Partisan Politics & the University

Responses To War and the Military

Throughout the late nineteenth century, the political and economic views of Brigham Young Academy faculty and students tended to mirror those of their church leaders who advocated political solidarity, protective communal economics, and selective pacificism. "The Kingdom of God cannot rise independent of [other] nations until we produce, manufacture, and make every article of use, convenience, or necessity among our own people," Brigham Young preached only days after arriving in the Great Basin in 1847. Young eventually marshalled Mormon immigrants into some 150 communal enterprises, vestiges of which can be seen today in such corporations as ZCMI (Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution). With the approach of the Civil War, Young commented, "If we could have our choice, it would be to continually walk in the path of peace." Nor could he find fault with those who based their refusal to fight on moral grounds. Thirty years later, as the Spanish-American War developed, George Q. Cannon, first counselor in the church's governing First Presidency, echoed, "We must make any sacrifice that honorable people can to avert war." Following the church's protracted struggle to achieve statehood in the mid-1890s, Mormons abandoned their political and economic independence in favor of mainstream American social and political policies. Intent on dispelling accusations of disloyalty to their country and its leaders, church authorities rallied to the defense of the United States government, whether at home or abroad, with growing patriotic zeal. The economic communitarianism and pacificism that had characterized nineteenthcentury Mormonism were, in the process, largely discarded as obsolete theological baggage. As the academic showplace of Mormonism, Brigham Young University eventually emerged as a leading champion of conservative political thought, free market capitalism, and military service.¹

At the onset of World War I, most Mormons, including BYU faculty and students, remained unreceptive to the prospect of intervention in foreign disputes. "In the event of active conflict with the central powers, . . . we urge the men and boys of the BYU to remain conservative and not rush into the army," wrote student editors in the 4 April 1917 White and Blue. "The mad rush of emotion imperils our very existence. . . . From the standpoint of the school, it wastes the forces that might be made to lift humanity to a higher level." However, following the entrance of the United States into the world conflict, both church and university leaders were moved to action by pro-war propaganda. Church apostle and U.S. senator Reed Smoot told students in November 1917, "Mormonism must triumph in all the world and this fight is only to open the opportunity." BYU president George H. Brimhall wrote to one of the school's pro-German benefactors three months later, "The only thing that we know about Kaiserism and the Kaiser is that both of them ought to be killed, and we are doing everything we can, from raising potatoes to building ships, to crush out autocracy as represented by the Kaiser and Kaiserism." "The Germans from Kaiser to corporal have been controlled by a dark power behind the veil," English and theology professor N.L. Nelson editorialized in late April 1918. Before the war's end, some sixty-five Utah Valley men, many of them BYU students, had enlisted in the U.S. armed forces; patriotic coeds contributed sweaters, socks, scarfs, and hats to those in military service. The small student body also voted to abstain from candy because of the military's need for sugar. (Unfortunately, student willpower proved short-lived, as candy sales showed no decrease [WB, 14 Nov. 1917].) During the height of the European war, White and Blue editors warned in March 1918, "We must all be careful not to drop any chance remarks that might give information to the German spies. . . . A careless remark dropped in the street car may furnish a spy with the missing link in a long chain. When in doubt don't say it."²

In mid-1918, when the Department of War announced the establishment of the Student Army Training Corps (SATC) on American college campuses, BYU dutifully forwarded an application to Washington, "vigorously manifest[ing]" its "Americanism and democracy." President Brimhall wrote to church president Joseph F. Smith, "There is a demand here in the school for military training, and unless we supply that demand, a number of our boys will undoubtedly leave school to get this training." Endorsed by Senator Smoot, BYU's SATC was inaugurated in early October 1918. Over 500 eager students applied for admission; 141 were accepted. Federal subsidies covered the cadets' tuition and fees for one to three terms and provided a thirty-dollar-per-month living allowance. The curriculum emphasized vocational and technical training. To provide the necessary instruction for their military students, school administrators hastily constructed a Mechanic Arts Building (later renamed the George H. Brimhall Building) at a cost of $43,000. Less than two weeks after the first SATC classes were held, however, an influenza epidemic swept through the state, forcing university officials to suspend academic work. The armistice with Germany was signed the following month and BYU's SATC camp was dismantled in late December, after less than three months of operation.³

For many church members, including BYU students and faculty, the end of the "war to end all wars" heralded the promise of universal peace, and possibly the beginning of the Millennium. Students were especially enthusiastic at the prospect of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations. Following Wilson's visit to the campus in September 1919, eager students drafted a resolution to their U.S. senators to "use their utmost influence for the immediate ratification of the treaty and League of Nations, without reservation or amendments." But Republican senator Smoot, a member of BYU's Board of Trustees, responded that he was "compelled," under his oath of office and his fears for the future of the U.S. government, to vote against the treaty. "I cannot vote to submerge our nationality with a super-internationality, which would be the result if the League of Nations in its present form were ratified," he wrote to students in an open letter. The senator soon became a target for student insults. BYU's glib yearbook editor Nels Anderson publicly compared Smoot's intelligence to that of a monkey.⁴

Fifty-two BYU faculty, including Herald R. Clark, T. Earl Pardoe, and Carl F. Eyring, immediately wrote to the senator urging that he reconsider his position. President Brimhall, too, added, "I am for the League of Nations, first, last, and all the time." Troubled by such opposition, Smoot wondered if it might not "be best for me, under the circumstances, to resign as one of the directors of the university." Fearing repercussions similar to those of the 1911 evolution controversy (see Chapter 4), Brimhall set aside his support of the league and replied to Smoot that his "strength and love and loyalty must be kept officially close to the school." Shortly afterwards, the U.S. Senate formally rejected Wilson's league proposal. Brimhall apologized to Smoot for the students' abuse and pledged his personal support in the senator's up-coming re-election.⁵

During the 1920s and 1930s, many students across the country protested compulsory military drill in their schools--only one-fourth supported the possible involvement of America in future foreign wars. In a 1926 Y News editorial, BYU students boasted, "We do not participate in politics. Our curriculum does not include a course in republicanism, democracy or socialism. Our faculty has never imposed their political views on their students." At the same time, church president Heber J. Grant had become, according to his biographer, a "thoroughgoing skeptic over the purposes of war;" while his first counselor, Anthony W. Ivins, told students, "We shall renounce war, and . . . not be guilty of slaying our brothers. . . . America [can] best proclaim its mission by a peaceful, moral example" (Walker; YN, 26 Jan. 1933). When Mormon military officers visted the campus in the late 1920s to encourage undergraduates to enroll in the Citizens' Army Training Camp, one student answered incredulously, "How in the name of common sense can people have the undiluted brass to go about using [the] church as a pry pole with which to introduce and popularize military drill? . . . The entirely negative response among the students to the invitation to join the [reserves] was commendable" (YN, 11 May 1927). A second added, "The principles of militarism and true Christianity are of the most distant relationship" (YN, 25 May 1927). Later, visiting lecturers praised Italy's Benito Mussolini as a "Moses and a Savior" and challenged students to "actively avoid being propagandized into another world catastrophe" (YN, 11 March 1932, 23 April 1937). Perplexed by his government's military preparations, one undergraduate thoughtfully wrote that "in the face of the government taking over industry we thrust the charge that [it, too,] is fascist. When we think of going fascist to defeat the fascists, it doesn't make sense" (YN, 24 May 1940). Another complained that "some leaders of our country . . . are thinking once more of sacrificing individuals and individual rights for the efficiency of the mass units, and that isn't Americanism!"⁶

Despite growing support for U.S. intervention in Europe following the declaration of war by France and Great Britian in September 1939, most BYU students remained opposed to American involvement. A poll of students less than a year later revealed that over 80 percent did not favor "American entrance into the present World War." But in the wake of Japanese raids in Hawaii and Manila, BYU president Franklin S. Harris admitted in the Y News, "It is inevitable that there will be a certain amount of hysteria and students will want to rush off and do something different than they are doing at the present time, [although] this would be unwise." Just five days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, one student wrote, "Of course, Japan attacked us so we are justified in declaring war, but with all the minds in the world couldn't we have avoided everything in the first place?" A second echoed the same day, "To oil the gun and leave the mind to rust is folly, for this nation or any nation." Once again, however, the church and university moved to meet the demands of their government. By April 1942, 6 percent of all Mormons were serving in the military or in defense-related industries--a figure that would double by the end of the war. Church authorities purchased over $17 million in government bonds (Lee and Petersen to First Presidency). President Grant personally donated to war charities and counseled his grandchildren to serve their country (Grant to White; to Judd; to Anderson). "We have felt honored that our brethren have died nobly for their country," the First Presidency wrote; "the church has been benefited by their service and sacrifice." Paralleling official rhetoric of the late 1910s, Grant's second counselor, David O. McKay, and other ranking church leaders declared the war to be a "moral struggle to preserve liberty" (in Walker).⁷

For an increasingly diverse BYU student body, the response to the war was mixed. An undergraduate anti-war satire, "O, Frabjous Day," was favorably reviewed by the school's journalists but roundly condemned by some speech and dramatic arts faculty as "communist propaganda." The Y News eventually announced its support for the war by encouraging the purchase of defense bonds. As the monthly totals of students enlisting or being drafted steadily increased, enrollment plummeted. Over a five-year period, the size of the student body shrank by an average of 15 percent each year. In July 1942, BYU became one of 300 colleges to participate in the federally funded Army Specialized Training and Naval College Training programs to provide technical instruction for new recruits. Some 300 privates, housed on campus under general military orders, were enrolled at the university for three terms before transferring elsewhere for advanced training in engineering or mechanics. BYU also sponsored programs in Civilian Pilot Training, Radio Technician Training, and voluntary emergency skills. Many students joined local reserve units, as well; 150 of the Y's reservists were called to active duty in 1943. The Y News editorialized, "Expendability is . . . the price of greatness. It is the spirit of Christianity and it is the spirit of democracy." Anxious that the university not exaggerate its role in the war, President Harris cautiously explained, "[We will] offer the type of pre-induction preparation which lays a safe base for individual and world freedom and peace, [but] will continue to give intellectual discipline and enlightenment for young people, which will [allow] them to carry on their usual work in society."⁸

