to view her dis-fellowship-ment as freedom or liberation.
GT 16:34 Yeah, she definitely did.
Sara 16:36 From and felt like she found a much more fulfilling spiritual life outside of the institution.
GT 16:44 So it was just interesting. Quinn lost or resigned from his job, but under pressure. So I’m going to say, to me, I treat that as a loss.
Sara 16:54 Okay. {both chuckling}
GT 16:56 Then he was excommunicated. They went after Margaret. They went after Janice Allred, who we haven’t talked about yet.
Sara 17:02 Yeah.
GT 17:02 I think you’ve included her in the September group. You have a broader picture. But it’s interesting how Cecilia Farr, David Knowlton, are still members. Was just going after their job good enough? Or why haven’t they been excommunicated as well? I guess that is my question? Why did they go after David Wright and Michael Quinn and not some of these others? Do you have any insight into that?
Sara 17:33 I would be hypothesizing, of course.
GT 17:36 We can do that. This is Gospel Tangents. I know that historians don’t like to do that. But I do! I like it when we do that!
Sara 17:47 It makes me anxious. {both laughing} Could it have happened differently? I always think, I don’t know.
GT 17:56 It’s called Monday morning quarterback.
Sara 17:57 Cecilia left Utah, and found another position. She left with her temple recommend in her hand. She stayed in the church for quite some time. In fact, it wasn’t until her children were struggling with some of the messages in the church that she decided to stop attending church.
GT 18:22 Okay.
Sara 18:25 But, perhaps it has to do with her moving away from those centers of orthodoxy. She moved to the Midwest. She talked about feeling initially, when people still remembered who she was, in terms of the BYU story, that women would ask her questions. She felt like they were trying to feel out. Where’s the line so that I make sure that I don’t cross it? But I think moving away helps. Right?
GT 19:01 It didn’t help Kate Kelly, but that’s beyond… {Rick laughing}
Sara 19:06 See, this is why I don’t do hypothetical stuff {both laughing}. I’m forgetting who else you included in your question.
GT 19:18 One person that I’m not as familiar with, that you had mentioned was Gail Houston. Let’s learn more about her story.
Sara 19:26 I don’t know a whole lot about it. It wasn’t a story that I focused on in the book. But she also was involved with feminist issues on campus, and I believe that that was what the issue was.
GT 19:39 Okay. And she was pretty good friends with Cecilia?
Sara 19:43 They both worked with VOICE, which was a feminist student group. And VOICE was quite active on BYU’s campus and was receiving a lot of pushback. And so, I think that what they were doing was seen as a lightning rod, activist group on campus.
GT 20:06 And we don’t do activism in the church.
Sara 20:09 Well, yeah. One of the issues that they were talking about at that time was assault on BYU’s campus.
GT 20:22 Sexual assault.
Sara 20:23 [Yes.] It’s clear from letters to the editor, they had a flyer that was meant to be ironic. There was a woman who was attacked on campus one morning at, I don’t know, 10 in the morning. I think she was beat up a little bit but managed to get away from the attacker. In response, they made a flyer that said, “Starting immediately, there’s going to be a curfew for men on BYU’s campus.” I don’t know. It was 10pm or something. And after that time, men need to walk with at least two women, if they’re going to be out to show that they’re not a threat to anybody. People really responded negatively to that. I think that they failed to see what they were trying to communicate, which was that women often don’t feel safe on campus and feel like they need to travel in groups. But in letters to the editor about that, it’s very clear. This goes back to this idea that BYU is a special place. And so, it’s very clear that any kind of assault that was happening on the campus was outsiders coming onto the campus.
GT 22:05 Not insiders.
Sara 22:06 Assaulting people, yes. So, people were just very reluctant to even entertain the idea that assault might happen. Student on student assault might happen. And so yeah, I think that’s tied to how people want to imagine BYU.
GT 22:25 Well, and I know BYU, it seems like if I remember right, when Elder Holland was president of BYU, he wanted to make it Harvard of the West. But there’s some problems with that. Harvard allows Jewish scholars, Catholic scholars, Protestant scholars. BYU doesn’t. You have to be LDS. Well, I won’t say you have to be, but they don’t have a Jewish scholar teaching Judaism. They don’t have a Methodist scholar teaching Methodism. That’s against the rules. Doesn’t it seem like there’s a conflict with being the Harvard of the West when we are not really acting like Harvard or Notre Dame, or some of these other schools that allow non-Catholic faculty, for example, at Notre Dame to teach Judaism or Islam or Methodism or whatever? Can you talk about that tension at BYU?
Sara 23:29 Well, I think David Wright is an interesting example of that, because it was because of Holland’s statement about the Harvard of the West that he decided to go to BYU. He had several job offers. And he thought, if I can go to BYU and do this scholarship, that is, historical criticism was just part of scriptural studies. He was not at all radical or cutting edge in terms of what he was saying about Scripture and how it should be read.
GT 24:06 But he was radical at BYU.
Sara 24:08 But, he was radical at BYU. And so, when he got there, he quickly realized that he was not able to have the conversations that he wanted to have. He talked about wanting to host a discussion of differences between creation stories, and the response he got from his department members was, “don’t point out to people that there are differences in the creation stories because, if they don’t know that, then you don’t want to introduce to them something that might become a problem for their faith.” And so, yes, I think it’s not just tied to different faiths teaching their own perspectives, but it’s also about what questions you’re able to ask. And I think he didn’t realize that people were going to perceive at a basic level in introductory Biblical Studies classes you learn that there are differences in the creation stories at secular universities all around the country. So, yeah, it was radical, as you said.
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