By MARGARET NELL and KRISTEN SONNE
At BYU the “climate for academic freedom is distressingly poor … and (BYU) fails to give adequate guidance to the faculty,” said the American Association of University Professors in a report released Monday.
The report was part of a formal response to complaints by Gail Turley Houston, former assistant professor of English, who was denied continuing status by BYU in 1996.
The AAUP report was published in the September-October edition of Academe, the AAUP’s national magazine.
The AAUP became involved in the issue of academic freedom at the request of the BYU chapter of the AAUP, Houston said in a telephone interview.
“They only came to four campuses that year. They had many, many more complaints to look at, and they chose to come to our campus which suggests that they felt there were really some issues that needed to be addressed, that BYU had to deal with,” Houston said.
Houston said her academic freedom had been violated. The AAUP sent a team to investigate the charge in January 1997.
James D. Gordon, BYU’s associate academic vice president, said the discussions with the AAUP were “frank and open.”
“We attempted to be clear about who we are and what our policies are,” he said.
According to Alan L. Wilkins, BYU’s academic vice president, the AAUP is an association of professors whose stated goal is to promote individual academic freedom.
Less than 5 percent of faculty members in the United States belong to the AAUP.
“It (the AAUP) is not an accrediting body, and we are not obligated to follow its policies. The only action the AAUP can take is to censure us in its publication … (and) the AAUP has censured numerous religious institutions,” Wilkins said.
BYU has chosen to respond to the AAUP’s charges because it asked BYU to respond, and because Houston has chosen to make her case public, Gordon said.
In its report, the AAUP concluded four things from Houston’s case.
_ “Brigham Young University, in establishing limitations upon academic freedom, fails to give adequate guidance to the faculty. The university administration can not validly invoke the limitations to justify denying continuing status to Professor Gail Turley Houston on the stated grounds of publicly contradicting Church doctrine and deliberately attacking Church leadership.”
_ “To the extent that the Brigham Young University administration acted against Professor Houston because of displeasure with the positions on feminism and gender construction that she took in her teaching and scholarly work, the administration violated the academic freedom assured her by the (AAUP) 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure.”
_ “The available procedures for appeal at Brigham Young University did not provide Professor Houston an adequate hearing on her allegations that her academic freedom had been violated and she had been subjected to discrimination because of her sex.”
_ “Numerous additional cases and complaints at Brigham Young University indicate that infringements on academic freedom are distressingly common and that the climate for academic freedom is distressingly poor.”
All BYU professors must go through a review process to gain continuing status. This life-time appointment is determined at the university level after six years of employment.
Houston’s case began in her third-year review in the English Department Review Committee.
“My sense is that from the third year on, the process was tainted badly in my case,” Houston said.
The committee, whose report Gordon said was sent to Houston, told Dean Randall L. Jones of the College of Humanities, that Houston was a good teacher. However, the committee members were concerned “with that teaching as a reflection of her citizenship at Brigham Young University and to her loyalty to the teachings, doctrines and leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” according to the AAUP report.
The committee noted there were frequent student complaints in regard to Houston in the classroom. Another concern was her feminist viewpoints that “overwhelm her English courses,” the AAUP report states.
Another topic which presented itself during the third-year review was an article Houston wrote for the off-campus newspaper, Student Review in which she “advocates praying to a mother in heaven,” according to the AAUP report.
“Frankly, I did not get any reaction (to the article in “Student Review”) and that is what always bothered me. So, suddenly, when it was being talked about in my third-year review, … I didn’t understand,” Houston said.
The report states that Houston wrote the article as a reaction to the Academic Freedom Policy.
BYU’s Academic Freedom Policy was released in September 1992. It states that “At BYU, individual academic freedom is based not only on a belief (shared by all universities) in the value of free inquiry, but also on the gospel principle that humans are moral agents who should seek knowledge in the sacred as well as the secular, by the heart and spirit as well as by the mind and in continuing revelation as well as in the written word of God. BYU students … are entitled to expect an educational experience that reflects this aspiration.”