By the war's end in late 1945, the names of BYU student and faculty veterans, including over 100 killed or missing in action, filled eight pages in the Y News. With the return of BYU's veterans, most of whom were taking advantage of G.I. benefits, enrollment swelled from 1,811 in 1945 to 4,366 the following year, an increase of more than 140 percent. The university established a veterans' office and appointed Hugh B. Brown, LDS Serviceman's Coordinator during the war, as Veterans Counselor. Struggling with their religious heritage, many young Mormon veterans "had difficulty in harmonizing the idea of God with what they had seen" during the war, Brown later remembered. The effect of military life on the church's youth also prompted church leaders to vigorously denounce peacetime conscription in December 1945. "We shall make our sons the victims of systematized allurements to gamble, to drink, to smoke, to swear, to associate with lewd women, to be selfish, idle, irresponsible save under restraint of force, to be common, coarse, and vulgar--all contrary to and destructive of the American home," the First Presidency warned. Church officials further believed that "by building a huge armed establishment, we shall belie our protestations of peace and peaceful intent and force other nations to a like course of militarism."⁹

ROTC and the Peace Corps

Not until the appointment of Ernest Wilkinson as school president in mid-1950 did the push for a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) unit at BYU gain serious momentum. Members of the school's Board of Trustees had vetoed a request from the government to establish an ROTC unit on campus fifteen years earlier. Following deepening U.S. commitment in Korea in 1951, however, Wilkinson succeeded in securing the acquiescence of reluctant trustees for a BYU air force ROTC unit. Wilkinson, a veteran of BYU's short-lived 1918 SATC program, later assured anxious parents during a 1956 Leadership Week address, "One of the strange things in our church, and this happens often, is that people assume that the authorities are against anything pertaining to military training. . . . [In fact,] the brethren were happy to authorize the formation on this campus of an air force ROTC." He explained that "an ROTC set up with prudence under the spirit of our Heavenly Father will prepare our men to render service in the most effective method." Wilkinson was convinced, as he emphasized in a 1968 speech, that military training afforded students "one way in which, in accordance with prophecy, the elders of Zion may help to save our country." Given the alternative facing most students of draft age, the response to Wilkinson's ROTC program was overwhelmingly favorable. Polls showed that 90 percent of the student body supported the prospect of an ROTC unit, and one student confessed, "An ROTC unit here--now--would have certain very definite advantages. . . . Male students who feel the warm breath of their local draft boards down the back of their necks would not have to transfer to schools which already have [a military program] to finish their education."¹⁰

By late 1952, enrollment in BYU's air force ROTC unit had skyrocketed to 1,800, and included more than three-fourths of all freshmen males. Enrollment dropped off significantly during the early 1960s to less than one hundred, but by 1965 the number of cadets on campus had more than quadrupled, many of whom were again seeking deferred status as a result of the United States' involvement in Vietnam (Boone). BYU subsequently obtained permission to establish an army ROTC unit, and the Daniel H. Wells ROTC building was dedicated in 1969 by Boyd K. Packer, assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, managing director of the church's military relations committee, and a war veteran. By 1971, BYU boasted the "largest entirely voluntary college [army] ROTC program west of Texas" (in Boone). Following the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam in the mid-1970s, enrollment in both campus ROTC units again decreased, though student participation has remained strong. In late 1975, after several unsuccessful attempts, school officials secured Board of Trustees approval to allow women to join campus ROTC units, provided the transition be "done on as low a visibility basis as possible, and that the minimum possible publicity [be] given to the matter" (Board Minutes, 3 Dec. 1975).¹¹

At the beginning of fall semester 1961, administrators suggested that ROTC cadets supervise formal United States flag raising and lowering ceremonies every weekday near the Abraham O. Smoot Administration Building. School officials concluded that the display would not only inspire greater patriotism in a lax student body, but would help to make the ROTC program more visible. Evidently, many students viewed the ceremony as an unnecessary inconvenience, and one university official complained, "Very few will stop to pay proper respect by standing at attention; . . . many will look at the flag as it is [being raised and] continue their gait toward class" (DU, 12 Jan. 1062). To students not "want[ing] to waste a couple of minutes of [their] precious time to pay tribute to our national flag," one observer recommended "a less conspicuous approach" to classes than through "the center of campus" where the ceremony was staged (DU, 14 Nov. 1962).¹²

Irked at such apathy, officials arranged to have the national anthem played in conjunction with the daily flag ceremonies. The response was again mixed. While many, perhaps a majority of students, stood at attention during the music whether they were within sight of the flag or not, others protested the dose of superpatriotism. One wrote, "I believe that forcing people to surrender even one minute a day through coercion is un-American" (DU, 28 March 1967). Another pointed out that most students "hustle across the open campus to the nearest building" at the beginning of the ceremony or wait in their classrooms until the flag has been lowered (DU, 31 Oct. 1967). A third writer observed, tongue-in-cheek, "I have also watched many of the foreign students during these precious moments. . . . They seem to show a passive tolerance and not a deep passionate commitment. They need to be taught true love of America, and if they are not going to develop that love they can leave--especially those ungrateful Canadians" (DU, 18 Dec. 1968). Queried for a 1983 Daily Universe story, others replied that hearing the national anthem twice each day "merely makes the anthem common, promotes a faulty sense of American superiority, and represents a dangerous example of forced nationalism." Despite mixed enthusiasm among students, the tradition of pausing during the morning and late afternoon rite has remained one of BYU's distinctive characteristics.¹³

President Wilkinson's fervent encouragement of ROTC units was matched by his opposition to Peace Corps recruiting among the student body. Both the Peace Corps and its domestic counterpart, Volunteers In Service To America (VISTA), were repeatedly refused permission to recruit on campus. Although Mormon businessman J. Willard Marriott and Hugh B. Brown, by then first counselor in the First Presidency, voiced protest at this policy, Wilkinson argued that the programs were inefficient welfare subsidies to third world countries which attracted students away from military and church missionary service. But the irony of sponsoring an ROTC unit while denying the Peace Corps access to campus did not go unnoticed among students (see DU, 2 Nov. 1970). Because of increasing public criticism of the university's inconsistent policy, Peace Corps representatives were eventually allowed, in late 1970, to interview interested students "on the same basis as any other company interviewing students," through appointments initiated by students in response to announcements on university bulletin boards.¹⁴

Vietnam

In many ways, the initial response of most BYU students to the Vietnam War differed importantly from their reaction to the first three American wars of the twentieth century. Where Mormons had previously remained suspicious of the intentions of U.S. government leaders at the onset of American mobilization, U.S. Cold War rhetoric had by the early 1950s made considerable headway among church members. Nearly 60 percent of BYU students polled in one survey believed, for example, that war with the Soviet Union was "inevitable." Significantly, many based their responses on interpretations of Mormon scriptures. A 1952 survey revealed that more than three-fourths of BYU males favored "compulsory military service," but that a majority also felt a person should not be "forced to go to war if he considers it to be morally wrong." Within fifteen years, support of the government's military involvement in Vietnam had become a measure of patriotism and loyalty, and following Congress's passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, 84 percent of BYU males expressed a willingness to fight in Vietnam (DU, 19 October 1965). The following month, while a growing number of American college students across the country protested U.S. intervention in Vietnam, eighty BYU students marched through the streets of Provo to mail a letter carrying 6,500 signatures to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, proclaiming their support of the war. Marchers carried signs reading, "I'm a War Monger--I Support the Troops," "Remember the Dead," and "Go To College--Learn To Riot." They also sang the national anthem, the school pep song, and "other patriotic songs." "In these days of student protests," commented one student, "it is good to know that some colleges like BYU are not joining in" (DU, 20 Oct. 1965). A second complained that the government had not adopted a sufficiently firm "anti-communist policy--both politically and militarily" (DU, 19 Nov. 1965).¹⁵

As U.S. commitment in Vietnam deepened, church officials announced in December 1965, "Latter-day Saints are not pacifists. . . . Neither are they conscientious objectors." "Mere membership in the church does not make one a conscientious objector," the First Presidency's secretary emphasized privately one year later. He explained, "It is not possible for an individual citizen to have the information that is available to the president and the Congress, and without all of the facts he is not in a position to judge." University-screened speakers reminded students that "freedom is bought with the red blood of soldiers, not red paint on posters" (DU, 15 April 1966). One zealous undergraduate pinned his draft card to his shirt and announced that he was "protest[ing] against protestors" (DU, 6 Dec. 1967). Fears that a weekly "Free Forum" sponsored by student government was turning BYU into "another Berkeley" proved unfounded when a 1967 poll showed that 80 percent of students believed the United States "should not pull out of Vietnam" (DU, 22 March, 18 Oct. 1967). That same year, administrators announced the inauguration of an annual "American Week" to "promote support for a better America." Military Week soon followed to demonstrate support for the school's ROTC units. In early April 1968, Elder Boyd Packer publicly condemned conscientious objection as a viable alternative to the draft, and when Ramparts magazine began criticizing U.S. presence in southeast Asia, BYU Bookstore officials stopped stocking the monthly journal. Faced with "jeopardiz[ing] its already fragile and restricted arrangement with the U.S. government for deferments from the draft for LDS proselyting missionaries," the First Presidency could not do otherwise but affirm its support of the draft in 1969 (Quinn). Thus, while backing military service, BYU and church officials also provided students with school and mission deferments. President Wilkinson told graduating seniors, "I trust you will all be good soldiers," assuring students in 1970 that Vietnam was "just as `moral and just' as any war we have fought in our history." Following withdrawal of U.S. troops in 1973 and the surrender of South Vietnam two years later, a disillusioned Wilkinson, writing in his journal, termed the war "the most humiliating incident in the history of our country."¹⁶

Perhaps the most probing study of the reaction of BYU students to Vietnam was conducted in 1968 by BYU psychologists Knud S. Larsen and Gary Swendiman. From their sample of 305 students, Larsen and Swendiman found that an average of only 27 percent could correctly identify the historical origins of the war and that, consequently, most lacked "a solid foundation on which to base their policy preferences." Nonetheless, a majority of students agreed that "communists must be crushed before peaceful solutions can be implemented" and believed that the Viet Cong "represent[ed] more of a conspiracy than a popular movement." Most were also convinced that "continued American intervention in the war is justified." Interestingly, Larsen and Swendiman also discovered that those students tending to be "more hawkish about the war" were also more active in the church or had recently returned from an LDS mission. A second study in 1968 by T. Tammy Tanaka added that most BYU students shared a common belief, reinforced by church and university leaders, in America as "God's chosen land" and hence backed American foreign policies as moral. In addition, a number of polls demonstrated that the political orientation of the student body was becoming increasingly conservative. From 1967 to 1972, for example, the percentage of BYU students identifying themselves as Republicans or American Independents blossomed from 54 to 75 percent, while the number of students identifying themselves as Democrats rose from 13 to only 16 percent.¹⁷

