Academic Freedom at Brigham Young University - Academic Freedom Issues - Case Studies

Case Studies

Soon after adopting their statement on academic freedom in 1992, BYU took actions which some have viewed as related to the implementation of the new academic freedom policy. For example, in late 1992, the university's board of trustees vetoed without comment a BYU proposal to invite Pulitzer Prize winner and Harvard University professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, an active feminist, to address the annual BYU Women's Conference. Since then, the University has also dismissed, denied continuing status, or censured faculty members who have taken critical positions relating to official church policy or leadership as well as those who for personal reasons did not pay a tithe to the LDS Church.

For example, in 1993, BYU revoked the continuing status to Cecilia Konchar Farr, who had publicly advocated a pro-choice position on abortion. Farr was hired as an English instructor and some felt her positions of pro-choice were irrelevant to her assignment with the school. And to David Knowlton, who had discussed the church's missionary system at an independent Mormon forum. In 1996, BYU dismissed Gail T. Houston, an English professor, despite positive votes from her English Department and the College Committee. Also in 1996, professor Brian Evenson resigned in protest after receiving a warning from BYU administration over some violent images in one of his short stories. In 2006, part-time faculty instructor Jeffrey Nielsen's contract was not renewed after he wrote an op-ed piece in the June 4 Salt Lake Tribune which criticized and opposed the LDS Church's stance on same-sex marriage. Also in early 2006, BYU discontinued the contract of Darron Smith, another part-time faculty instructor. Smith was one of the few African Americans teaching on BYU campus. He claims that his contract was not continued because he called for the LDS Church to address lingering issues of racism. Smith was co-editor of the book Black and Mormon, which has received favorable reviews. Although Smith was let go, Gordon B. Hinckley, then president of the LDS Church, made public statements against racism shortly thereafter. Officially, BYU spokespeople generally framed the actions in the cases of Farr, Knowlton, and Houston as relating to the quality of the professors' scholarship, and sometimes to unspecified misbehavior, rather than the controversial content of the affected professor's academic activities. Nevertheless, some critics viewed these dismissals as a kind of purge. Some of the professors dismissed for academic reasons claim that their publishing credentials were stronger than many of their colleagues. Additionally, in 1997, four nude and semi-nude sculptures by the 19th century French artist Auguste Rodin, including his famous The Kiss, were pulled from a traveling exhibit of his work at the Museum of Art.

BYU's academic freedom controversy has not always been limited to religious matters. BYU placed physics professor Steven E. Jones on paid leave in connection with an internal investigation that a paper he authored on the causes finding that the World Trade Center towers fell on 9/11 because of pre-set explosives might not have met "scientific standards of peer review" and his failure of "appropriately distancing himself" from the University in his statements regarding his explosive theory. Mr. Jones retired while the investigation was in its early stages.