“BYU intends to nourish a community of believing scholars where students and teachers, guided by the gospel, freely join together to seek truth in charity and virtue. For those who embrace the gospel, BYU offers a far richer and more complete kind of academic freedom than is possible in secular universities because to seek knowledge in the light of revealed truth is, for believers to be free indeed,” the policy states.
In 1995 Houston’s case was once again examined for her final six-year review for continuing status.
“The issues from the 1993 review were augmented with new concerns,” according to the AAUP report.
In addition to the Student Review article two other incidents were raised where Houston spoke out on doctrinal issues.
The first incident occurred in the fall of 1993 known as the “1,000 White Roses.” A presentation of white roses was made to the general authorities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on behalf “of both the church and several Mormon intellectuals and feminists who had been excommunicated.”
Houston circulated a memo inviting faculty members to contribute to the fund which paid for the roses, according to BYU’s response.
“I was part of a group that peacefully sent flowers to the church headquarters to express our love for the church leaders and for the people who had been excommunicated,” Houston said.
“The BYU Administration has characterized the presentation as a protest against the church’s actions in the form of a highly publicized media event,” according to the AAUP report.
The other new concern involved a speech Houston gave in 1994 for Sunstone, an independent organization which studies the LDS Church. In the speech, Houston discussed praying to a heavenly mother.
The LDS Church position on praying to a heavenly mother was made clear on Sept. 28, 1991, in the General Women’s Meeting of the LDS Church. President Gordon B. Hinckley, then First Counselor in the First Presidency, said it was “inappropriate for anyone in the church to pray to our mother in heaven.”
BYU’s final concerns emerged from comments made on student evaluations.
“She brought no gospel insight into the class,” one evaluation said.
“I feel I can’t express my own views and receive a fair grade. Also, I question the theology in class. God is not a woman,” another evaluation said.
“I also felt that certain theories and ideas of Dr. Houston were contrary to revealed truths and doctrinal principles,” a third evaluation said.
“I am not a liberal or a feminist, and I felt that my views were not valued. She expects students to conform to her ideologies and she did not include the gospel in discussions. In fact, sometimes class discussions on sexuality did not seem appropriate for a BYU English class,” another student said.
However, the College Committee on Rank Advancement and Continuing Status “observed that teaching evaluations on ‘Instructor Rating’ ranged from one section (class) at 5.6 to several at 6.5 or higher, and that the university mean for instructors is 5.5, the college mean is 5.6 the department mean is 5.7.”
Houston said her student evaluations placed her in the top 8 percent of the university. She also said in her classes there was “a real sense the whole time of trying to live up to this high standard of integrity we have in the church and of doing good.”
“I know that my student evaluations tell me that my students and I did have really very special, wonderful experiences in the classroom,” Houston said.
She said these experiences were a “real spirit of collaboration together with the students.”
Houston’s case then went to the university level. The committee’s central charge in the case made against her was that she had “engaged in a pattern of publicly contradicting fundamental church doctrine and deliberately attacking the church.”
According to the AAUP report, “the administrative officers (of BYU) reached the conclusion ‘Professor Houston had an agenda to contradict and oppose Church doctrine on this issue and that her behavior would likely continue in the future.'”
When she received the June 5, 1996, notification of the decision that she would not keep her continuing status, Houston decided to appeal her case — even though she had already accepted a faculty appointment at the University of New Mexico.
On Sept. 9, 1996, the appeal panel reported “it found no evidence of violation of university procedure and it did not feel that other factors negatively affected to any significant degree the decision made in this matter.”
Houston was notified pm Sept. 11, 1996, that the original decision of the university-level committee would stand.
“I really truly believe that no matter how professors at BYU come down on what they think of me in particular, that’s really not important. What is important is do they have academic freedom? Can they have a spirit of inquiry or are they always looking over their shoulders worrying about what they say and what they do and what kind of questions they ask in their scholarship?” Houston said.
“I really believe my sense is that the atmosphere could not be any worse … there needs to be better communication between the administration and faculty,” Houston said.
Houston is now an assistant professor of English at the University of New Mexico.
“I want the best out of this,” Houston said. “I’m hoping for the best for them and for me. I would like to see BYU being the best institution it could possibly be. I’m not in this for revenge or anything.”