Despite BYU's deserved reputation as an "oasis of calm amidst [the] campus turmoil" that rocked American colleges throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, dissent was not entirely absent from the Mormon campus (U.S. News & World Report). Indeed, when compared to World War I, World War II, and the Korean war, Vietnam proved to be the most divisive of any world conflict among BYU students. As with student unrest nationally, dissent at BYU tended to embrace not only the war--the primary focus of American student protests--but also the individual and political rights of students, student participation in campus decision-making, and minority discrimination. "Why should the [Vietnamese government] waste [its] own people when [it] can sucker American boys to blindly fight and die instead?" asked one student in the Daily Universe. During the campus's Military Week, a second wrote, "I respect and admire our soldiers and our campus ROTC, but I do not believe it a fit honor to our war dead to display the weapons that killed them." On-going, occasionally heated discussion of American military policies, evident in many of the letters to the school's daily newspaper, the columns of the Young Democrats' surprisingly vocal newsletter, and the underground Zion's Opinion, also found outlets in more visible forms of social protest. Nor was debate confined solely to students.¹⁸

An unexpected voice in support of student pacificism came in late 1969 from visiting apostle Gordon B. Hinckley, whose church assignments included writing a letter to parents who had lost sons during the war. "I have felt very keenly the feelings of many of our young men concerning this terrible conflict," he reported at a BYU devotional service. In defense of conscientious objectors, Hinckley confided, "A man has to live with his conscience, his principles, his convictions and testimony, and without that he is as miserable as hell. Excuse me, but I believe it." Utah senator Frank Moss (D) echoed Hinckley's sentiment six days later. But at a special Veteran's Day devotional service the following week, Hartman J. Rector, Jr., a navy veteran of World War II and member of the First Council of the Seventy, appeared on campus in full-dress uniform to highlight his support of U.S. policy. "This nation represents the last great bastion of freedom and liberty," he asserted. "We have an obligation to the world as well as to ourselves." Not unexpectedly, some students disagreed, maintaining that Rector had simplified "a very complex question" in a way that was not "completely responsible." The next year, again only a few days apart, Hinckley reaffirmed his hatred "of war with all its mocking panoply," while Rector speculated, much as Reed Smoot had done more than fifty years earlier, that war "was an instrument in the hands of the Lord" to further the church's missionary interests, this time in Vietnam. Meanwhile, that spring, Frank Child, an advisor to Vietnam for the Ford Foundation and Yale University, told students, "In the name of freedom we stamp out freedom," while former Mormon U.S. presidential candidate George W. Romney admitted that the war "was the most tragic foreign policy mistake in our nation's history."¹⁹

Student Protests

Eventually the debate on campus over the merits of the Vietnam War passed from the exchange of ideas to more militant activism. Although BYU students of the late 1960s and early 1970s were influenced primarily by their peers on other American campuses, a tradition of sometimes large-scale demonstrations was not unknown to many BYU alumni. In 1910, for example, students paraded through downtown Provo in support of prohibition, which church and school officials opposed. The following year, students gathered on campus to express opposition to the threatened dismissal of three faculty members who were teaching organic evolution. In 1919, they demonstrated in a show of support for the League of Nations and later boycotted devotional services because of a policy of forced attendence. Forty years later, in the early 1960s, a protracted struggle to extend the university's Christmas recess period divided the school. At the height of the controversy, more than 2,000 angry students assembled at the football stadium, where they burned the dean of students in effigy and then attacked the school cafeteria with raw eggs. The mid-1960s also saw the emergence of BYU panty raids, or "lace riots," and the hardening of the school's policy on "demonstrations." Following one particularly destructive siege on the women's dormitories in 1965, an angry Wilkinson ruled that any student apprehended at the scene of a "riot," which he defined legalistically as a gathering of two or more people disturbing the peace, would be "automatically dismissed from school."²⁰

As fall semester 1965 commenced, Wilkinson warned the dean of students, in what may be the earliest reference to the possibility of campus protests against Vietnam, to "look out" for "incipient tendencies" among students "so that we can nip [them] in the bud" (Wilkinson to Cameron). To students two days later, Wilkinson beamed, "All of us feel very good because we feel that the student body is completely behind us." Despite mounting anti-war sentiment among students nationally, not until late 1968 did the first major political demonstration occur at BYU, when some sixty students wearing black armbands attended a speech by Curtis LeMay, the conservative running mate of third party U.S. presidential candidate George Wallace (Zion's Opinion, 13 Nov. 1968). Facing away from LeMay, the students attempted to disrupt his address by applauding at inappropriate intervals. Fearing that such activities might escalate, school administrators soon established a list of "suggestions regarding disturbances" and appointed a campus committee on student and civil unrest (Nielsen to Committee). They also adopted, two years later, a detailed civil disturbance plan and discussed the feasibility of organizing a campus "riot squad" (Nielsen to Brewster).²¹

As U.S. fighting intensified through 1968-69, so did student unrest. In March 1969, representatives of a "Free Student Coalition" presented a list of sixteen demands--including recognition of a student Mobilization for Peace club, abolishment of ROTC class credit, and establishment of a civil rights week--to an unreceptive BYU administration. Wilkinson, in an April memo to his public relations director, expressed increased anxieity that "nothing get started on this campus against the ROTC" and blamed nation-wide demonstrations on "communist revolutionaries." "Their ultimate goal," he later explained publicly, was "outright opposition to the `middle class' and defiant destruction of our existing social order. . . . Any student who, by any revolutionary tactics, would attempt to destroy our government . . . should have his revolutionary dreams fulfilled by having his citizenship revoked." At devotional services in late April, Elder Boyd Packer invited would-be critics of traditional religious and democratic values to study elsewhere. When rumors of a possible student demonstration against the appearance of U.S. vice-president Spiro Agnew surfaced in early May, fine arts dean Lorin F. Wheelwright suggested that the university "alert some of our outstanding students to be ready to stand up for what we believe, . . . such as athletic heroes, queens, student body officers, and our outstanding debators. It would be hard for the media not to recognize such students or to ignore their statements in favor of our position." Wilkinson agreed, and administrators subsequently identified four such students to "give balance to the controversy," but Agnew's scheduled appearance took place without incident.²²

In an attempt to improve relations with the student body, Wilkinson "subjected" himself to a probing "interrogation" by nearly 300 students at a campus "Free Forum" in late May 1969. Wilkinson afterwards confided to his journal that "I rather like the give-and-take of [the] free discussion," but sensed that "from this confrontation, there is more unrest on the campus than there has been in any previous year." As a reminder to students that the university would not tolerate violent dissent, Wilkinson had the school's Code of Student Conduct amended that fall to provide for "disciplinary action" in the event of "obstruction or disruption of teaching, research, administration, disciplinary procedures, or other university activities, including its public service functions." Student plans for participation in a nation-wide boycott of classes in mid-October to protest the war were averted when ASBYU officers voted instead to "support the idea that each person should write his congressman expressing his opinions either for or against the Vietnam War." As a compromise, several campus workshops and lectures on war and pacificism were scheduled during the national moratorium.²³

Throughout the succeeding few years, nervous school administrators initiated a program of covert surveillance directed at the university's "radical" students. For example, at Wilkinson's insistence, BYU security officers maintained a close watch on BYU student activist and Vietnam veteran Jerry Owens, a leading participant in November 1969's moratorium demonstrations staged in Salt Lake City, as well as on approximately forty other people involved in the weekend demonstrations. Chief Swen C. Nielsen reported, "Heretofore some of our students with radical political views have floundered about rather aimlessly; however, it appears now that they are being used by some rather skillful agitators, some of whom are what we might call `known communists.'" Wilkinson instructed Security to continue its surveillance of students to prevent any "entanglement" between the university and communist sympathizers and, in early 1970, asked trustees for a supplemental financial appropriation to cover "additional security protection" (Ex. Com. Minutes, 19 Feb. 1970). Increasingly defensive, Wilkinson issued a special statement in March on "campus conduct":

Any person who participates in or supports illegal or disruptive action designed to subvert the purposes of the university and its sponsoring institution will be subject to immediate arrest and criminal prosecution. Furthermore, any student involved in such acts will be subject to immediate expulsion from Brigham Young University, as well as criminal prosecution. Channels for appeal for violations of law will be the courts, rather than the university or ecclesiastical officers (Bulletin, 13 March 1970).

At the same time, Wilkinson asked his public relations director to brief him regularly on "disturbances or riots" at other American universities. That May, Wilkinson publicly applauded his school's "cool" reaction to the expansion of the war into Cambodia and the deaths of four demonstrators at Kent State University (Ohio). To his journal, however, he confessed, "There is certainly a spirit of unrest throughout the country and while it is manifest only slightly at the BYU it is nevertheless manifested here."²⁴

When specific instances of student protest erupted on campus, BYU officials tended to react decisively, fearing that inaction would exacerbate tensions. For example, undergraduates were told to remove peace signs from their dormitory windows with the curt explanation, "Just do it--you don't need a reason" (DU, 16 May 1969). More drastically, students who publicly questioned BYU policies were investigated by the Office of Student Life at Wilkinson's instruction to determine if grounds existed for disciplinary action. After the appearance of one student's letters to the editor in the Daily Universe, Wilkinson complained to the deans of fine arts and student life, "I wish Lorin would see to it that no further letters of [this student] go into the Universe, and I wish Elliot would see if there is anything we can do with respect to [the student]." Cameron replied that his office had been "watching" the student "very carefully during the entire year." He admitted that he did not "have anything that would justify taking any action against him at this point" but promised that after the student's graduation, his office intended "to tag [the student's] records so that he will not return to BYU."²⁵

In May 1970, when several students asked permission to collect signatures on a petition calling for the gradual withdrawal of congressional funding for the war, school officials responded by banning all petitions from campus. Wilkinson explained feebly that with the approach of the end of the semester, "students need all of their time to adequately prepare" for final exams (Salt Lake Tribune, 14 May 1970). One letter to the editor replied, "If my memory is correct, a few years ago a petition circulated at BYU was sent to Washington supporting the war in Vietnam. How can this apparent double standard be rationalized?" (DU, 15 May 1970). Another wrote, "I am angry. Angry because of the invisible iron glove that keeps us in our place; angry with the kind of education that teaches us to `accept' rather than discover; angered by words praising us for our silence, words that have undertones of warning." Five days after announcing the ban, administrators reversed their decision to allow "individual students [to] circulate petitions on campus which do not violate the fundamental objectives of BYU." Still, "all petitions would be submitted to the dean of students for approval." Two days later, zealous officials decided to "deny service on the campus to [students] wearing armbands." Wilkinson discussed issuing a public statement against armbands with Cameron, and at least one dean instructed his faculty: "We will expect all faculty members, including teaching assistants, to ask members of their classes not to wear [armbands] or to ask these armband wearers to leave the class. [They] are tasteless and the messages they convey are generally derogatory of the university and/or the church" (Allen to All Faculty).²⁶

At the beginning of fall semester 1970, Wilkinson distributed a one-page flyer to students entitled, "Men of BYU--A Message From the President," encouraging enrollment in campus ROTC units. In turn, twelve undergraduates, including ASBYU president and vice-president Brian Walton and Jon Ferguson, published a reply entitled, "An Important Message to the Men of BYU," identifying legal alternatives to military service. Dean of Student Life Elliot Cameron approved the 3,000 pamphlets for distribution during a campus devotional service. Wilkinson, who had not seen the pamphlet before he was handed one at the door, denounced its contents during the devotional and later condemned Walton for "openly proclaiming allegiance to the General Authorities on certain decisions with respect to BYU, [while] trying by devious ways to circumvent those decisions." Wilkinson invited all BYU veterans to wear their uniforms during a Veteran's Day devotional at which he reiterated the church's endorsement of military service. The controversy over the student pamphlet was subsequently discussed by the Board of Trustees, and Dean Cameron wrote to Walton, "Any authorization to distribute this pamphlet which was previously given is hereby rescinded." Before the end of the year, however, some fifteen other students were allowed to distribute "A More Important Message to the Men of BYU" in response to Walton's flyer, citing church authorities in defense of military service.²⁷

Other minority voices surfaced on campus, but the threat of administrative sanction succeeded generally in hampering student activism. In October 1970, members of the student club Spectrum staged a series of anti-war skits they titled, "Guerilla Theater," in the school's Varsity Theater. Complaints followed, and the seventy-five students were denied permission to restage their productions on campus. Although they admitted they had not seen the play, administrators ruled that "Guerilla Theater . . . is associated with radical and subversive movements and is contrary to the sprit of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We favor constructive statements rather than negative or destructive approaches." Spectrum later sponsored a panel discussion on U.S. presence in Vietnam, featuring BYU conscientious objector Andrew Kimball, a grandson of church apostle Spencer W. Kimball. "It turned out to be not nearly so violent [an] attack as we were afraid of," Wilkinson recorded afterwards in his journal, "[although] I recognize that my presence may have toned it down some. . . . Young Andy Kimball is very sincere in his views but is naive and impractical." Still, he concluded, "I don't believe any Mormon can be [a pacifist]." Campus debates concerning the value of BYU's annual Military Week continued intermittently until the 1973 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam (see DU, 13 March 1973). By the war's conclusion, approximately 25,000 Mormons had served in Vietnam, of which nearly 600, including thirty-eight BYU alumni, had been killed, were missing in action, or had been held as prisoners of war (Boone; BYU 4:527).²⁸

Much of the drive fostering student unrest at BYU disappeared with the end of the war, the resignation of Ernest Wilkinson as president, and a national upswing in political conservatism among students. The number of BYU undergraduates favoring a Republican U.S. president increased from 73 to 86 percent during the 1970s; one undergraduate was "appalled" in 1972 to learn that the campaign literature of a Democratic U.S. presidential candidate had been allowed on campus. Two years later, more than 50 percent of the student body opposed the impeachment of U.S. President Richard Nixon for alleged Watergate misdeeds; more than 80 percent believed Nixon should not have resigned. (Almost 60 percent later opposed his pardon, however.) A 1977 poll of students revealed that 89 percent favored capital punishment, and that 22 percent based their opinion on church teachings. Students themselves began referring jokingly to the university as a "hot bed of social rest" (Beginning BYU). Not until the early 1980s did rumors of possible dissent again surface. School officials decided to interview all international students to remind them of the university's policies on campus disruptions (President's Weekly Minutes, 3 Jan. 1979). Early the following year, a group of Iranian students interrupted the lecture of a former Iranian ambassador to the United Nations and accused him of being an accessory to tortures committed by Iran's secret police force, SAVAK. Relatively minor outbursts continued to punctuate campus political presentations, including the heckling of Norma Matheson, wife of Utah's Democratic governor Scott Matheson, by conservative undergraduates in 1980. But it was the reappearance of artillery on campus during Military Week that has provoked the greatest reaction among students since Vietnam.²⁹

Beginning in the late 1970s, Military Week included target practice with pellet guns for ROTC cadets and the exhibition of howitzers and other heavy artillery between the Harold B. Lee Library and the Ernest L. Wilkinson Center. Highlighting the 1982 festivities, General William C. Westmoreland, former commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, delivered a public address on campus and was confronted by students displaying large banners, one reading "Plowshares Not Guns," and by two students wearing army fatigues, their faces painted like skeletons. Other students passed out anti-war flyers and wore black armbands. Afterwards, several of the protestors were warned by university officials that they risked suspension. The Daily Universe branded the demonstration a "mirage," a "pseudo-event," and a "publicity stunt." The "shallowness" of their protest, student editors wrote, was "typical of students who desire to protest against the establishment." The student activists soon replied with a letter to school officials explaining their protest of Military Week. "The display of armaments on campus," they wrote, "[is] an offensive glorification of the instruments of war" (in SEP, 20 Feb. 1982). They eventually obtained permission to sponsor a university-wide Symposium on Peace, featuring lectures by local, national, and international speakers. Other peace symposia have since been held in succeeding years.³⁰

Student Political Clubs

Besides public demonstrations, an additional avenue for campus political activism has been participation in officially recognized political clubs. Although politically oriented student groups existed earlier, partisan political clubs did not become officially established at BYU until Wilkinson's administration. In 1952, he announced that he had "no objection . . . to students organizing themselves into political clubs," provided they not become "preponderantly partisan, emotional or demagogic in their approach." By 1968, six known student political clubs had emerged: Young Democrats, Young Republicans, Young Independents, Young Conservatives, Young Americans for Freedom, and Young American Independents. Petitions to organize student chapters of the leftist-oriented W.E.B. DuBois Club, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), and the Peace and Freedom Party were refused. Administrators contended that the DuBois Club was a "communist front organization," that SDS championed violent revolution, and that the Peace and Freedom Party advocated "the indiscriminate use of contraceptives" and supported "free love." Consequently, only one club, Young Democrats, provided a forum for politically moderate and liberal students. Because of this, Young Democrats not only boasted the largest membership of any student political club during the 1960s but also drew repeated threats of banishment, such as in 1969 when members displayed a peace symbol in the Wilkinson Center, distributed anti-draft literature, and publicly exhibited books by revolutionaries Che Guevara and Malcolm X (Zion's Opinion, 25 March 1969). Young Americans for Freedom and Young American Independents served as the primary outlets for ultra-conservative student activists. In 1966, Young Americans for Freedom sponsored visits from conservative apologists Jerreld L. Newquist, author of Prophets, Principles, and National Survival, and John Stormer, author of None Dare Call It Treason. Two years later, student leaders of Young American Independents publicly defended racial segregation as a moral obligation to prevent the miscegenation of the races.³¹

Accompanying changes in church and university leadership in the early 1970s, the number of political clubs allowed on campus was cut in half. An application for a student branch of the John Birch Society was turned down in 1971. The next year administrators adopted an official policy of recognizing only two clubs, the Young Republicans and the Young Democrats. Proposed clubs subsequently refused recognition included the Belmont Club, the Assembly of BYU Statesmen, Common Cause, the League of Women's Voters, and the American Party (see Ex. Com. Minutes; DU, 2 Oct., 13 Dec. 1974). The Board of Trustees clarified its position in January 1975 when it noted that the Republican and Democratic parties enjoyed an "established record of not creating the kind of difficulties with which the board is concerned." Additional political groups were barred from campus "to avoid the excessive politization that has characterized many institutions of higher education to the detriment of their learning activities." When students affiliated with Young Americans for Freedom petitioned for official recognition two years later, they were told to "operate within the framework of either the Republican or the Democratic Party." Dean Elliot Cameron added the following year that the Young Republicans and Young Democrats existed "only because of the grandfather clause--they've been here for years and years so they are still permitted. If [they] ceased to exist for a year they would not be rechartered," because the board "does not want the student body polarized."³²

Despite official encouragement to work within traditional parties, the political affiliation of some BYU students has followed national trends of greater pluralism. A relaxation of school policy was evident, for example, when administrators allowed the Utah Association of Women to organize on campus in late 1979 "as long as they pursued the non-political aims outlined in their charter." Early the next year, officials voiced "no objection to a student chapter of United Families of America being established on campus, as long as the purpose would be one of education rather than being used as a springboard for lobbying efforts." And following the U.S. presidential campaign of independent John Anderson in 1980, students pushed for the organization of a Young Independents political club. With the support of BYU executive vice-president W. Rolfe Kerr, President Jeffrey R. Holland announced approval for this third student political club early the next year. Yet, "as an alternative middle ground to the two major party groups," the Young Independents club was to be "the only other `catch-all' political club approved." As a result, Young Americans for Freedom representatives were again turned down, and Amnesty International was refused permission to organize on campus. More recently, however, students succeeded in establishing a quasi-political club, Response, to "plead the case of human rights and explore the alternatives for resolving conflicts in the world." During its first two years, Response sponsored several successful peace and human rights symposia. While offering additional outlets on campus for political activism, Response, Young Independents, and even Young Democrats have remained largely in the shadow of the Young Republicans, currently the largest of BYU political clubs. Young Republicans, with its emphasis on partisan politics, laissez-faire economics, and limited federalism, continues to reflect the political views of the greater part of today's increasingly conservative BYU student body.³³

Administrative Support for Conservative Politics

Perhaps as a result of their own nineteenth-century communitarian heritage, many Mormons sympathetically greeted the rise of Russian socialism following World War I. For example, shortly after a tour of Soviet communal settlements in 1930, BYU agronomist Thomas L. Martin explained that the Soviet distaste for religion centered primarily on the Russian Orthodox Church. "Russia seemed to be over-churched before the revolution," Martin said, "and is even more so now. I found eleven churches in two blocks." A second BYU eyewitness to Russian socialist experiments, President Franklin S. Harris, later acknowledged his regret at "leaving this land where . . . we had all become attached to a great people who were sacrificing and struggling that better human [conditions] might be worked out." Students, too, were apparently receptive to quasi-socialist programs. More than 60 percent supported U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal welfare acts in 1934. Indeed, Utahns generally "let federal money pay the way" throughout the depression as official LDS relief programs, inaugurated in 1933, proved ineffective in dealing with state-wide poverty (Bluth and Hinton). By 1936, communist showings at Utah's election polls and rumors that some Mormons had joined the Communist party of the United States prompted the First Presidency to warn members that "communism [is] hostile to loyal American citizenship and incompatible with true church membership. . . . No loyal American citizen and no faithful church member can be a communist." Critics of BYU were quick to cite Thomas Martin's and Franklin Harris's qualified praise as evidence that Soviet communism was being taught at the church university (Broadbent to Harris). BYU president Howard McDonald's student health plan would be criticized ten years later as "socialized medicine" because of a mandatory ten dollar per student allocation from tuition receipts (see BYU 2:465-66).³⁴

Not all BYU students and faculty shared their church's growing anxieties about communism. One 1947 campus editorialist termed Russian communism an "international bogey man" and branded J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and arch anti-communist, the world's "ace truant officer." BYU English professor Parley A. Christensen wrote sympathetically in the late 1940s of socialist experiments, observing that "no reputable historian [had ever] ascribed the greatness of America to `Free Enterprise.'" Christensen also condemned capitalism, which, he wrote, "has never been interested in anything except `bread,' and the profits [that could be made] from it." One 1950 visiting guest lecturer suggested, "We have been spending too much time fighting communism when we should have been preaching freedom." Yet the majority of church and university officials had become ardently anti-communist during the Cold War years following World War II. J. Reuben Clark, Jr., first counselor in the First Presidency, asserted in 1949, for example, "The plain and simple issue now facing us in America is freedom or slavery. . . . Our real enemies are communism and its running mate, socialism." Less than three years later, church president David O. McKay stressed, "Only in perpetuating economic freedom can our social, political and religious liberties be preserved." In a 1954 speech, he queried, "In education for citizenship, why should we not see to it that every child in America is taught the superiority of our way of life, of our Constitution and the sacredness of the freedom of the individual?" Communism, McKay told BYU students in 1960, "has as its ultimate achievement and victory the destruction of capitalism." As if to dramatize his resolve, McKay endorsed the U.S. presidential bid of anti-communist crusader Richard M. Nixon six months later.³⁵

The concern among church and university officials over the growth of communism manifested itself most conspicuously in the 1951 appointment of Ernest Wilkinson as BYU president. A Republican convert and conservative critic of the federal government, Wilkinson needed little encouragement when church leader Stephen L Richards charged him at his inauguration to "implant in youth a deep love of country and a reverential regard for the Constitution of the United States." Nor did President McKay's later prayer go unheeded that Wilkinson would "have [the] vision to understand more than anyone else in education circles the dangers of communism and . . . be a leader in our schools in protecting our people against this ungodlike philosophy" (Wilkinson Journal, 28 April 1960). "This institution," Wilkinson promised, "is definitely committed to a philosophy which is the antithesis of that espoused by the communists. . . . More than any other school, Brigham Young University has a better basis for teaching correct principles of government" (Wilkinson to Widtsoe). What Wilkinson hoped to establish was an exemplary church institution of higher education where a loyal and patriotic faculty would "teach `correct' economic doctrines--doctrines which would assist in salvaging the American system of free enterprise from threatened extinction" (Wilkinson to Clark and McDonald). To this end, he actively promoted a politically conservative image both for himself and his university, while championing the campus appearances of anti-communist crusaders and lobbying for the establishment of a curriculum that favored Republican party principles. He also attempted to recruit a core of similarly minded administrators and faculty. In the process, however, he became fearful of dissent, preoccupied with rumors of teacher disloyalty, and particularly distrustful of faculty in the political sciences, economics, and history.³⁶

Wilkinson's impact on the previously bipartisan BYU community was immediate. "There had been some activity politically at the university before Ernest Wilkinson became president," remembered longtime friend George S. Ballif, "but not nearly as much as [after] his administration began. . . . There were many university professors who were Democrats, and some . . . stayed on with the university after Ernest came, but they weren't very vocal Democrats." In 1953, one faculty member characterized the "professional radicalism" of his colleagues as extending "no further than [to a] belief in Social Security or Adlai Stevenson." But even this was sometimes enough to raise Wilkinson's hackles. Until 1959, he refused to authorize special commemorative activities honoring the United Nations, including participation in state-wide model United Nations conferences, because the international organization competed with the "American form of republican government." BYU officials reluctantly approved a shortlived student exchange program with Russia and eastern European countries in 1960 but denied permission to the university's A Capella Choir to perform in Russia several years later.³⁷

While anti-communist speakers appeared regularly before campus audiences during Wilkinson's presidency, liberal and leftist lecturers were intentionally excluded from the university's platform. "There are certainly going to be no communists speaking to our students," Wilkinson insisted, "nor are there going to be any fellow travelers who invoke the Fifth Amendment for the purpose of refusing to tell of their communistic affiliations" (Wilkinson Journal, 9 Sept. 1957). Church and school officials tried unsuccessfully to persuade FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to address students on communist "masters of deceit." "Over the years," Wilkinson wrote to Hoover in 1958, "we have had great admiration for your distinguished and unselfish public service which has not been surpassed by anyone else in the nation." Speakers who accepted the school's invitations challenged students to "become as indoctrinated in Americanism as Soviet children are in communism." Attention in campus publications occasionally focused on such outspoken faculty as conservative apologist and religion professor Hyrum L. Andrus. "When the conservative position in modern America is viewed in light of the Kingdom of God, its strengths become apparent," Andrus told students in a November 1962 Daily Universe guest editorial. "[However,] liberalism, like the plan proposed by [Satan] and his hosts in the War in Heaven, is deficient and perverse." The next day, BYU alumnus Reed Benson, Utah coordinator of the John Birch Society, insisted that communists were "absolutely amoral. . . . We haven't treated them yet for what they are--murderers."³⁸

In response to the apparent politization of their school, especially evident in campus-wide assemblies and devotional services, many students publicly criticized Wilkinson for his "unabashed partisanship." "The political speakers at university programs, with one exception, have been of one political party," wrote one student in 1954. "I believe that this has unconsciously influenced many students, and that by being so arranged, these programs have degenerated from an educational function into a political harangue." Another added, "[Selling] politics on the market of righteousness is repulsive to intelligent students and townsfolk alike. If this is to become a university, we must have fewer `little' deeds from Big Brother." Other students complained that patriotic songs such as "America," "America the Beautiful," the "Star Spangled Banner," and the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," were sung "over and over" during school assemblies. In 1961, when Wilkinson announced that the year's commencement speaker would be Barry M. Goldwater, a conservative Republican senator from Arizona and later U.S. presidential contender--whom Wilkinson would introduce as "essentially one of us"--one undergraduate composed the following "special glossary of terms" for those unfamiliar with right-wing rhetoric: socialism--"any plan for social change or betterment not cleared with either Barry Goldwater or President Wilkinson;" conscience--"a special sense of right and wrong which is possessed only by . . . a few Republicans of the extreme right, most of whom the students of Brigham Young University have been privileged to hear speak during the last year;" and freedom of assembly--"freedom to listen almost every Monday to a defense of President Wilkinson's political philosophy."³⁹

Throughout the early 1960s, the number of partisan speeches featured on campus as part of the university's devotionals or forum assemblies sometimes accounted for nearly 60 percent of the total offerings. Students especially "object[ed] to the use of our devotional as the vehicle of political indoctrination." Daily Universe editors wryly added, "Most of us who have been around for a while realize that President Wilkinson is a conservative Republican. We know these things because he has told us many times." Another student wrote, "One need no especially acute perception to note that the weekly forum speakers tend to advocate the same political and economic philosophy. Can we claim intellectual honesty for ourselves . . . when we present only one side of an issue while the other is disparaged or at best neglected?" Not all students were as dissatisfied with the administration's choice of speakers, however. More than a few expressed shock when David R. Mace, director of the American Association of Marriage Counselors, claimed that "Soviet families are happier and more stable than American families." One undergraduate quickly complained, "It would appear Dr. Mace is in actual essence a socialist at heart and chooses to support his views with what he saw in Russia." Still, many students, a majority according to one estimate in 1962, remained relatively neutral, unswayed by their president's partisan policies.⁴⁰

By 1963, political issues occupied much of Wilkinson's time, occasionally taking up to 70 percent of his meetings with church officials, according to his own estimate. The long-standing possibility of running for public office became increasingly attractive as Wilkinson regularly toured the country, delivering stirring defenses of free enterprise to interested civic, social, and religious groups. He contemplated establishing a patriotic Freedom Institute at BYU but, he claimed, was thwarted by faculty bent on "teaching [the] welfare state." Amid the clamor to allow a variety of opinions on campus, Wilkinson unexpectedly announced that Soviet journalist Gyorgi I. Velikovosky would appear at a university-wide assembly. The president uncharacteristically explained, "We have had so many references to communism this year, it seemed well that students should have the opportunity to hear from a real communist." Two-thirds into his well-attended address, Velikovosky suddenly dropped his thick Russian accent and annouced that he was George Velliotes, a California businessman and former history teacher, who had adopted the masquerade to dramatize "the evils of communism." Dismissing the criticisms that followed, Wilkinson reiterated, "Brigham Young University stands squarely behind the prophets of this great church and the political leaders of our country in denouncing communism as a devilish and satanic gospel. I am surprised that anyone thought otherwise."⁴¹

Ultra-Conservative Factionalism

In many ways, Wilkinson's anti-communist activism mirrored a growing affinity among some General Authorities for ultra-conservative ideologies, especially those espoused by the nascent John Birch Society. Because of his own conservative partisanship, church president David O. McKay occasionally became a willing accessory to anti-communist histrionics, despite resistance from his Democratic counselors, Henry D. Moyle, Hugh B. Brown, and later N. Eldon Tanner. For example, when Salt Lake City police chief and former FBI agent W. Cleon Skousen published in 1959 an alarmist expose' of communism, The Naked Communist, McKay publicly admonished church members during General Conference to read "that excellent little book." Skousen's polemic quickly became an ultra-conservative manifesto. Despite mounting opposition from members of the BYU faculty and his own counselors, McKay privately encouraged Skousen, who had served as an administrative aide to Wilkinson until 1956, "to keep up his good work in talking against communism and the increase of socialism in this country" (Wilkinson Journal). The church president also endorsed the anti-communist activities of Utah governor J. Bracken Lee, Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, Senator Barry Goldwater, and Vice-President Richard M. Nixon, as well as conservative church leaders J. Reuben Clark, Jr., Thorpe B. Isaacson, LeGrand Richards, and especially Ezra Taft Benson. Indeed, for many, the conservative politics of Apostle Benson, former U.S. secretary of agriculture, epitomized much of the political piety that characterized the church and university throughout the 1960s.⁴²

At the university, the reaction among students and faculty to the emergence of an ultra-conservative faction among church authorities was divided. Religion professors Reid Bankhead, Glenn Pearson, and Hyrum Andrus favored Birchist ideology and had to be reminded not to "interject their personal opinions and feelings in the classroom." After meeting John Birch Society founder Robert Welch in the mid-1960s, Wilkinson wrote in his journal, "The John Birch Society is a real patriotic living and moving organization." He hoped to "press forward for more training along this line at the BYU." Although Wilkinson considered it impolitic to join the society, he added, "I would probably agree with 90 percent of their teachings." But BYU political scientist Louis Midgley publicly rebuked society devotees in 1964, asking how "anyone at a university--anyone who reads books and thinks"--could "take it seriously? . . . Their morality is simply the old notion that the end justifies the means; any stick to beat the devil." Two months later, twenty-two faculty members signed an open letter to the student body condemning conservative author John A. Stormer's sensationalistic None Dare Call It Treason as a "piece of fanaticism." They explained that their letter was written because Stormer's book was "being distributed in certain BYU religion classes . . . [and] regarded as authoritative because of this sponsorship."⁴³

However much President McKay privately supported Birchist goals, he feared that the controversy surrounding the society's successful proselyting of church members was "causing considerable . . . embarrassment to the church because of unfounded statements being said and written on both sides of the subject." He consequently instructed BYU officials, "in no uncertain terms," not to "bring speakers to the campus to discuss [the] subject, nor [to allow] faculty or students to debate the subject, nor [to allow] articles to be written on [the] subject in the Daily Universe. . . . The matter [should be] dropped entirely." As a result, school administrators later vetoed the proposed speaking engagements of Robert Welch himself and Tom Anderson, a member of the society's national board. McKay's instructions also prevented some church and university leaders from backing a student chapter of the society in the early 1970s.⁴⁴

When Wilkinson resigned as president in early 1964 to run for the U.S. Senate, he had already become a leading Utah spokesman for the conservative wing of the Republican party. His ten months on an often bitter campaign trail crystallized his intense political views. He became increasingly critical of Democratic social reforms, "the welfare state which has now come upon us," and his own party's drift towards "socialism." Following his return to the campus in 1965, Wilkinson, freed from his responsibilities as church schools administrator, turned the focus of his fears towards the university. Determined to mold BYU into a showcase of conservative politics, he regretted that in his absence "there [had been] a marked tendency for so-called `liberal elements' to take charge of the economic and political things of the university." "We are facing a great crisis in this country," he added in a letter to President McKay, "and many of our political science and economics teachers are teaching false doctrine." "The problems that I will face," he confided to his journal, "are much larger than those I faced when I first came in as president of the B.Y.U. Whether I will have the energy and the fortitude and patience to solve some of them remains to be seen." But, he vowed, "I am going to do what I can to reverse [this] trend which may mean the elimination of certain faculty members." As a result of the president's renewed zeal, "hardly a day went by that we did not hear something about socialism or the like," remembered Wilkinson staff employee Jan Izatt. "And, of course, he was always on the lookout for anything subversive on campus and anytime there were reports of the same, he would really get upset. . . . He didn't want anything tainting our campus, and he pretty much saw to it that people of that kind were kept out."⁴⁵

Criteria for promotion in faculty rank were subsequently expanded to include "commitments to business history and . . . to the business community," as well as "affiliations with the conservative elements of economics." Wilkinson balked at appointing economics faculty whose views differed from his own (see Ex. Com. Minutes, 28 Jan., 3, 25 Feb. 1965; Wilkinson Journal, 1-6 Feb. 1965). The university's required course in American history was "adjusted" in 1968 to include "treatments of economics and the American system of free enterprise," as well as J. Reuben Clark's writings on the U.S. Constitution (Ex. Com. Minutes, 21 Nov. 1968). But after reviewing an administrative survey of student attitudes two years later, Wilkinson wrote to business dean Weldon J. Taylor that "there is still a lot of room for improvement as to the appropriate answers if we are going to maintain our republic." Dance bands brought to campus were screened for possible communist sympathizers. University administrators contacted local radio stations when their programming featured such musicians as folksinger Joan Baez, "known to be a communist and the leader of certain riots in this country." When Wilkinson learned that the number of students using federal food stamp subsidies had more than doubled in recent years, comprising 80 percent of all food stamp recipients in Utah Valley, he asked the Board of Trustees "for guidance." Trustees initially concluded that "any additional comments or actions would draw attention to the program," but Elder Ezra Taft Benson later condemned the practice in a devotional address.⁴⁶

The Development of a Speakers Policy

Although the number of conservative guest lecturers prior to 1965 had been disproportionate, the imbalance was even more striking after Wilkinson's senate bid. Favored BYU speakers included General Carlos Romulo of the Philippines; George Mardikian, a San Francisco restauranteur and U.S. military advisor on food preparation; Kenneth McFarland, superintendent of the Topeka (Kansas) Public School District; and news commentator Paul Harvey. As Wilkinson explained to McFarland in 1966: "I am looking for the very best speakers in the nation, but they must have honest-to-God American thinking, who inspire us to greater heights rather than sow the seeds of disillusionment." In an effort to distance himself from criticisms, Wilkinson partially delegated responsibility for the selection of university-wide speakers in 1965 to a Speakers Committee composed of four administrators, three faculty members, and the student body president. Under Wilkinson's watchful eye, committee members adopted a policy of prohibiting speakers who "advocate the overthrow of the government of the United States or of its constituent units by force, or in any other way violate restrictions imposed for public safety;" or who "advocate or espouse ideas inimical to a belief in a divine creator, honesty, morality and individual responsibility, or take advantage of [their] forum in any other way to demean the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or its doctrines or policies" ("Policy"). Wilkinson, who retained final speaker approval, instructed school officials in 1968 to check the names of speakers against lists supplied by leading anti-communist groups for evidence of leftist affiliations.⁴⁷

During Wilkinson's 1964 absence, acting president Earl Crockett approved the speaking engagements of four alleged communist sympathizers: Louis Untermyer, a consultant in English poetry to the Library of Congress; Max Lerner, a syndicated newspaper columnist; Stringfellow Barr, a historian and political satirist; and folksinger Allan Lomax. Upon his return, Wilkinson immediately cancelled the contracts of both Barr and Lomax (Wilkinson to Bernhard; Wilkinson to Bateman). When television reporter Howard K. Smith, who had also been invited during Wilkinson's absence, spoke favorably of U.S. president Lyndon Johnson's New Society, Wilkinson promised that Smith would not be invited again (Wilkinson to Horton; Wilkinson to Stafford). Wilkinson also argued that the joint appearance of nationally syndicated columnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson would "have serious repercussions with certain members of my Board of Trustees, who are acquainted with what they consider to be the unethical conduct of these two gentlemen" (Wilkinson to Taylor). Following the appearance of U.S. vice-president Hubert Humphrey in October 1966, Wilkinson complained that he had been pressured by Democratic General Authorities into allowing the vice-president to speak on campus (Wilkinson Journal). He was particularly annoyed that he had not had enough time to provide an articulate Republican rebuttal. Less than two years later, Wilkinson refused to cancel classes for the campus appearance of presidential candidate and U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy (D--Massachusetts). Still, more than 15,000 students packed the George Albert Smith Fieldhouse to hear the charismatic Kennedy quip, "I had a very nice conversation with Dr. Wilkinson, and I promised him that all Democrats would be off the campus by sundown." The next week, Republican senator Charles H. Percy (Illinois) attracted fewer than 5,000 students. In late 1970, Wilkinson accompanied Senator Barry Goldwater and Utah's Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, Laurence J. Burton, to the school's Homecoming Assembly. Despite the protests of surprised ASBYU student body officers, Wilkinson invited Senator Goldwater, who had not been cleared by the Speakers Committee, to address the captive audience.⁴⁸

During the late 1960s, trustees expanded the speakers' policy to prohibit speakers who were "engaged in programs or movements antagonistic to the church or its standards," which Wilkinson interpreted to preclude "atheists," "subversives," "those [having] any link with Russia or who would destroy our country," and "those who would defame or ridicule our concept of strict morality." Because most speakers continued to represent a narrow political spectrum, limited by Wilkinson's interpretations of the guidelines, complaints from both faculty and students continued to surface. "It is my impression," wrote BYU political scientist Ray C. Hillam, "that the committee is entirely responsible for censoring rather than promoting . . . possible speakers for the university." Five months later, Wilkinson replied publicly to his critics, "It is a matter of deciding whether to host speakers whose views on matters parallel our own as opposed to those whose views we do not respect." Although one undergraduate asked rhetorically the following week, "Do you want BYU to invite a representative of Satan to speak to us?" an impressive 60 percent of the student body countered in a 1970 poll that "viewpoints contrary to the church stand should have an opportunity for exposure on campus." Perhaps aware already of the sentiment among students, Speakers Committee members tried to increase student participation in choosing speakers in 1969. However, Wilkinson advised the committee, "Before you do anything of this kind you [should] consult with me because I am not at all sure that students are the ones to select these assembly speakers" (Wilkinson to Wheelwright). Among those prevented from appearing on campus primarily for political reasons throughout the late 1960s were Donna Allen, Erich Fromm, George Wallace, the Shah of Iran, Gore Vidal, Marshall McLuhan, Whitney Young, Stewart Udall, Betty Furness, and Jesse Jackson. Wilkinson also criticized the on-campus speaking assignments of members of his own faculty, including economist J. Kenneth Davies; political scientists Stewart Grow, Melvin Mabey, and J. Keith Melville; and historian Thomas Alexander, whom Wilkinson had previously termed a "socialist" (Wilkinson to Thomas; Wilkinson Journal, 10 May 1970).⁴⁹

Stemming, in part, from criticisms of Wilkinson's speakers policy, Neal A. Maxwell, newly appointed church commissioner of education, announced his intention in November 1970 to establish a uniform speaker selection process for all church schools, including BYU. (The push for a consolidated speakers policy coincided with Wilkinson's resignation, made public five months later.) The executive committee of the Church Board of Education ruled in February 1971 that the "names of prospective speakers [for general audiences were to] be submitted to the [Board of Trustees] prior to any contact being made with speakers in order to avoid any possible embarrassment." Shortly before his release, Wilkinson attempted to expand the list of "proscribed performances" to include the "advocacy of birth control and deviance from the Word of Wisdom," the "advocacy of hostility between the races," and the "advocacy of violent and/or irrational, emotional confrontations." Instead, however, the board adopted a statement mirroring the 1965 BYU Speakers' Committee guidelines, with the following additions: that proposed speakers not have committed "acts of immorality, dishonesty, or other conduct [which] would make it inappropriate for the Church Educational System to feature [them] as a speaker;" that "any person who has qualified as a candidate for the . . . office of president of the United States [be allowed to] address general assemblies . . . without prior submission of his or her name to the board;" and that "no speaker be disqualified solely on political grounds." "Our platform," a depolitized Board of Trustees concluded, "should be available for invitation to representatives and members of all political parties and persuasions to explain their points of view." The board's resolution represented a major reversal of the precedent established by Wilkinson.⁵⁰

Because of the board's policy, BYU speakers came to include spokespersons from the Democratic, Republican, American Independent, and Libertarian parties. When an invitation was extended to former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in 1974, trustees insisted that "an invitation [also] be extended to someone representing the Arab world." Following actor Robert Redford's much-publicized appearance on campus four years later, during which he criticized Utah's two Republican U.S. senators, school officials invited Senators Jake Garn and Orrin Hatch to publicly answer Redford's attack. In November 1979, Wilkinson's moderate successor, Dallin Oaks, recommended to the First Presidency that BYU's policy be further amended to allow any officially declared candidate for the U.S. presidency from either of the two major parties to speak regardless of moral conduct or reputation. Oaks explained that according to the board's policy, at least two presidential hopefuls "probably would not withstand scrutiny on moral grounds." Oaks had been approached by supporters of Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D--Massachusetts), as well as by newspaper reporters, asking if Kennedy had been "banned at BYU." "We currently stand in imminent danger of a coast-to-coast wire service story" about the school's policy, Oaks wrote, stressing that the university could "not delay the issue much longer." At Oaks's urging, the board approved his recommendation.⁵¹

Despite the new tolerance for presidential candidates of varying life styles, other speakers were rejected during the 1970s on the basis of alleged sexual immorality. Among those disapproved for allegedly advocating or engaging in illicit sexual behavior were Moshe Dayan, Ben Bradley, Jerry Brown, Betty Ford, and Allen Ginsburg. By the late 1970s, politics again emerged as a criterion in speaker selection. For example, both morality and politics were cited in disapproving liberal Democrat George McGovern in 1978. One university official stated that he was "not about to let [McGovern] come and sit in front of the student body with his concubine," while a second admitted, "Ezra Taft Benson would hit the ceiling if [McGovern] spoke on this campus" (DU, 9 April 1980). In rejecting consumer advocate Ralph Nader the following year, academic vice-president Robert Thomas wrote, "Most of his comment is simply carping, and we don't need to pay for that" (Thomas to Polve). Administrators again began checking the names of prospective speakers against rosters supplied by conservative action groups. Some trustees, too, renewed their conviction "that visiting speakers . . . [should] speak on topics that will not be offensive to the membership of the church" (Ex. Com. Minutes, 7 Nov. 1980). Still, university officials--careful to distance themselves from the restrictive policies of the late 1960s--have not been intractable. For example, when television actor Mike Farrell refused to speak on campus in 1983 because BYU had initially stipulated that he not address "any political issues," the school reconsidered its decision and offered him an open forum.⁵²

Covert Faculty Surveillance

One of the most common reasons cited in faculty dismissals nation-wide during Cold War anti-communist crusades was reputed "un-American" sympathies. In 1950, some thirty-six members of the University of California faculty were fired for refusing to sign an oath of loyalty to the United States. Attempts were made at other colleges to rid their campuses of suspected leftists and communist sympathizers, using oaths, disclaimer affidavits, certificates of allegiance, and pledges of patriotism. From 1965 to 1970, the number of political dismissals more than doubled as a result of American involvement in Vietnam. For Wilkinson, the possibility of subversive infiltration at BYU had always presented a serious danger but never more so than after his 1964 defeat. "We are clearly in the midst of a great campaign to create a socialistic state," he fretted in his journal, repeatedly condemning university "liberals [who] want to make the BYU a pulpit for all of the left-wing groups in the country." The president was determined to "have a more patriotic and dynamic political science and history department," but admitted, "How to get this is a real problem."⁵³

In his attempts to secure an ideologically pure faculty, Wilkinson adopted a number of measures which, in retrospect, proved to be both ill-conceived and counter-productive. During the early 1950s, Wilkinson had periodically solicited individual eyewitness reports of employee disloyalty from sympathetic faculty and school administrators. Shortly after arriving in Provo, for example, he asked religion professor Sidney B. Sperry for a "confidential memorandum of the various criticisms or complaints" regarding the "attitudes of some of our faculty members." Several years later, however, Wilkinson vowed to "set up some kind of machinery for getting the facts," because "most people have a tendency to exaggerate or color the facts when they are alone and think they can get away with it" (Wilkinson Journal, 21 April 1958). He consequently instructed BYU legal counsel Clyde Sandgren to monitor a student club's 1959 dinner dance scheduled at a local restaurant managed by the head of Utah's Communist party. About this time, Wilkinson also began appointing administrative "fact finding" committees, which, under his direction, were assigned the task of investigating complaints of faculty or administrative malfeasance. In 1960, for example, he assigned two university subordinates to investigate the allegedly unethical behavior of a third school administrator. "Should any person refuse to give you the facts as they know them," Wilkinson charged, "you are authorized to inform that person that his services will be terminated. . . . Somehow we must develop a group of `he-men' who have the courage to tell what the facts are."⁵⁴

By the mid-1960s, Wilkinson came to rely most heavily on trusted in-house "lieutenants" to gather the information he needed. When Reed Benson, a son of church apostle Ezra Taft Benson, suggested in late November 1960 that he be appointed to the faculty to "find out who the unorthodox teachers were and report to his father," Wilkinson wrote that he did not "want espionage of that character." But by 1965, Wilkinson began asking a number of friends both on and off campus to confidentially forward to him "specific information" regarding the reported "socialist teachings" of BYU historian Richard D. Poll. "I am sure you know that it's difficult for me just to act on hearsay," he confided to Mark Benson, another son of Elder Benson, "so if you can document any irregular statements [Poll] has made, together with giving me information as to how that may be proved, I will be grateful." A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, Richard Poll had joined the BYU faculty shortly before Wilkinson's appointment as president. Though an active Republican, Poll's moderate political views set him apart from Wilkinson's hard-line conservatism but did not prevent his advancement to full professor or appointment as chair of the Department of History and Political Science in 1954. Still, Poll's public disagreements with W. Cleon Skousen and Ezra Taft Benson over the appropriate response to communism (and with other church leaders on organic evolution) earned him the reputation among some Mormon conservatives as a liberal troublemaker.⁵⁵

Wilkinson first confronted Poll directly in early 1963, informing him that he would not receive any further administrative advancements because of his participation in "fringe activity of doubtful validity." Specifically, the president objected to Poll's critique of Skousen's The Naked Communist, entitled This Trumpet Gives an Uncertain Sound, and Poll's involvement in BYU's chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a nation-wide faculty-rights organization known for its advocacy of academic freedom and faculty participation in university governance. (Poll had been elected president of the AAUP chapter at BYU when Wilkinson allowed its establishment in 1960.) Heightened tensions between Wilkinson and Poll continued through mid-1965 when Poll took a sabbatical leave to Europe. Wilkinson asked the head of university relations, Stephen R. Covey, to prepare a dossier on Poll and submit a recommendation on renewing his teaching contract. With Poll still abroad, Covey submitted his 54-page confidential "Report on Richard D. Poll" the following year. Covey asserted that during Poll's fifteen years at the university, he had reportedly:

1. Highlighted disagreements among church authorities, putting "them in a bad light," to "justify his own and other liberals' actions;"

2. Criticized church president David O. McKay, as a part of his review of W. Cleon Skousen's The Naked Communist;

3. Been affiliated with the American Civil Liberties Union, "considered by many to be a communist front organization;"

4. Invited political activist Dorothy Marshall to speak on campus when she and her husband were both "known affiliates of communist front organizations;"

5. Oriented his classes towards "liberalism," and been a "rallying point for the `liberal' element on campus;" and

6. Been a member and a leading officer of the BYU chapter of the American Association of University Professors, where his influence "tended to be both constructive and critical (negative) towards the university and policies established by the Board of Trustees."

At the conclusion of his report, Covey made no recommendation regarding Poll's retention but added that he had been a "popular and effective teacher, a very intelligent and able person, and an effective leader."⁵⁶

Immediately, Wilkinson ruled that Poll was "probably guilty" on all counts but was troubled by Poll's apparent popularity. Surveys of more than 2,000 of Poll's former students showed that approximately 80 percent classified Poll's lectures as either "conservative" or "middle-of-the-road," while 82 percent reported that his courses had helped them "strengthen [their] understanding of the American constitutional system and [their] sense of civic responsibility." When Poll learned that other BYU faculty were receiving contracts, he wrote to his department chair and made contact with a member of the Board of Trustees to find out why he had not yet received his. Wilkinson subsequently announced to members of the executive committee that he had decided to "renew Brother Poll's contract but would carefully observe the latter's conduct during the coming school year" (Wilkinson Journal, 26, 27 April 1966; Ex. Com. Minutes, 28 April 1966). A number of politically conservative General Authorities continued to press for Poll's dismissal; in October 1969, Poll resigned to accept an administrative position at Western Illinois University, where he joined former BYU social sciences dean John T. Bernhard, who had been appointed WIU president the previous year. Poll checked on faculty and administrative vacancies at BYU after Wilkinson's resignation, but administrators were reluctant to provoke those church authorities who had been glad to see him go. In 1977, Poll taught a summer term at BYU and, after his retirement from Western Illinois, taught history at BYU part-time. Neither appointment required board clearance.⁵⁷

A second professor subjected to close scrutiny during Wilkinson's administration was economist J. Kenneth Davies, a graduate of the University of Southern California. A specialist in labor economics, Davies was both a vocal defender of unionizing efforts and a critic of right-to-work legislation that threatened to undercut the negotiating position of unions. Like Poll, Davies had emerged as a leading member of the school's chapter of the AAUP. By the mid-1960s, Wilkinson had concluded that Davies was one of the school's "most erratic teachers" and maintained a close watch of his professional and personal activities. When, in early 1966, Davies accepted a confidential listing of faculty salaries from a BYU employee for consideration by the school's AAUP members, Wilkinson seized upon the opportunity to brand Davies a thief and to assemble a roster of unrelated prior accusations in an attempt to pressure Davies to resign.⁵⁸

Wilkinson was particularly irritated by Davies's refusal to identify the employee who, with access to the school's main computer, had made a copy of the university's salary schedules. The president presented Davies's case to the Board of Trustees in early March 1966, characterizing the incident as an example of theft and insubordination and asked if he should "dismiss Brother Davies." The board authorized Wilkinson "to take such disciplinary action as he sees fit." Aware that Davies would be taking a leave of absence during the coming school year, Wilkinson agreed to extend his teaching contract one year, with the understanding that academic vice-president Crockett, business dean Weldon J. Taylor, and economics chair Richard B. Wirthlin would "persuade him not to return." Davies, however, gained the support of his immediate superiors when, in response to the administration's accusations, he wrote to Wilkinson, "The whole problem would not have arisen if we had an open, honest salary system at B.Y.U. by which a faculty member could evaluate his financial worth to the administration by comparing his own salary with the minimum, maximum, and average for his rank. At present, only a favored few have had sufficient information with which to improve their negotiating position with the administration."⁵⁹

Resentful of Davies's counter charges, Wilkinson asserted to Dean Taylor, "Had this been the first indiscretion of Davies, I would possibly not have taken the action I did, but there comes a time, if we are going to maintain proper decorum on our campus, that I have to take action." Nine months later, Davies unexpectedly announced his intention to return to the university. Wilkinson immediately ruled that his contract would not be renewed (Wilkinson to Crockett). Davies, however, feeling that Wilkinson's actions stemmed from his opposition to Wilkinson's 1964 Senate bid and his public criticisms of the John Birch Society, insisted that his case be aired before an impartial university committee. As news of the stand-off spread throughout the school, many faculty, both at BYU and elsewhere, interpreted the administration's position as an attempted breach of tenure and transparent subterfuge to rid the school of dissenting opinion. Davies arranged to meet privately with first counselor in the First Presidency N. Eldon Tanner and Apostle Harold B. Lee to explain his position. Under the weight of faculty and board opinion, administrators informed Davies that he would be granted an official hearing, but only "as a matter of grace," as school policy made no provision for such an allowance (Crockett to Davies).⁶⁰

Following the appointment by Wilkinson in late February 1967 of a three-man faculty committee to hear the case, the administration formally drafted five charges against Davies. They were:

1. Receiving and using stolen property;

2. Accusing the administration and trustees of dishonesty;

3. Calling President Ernest L. Wilkinson a "maniac" and a "rat;"

4. Criticizing church president David O. McKay and disbelieving "certain" teachings of the church; and

5. General misconduct, disloyalty, and offensiveness to the standards of the university.

Officials also announced they would retain final authority in the case, regardless of the committee's recommendations. Davies took issue with the administration's position as both prosecutor and judge, then asked that his accusers be required to appear personally before the committee. He also requested that the hearing be open to all interested faculty and that the administration pay for the transportation of witnesses called in his behalf. Committee members agreed that testimony would be accepted only from persons who appeared before them during the hearings but rejected all other requests.⁶¹

Only days before the president's committee was scheduled to open its hearings, Wilkinson assured the Board of Trustees that Davies would not be re-employed. Meanwhile, an unexpected complication arose when several undergraduates publicly declared that they had been recruited by administrators to form a "student spy ring" to monitor the lectures of faculty in the social sciences, one of whom was Davies. Fearful of the repercussions that a formal hearing into Davies's case might bring, officials disbanded the investigating committee and offered to renew Davies's teaching contract with an increase in salary. An elated economics faculty celebrated their victory, but Wilkinson warned Davies on 10 March that he would be expected to refrain from advocating "views at variance with the concepts of the restored gospel as interpreted by the presiding officers of the church." An irrepressible Davies replied within the week, "I am willing to serve under the same conditions and limitations which apply to all faculty members, interpreting them to include the degree of academic freedom we have historically enjoyed." More than a decade later, under President Jeffrey R. Holland, Davies was appointed chair of BYU's managerial economics department.⁶²

The 1966-67 Student "Spy Ring"

While illustrative of Wilkinson's approach to faculty control, the Poll and Davies cases represent only two such instances involving the surveillance of faculty accused of espousing "liberal" beliefs. By 1966, Wilkinson had concluded that the most effective means of combating the "advocacy [of] concepts at variance with the view[s] of our prophet" was to encourage selected students to covertly monitor the political and economic sympathies of their teachers on and off campus. In mid-April 1966, Wilkinson summoned his comptroller and aide, Joseph T. Bentley, to inform him that he intended to deliver a forum address, "The Changing Nature of American Government From a Constitutional Republic to a Welfare State," that would "rock the campus from one end to the other." According to Bentley, Wilkinson asked him if he "knew of some reliable students who would advise [the administration] as to the comments of teachers" in response to this speech. Bentley suggested Stephen Hayes Russell, "a very competent and reliable student," and several other undergraduates he believed could be trusted. Russell, an economics major, had previously received funding from the president's office to attend a conservative economics symposium in New York, sponsored by the Foundation for Economic Education.⁶³

Wilkinson's intent, Bentley insisted in 1982, was to "subdue criticism of the brethren. . . . In some of these classes, sentiments were expressed against Elder Ezra Taft Benson. Wilkinson was loyal to the brethren." According to Stephen Hayes Russell's 1967 statement, he was summoned to Bentley's office and informed that he had been "selected by the administration to assist in a confidential project." Flattered, Russell eagerly agreed. According to Russell, Bentley warned that "President Wilkinson's name must remain clear from the project," and that "if I got caught at this, official university reaction would be that I was working on my own." Then, with Russell present, Bentley "commenced writing a list of `liberal professors,'" inviting Russell to make any additions he "deemed proper." The final list included political scientists Ray C. Hillam, Louis C. Midgley, Stewart L. Grow, Melvin P. Mabey, and Jesse R. Reeder; economists Richard B. Wirthlin and J. Kenneth Davies; and English professor Briant S. Jacobs. Many of the faculty listed had campaigned for Wilkinson's opponent during the 1964 election. Bentley introduced Russell to his assistant, Lyman Durfee, who promised Russell whatever clerical assistance he needed. Russell recalled how "Brother Bentley praised me for my conservatism and expressed hope that I would use my abilities to realize my full potential as a Libertarian economist. That day in his office, I developed a deep respect and appreciation for a fine man." Bentley, too, subsequently remembered the confidence that he and Wilkinson had in Russell. "We seized upon the opportunity to use this young man to set up the monitoring groups," Bentley later acknowledged (authors' interview).⁶⁴

Immediately after his meeting with Bentley, Russell contacted a number of friends, many of whom he had met at local John Birch Society meetings. He assured them that "an important situation had arisen in which they could assist me in serving the administration." The small group assembled that evening, 20 April 1966, in room 370 of the Wilkinson Center. While one of the students stood guard at the door, Russell read a prepared mission statement, repeated his instructions from Bentley on the need for complete secrecy, and asked those who were not sympathetic to leave. Of the eight faculty targeted, Ray C. Hillam, a graduate of American University (Washington, D.C.) who had joined the faculty in 1960, was reportedly "on the top of the [administration's] list. . . . They wanted to know about him and they [were] going to get him," Russell promised. When copies of the teaching schedules of the eight professors were distributed, only two or three of those present could say that they were enrolled in any of the targeted classes. Russell consequently asked "for volunteers to monitor the other classes for [the] three periods following the president's speech or until the professors made a statement on the address to the class--whichever came first." Eight students volunteered: Lyle Barnett, Eugene Bryce, Michael Call, Curt Conklin, Ronald Hankin, Ted Jacobs, Mark Skousen, and Lyle Updike. Russell instructed them to "bring their reports to [him]" the following week so that he could deliver them to the administration as soon as possible.⁶⁵

As promised, Wilkinson presented his hard-hitting address the next morning. The nine undergraduates dutifully attended their assigned classes, asked leading questions, took careful notes, and promptly reported back to Russell, who typed a composite twelve-page report. At Bentley's urging, Russell submitted his findings directly to Wilkinson. Russell said that he "read a few of the more explosive and derogatory remarks to [the president] and then handed him the report." Wilkinson expressed his appreciation and Russell left. Privately, Wilkinson fumed in his journal over the professors' remarks, observing that many of the school's faculty "think much more of their political convictions than they do of following their prophets" (Wilkinson Journal, 29 April 1966). "Instead of being more lenient with communist and socialist ideas," he would resolve less than two weeks later, "we have got to be much more firm" (Wilkinson Journal, 10 May 1966). Wilkinson handed Russell's report to Vice-President Clyde Sandgren and instructed him to meet with the students individually to verify the accuracy of their allegations. Russell and other sympathetic students continued to monitor classes throughout the next ten months. Some students met personally with professors and, on at least one occasion, recorded a conversation without the knowledge of the faculty member involved. The list of "tainted" professors expanded to include Russell Horiuchi (geography), David Hart (political science), Gordon Wagner (economics), and social sciences dean John T. Bernhard. The students' reports were channeled to Wilkinson through either Bentley or Sandgren, who were expected to verify the reports before forwarding them to the president's office.⁶⁶

In mid-July, one of Hillam's students confided to him that Sandgren had asked him to confirm a number of allegations against Hillam made by Russell and James C. Vandygriff, a student registered in one of his classes. Hillam immediately contacted Sandgren to lodge a protest. Sandgren expressed surprise that Hillam had not been told he was under investigation but assured him that he was not "on trial." Skeptical, Hillam contacted his department chair, Edwin Morrell, who registered a personal protest with Wilkinson over the way the investigation was being handled. According to Morrell, Wilkinson replied that he "should not object because surveillance [was] a common practice used by the FBI." Wilkinson afterwards decided to "turn over these charges [against Hillam] to Vice-Presidents Crockett, [Ben E.] Lewis, and Sandgren and let them determine whether the charges are true and, if true, what [the] punishment should be." In his defense, Hillam not only denied the allegations against him but strenuously protested the "motives and methods" of the students who had gathered the information against him. He later met privately with Wilkinson, who assured him that students had not been organized to "spy on" the faculty, confidently predicting that Hillam's charge of improper administrative procedure would be put to rest during the vice-presidents' hearing.⁶⁷

After an initial conference with the three vice-presidents in mid-August, Hillam was asked if he could meet with them again in one month. He agreed and asked that his department chair, Ed Morrell, be allowed to attend. Sandgren initially consented but, when Wilkinson objected, begged Hillam not to press the issue. Hillam insisted, and the vice-presidents eventually agreed that Morrell could appear as a witness in Hillam's behalf and mutely observe the proceedings but ruled that he would not be allowed to participate otherwise. Rumors that "the administration had used students to spy on members of the faculty" began circulating among both faculty and students. Though some administrators were embarrassed by the resulting "unrest," Wilkinson, writing in his journal in early September, refused to "apologize" or "get in a very defensive position." On 13 September, one of Russell's colleagues, Ronald Hankin, inadvertently revealed to a neighbor of Louis Midgley that Midgley had been one of

	Brigham Young University A House of Faith by Gary James Bergera and Ronald Priddis Salt Lake City, Utah © 1985 by Signature Books. Table of Contents: Introduction 1. Growth and Development 2. Integrating Religion & Academics 3. Standards & the Honor Code 4. Organic Evolution Controversy 5. Partisan Politics & the University 6. Student Government, Social Clubs, & Newspapers 7. Intercollegiate Athletics 8. Arts, Entertainment, & Literature 9. Academics & Intellectual Pursuits Sources and Abbreviations Authors