“On another note,” I say, “thank you again for helping me with my appeal of the decision not to promote me to the rank of professor. I’ll send you a summary when I get home. If some patriarch complains about your lack of citizenship, you can show him what you did for me and for the university. Our reasonable arguments, our silver-tongued eloquence, and our ‘civility that becomes believers’—to quote the university’s citizenship policy—ought to get me promoted, don’t you think?”
“All things being equal,” Sam answers, “the BYU administration should promote you and give you a big raise. But when they accused you of ‘kicking against the pricks’ I figured it was over. Anyone who could categorize your arguments against them as ‘kicking against the pricks’ has no sense for language, no sense for irony, and no sense of humor. I’m afraid you may have kicked against your last BYU prick.”
8 March, Orem (by email)
Sam—Here is my summary of the appeal. There are probably psychological reasons why I put it in third person. Whatever the case, thanks again. It was nice not to have to stand alone. And best of all, we had a hell of a good time saying what we think in a place where that is anathema.
To ground their allegations of “contentious criticism,” university officials cited the following statements from Scott’s publications:
“There is a virulent strain of anti-intellectualism in the Mormon Church…and its purveyors are, among others, members of BYU’s Board of Trustees…The Department of Religious Education has hired teachers who fit the unctuous seminary teacher mold rather than teacher-scholars…BYU is a sanctimonious edifice, a formalistic, hyper-pious community.”
The Dean of Humanities wrote that through “Scott’s actions as co-president of the BYU Chapter of the American Association of University Professors [which had investigated allegations of infringements on academic freedom at BYU], the university and the Church have been held up to national ridicule.”
“A more circumspect Scott,” he asserted, “would think twice, then thrice about taking his grievances to a national organization that regards academic freedom as the only true God.”
Holy shit! Scott thought. There was not—and he knew this for a fact—a “more circumspect Scott.” The “University Representative” for the subsequent appeal wrote that Scott’s work had been “disruptive, manipulative, and contentious,” whereas BYU faculty “assume an obligation of dealing with sensitive issues sensitively and with a civility that becomes believers.”
HOLY SHIT! Scott thought. I need help. And who better to help him than his partner in godless academic-freedom crime: Sam Rushforth. Sam was, after all, co-president of the BYU Chapter of the AAUP. And he was not unctuous.
Sam was not sympathetic, either (he alleged that sympathy could be found between shit and syphilis in the dictionary). He agreed, however, to be Scott’s “faculty advocate.” As the two men prepared the appeal, they found it difficult to summon the “civility that becomes believers.” Some things are simply beyond belief.
Scott and Sam collaborated on the arguments they presented to the members of the appeal committee. Sam told the committee that, when he and Nancy were advocating stricter clean-air standards for Utah, “someone thought we were being contentious and threw a brick through our window. The people who have denied Scott’s application for promotion have, in effect, thrown a brick through his academic career.”
Scott concluded the appeal: “You have argued that I am a bad citizen because I used the word ‘unctuous’ in reference to hires of non-scholars and because I called BYU ‘sanctimonious’ The Dean has argued that I am a bad citizen because I held the university up to ridicule. You haven’t, however, addressed the question of whether an ‘unctuous’ and ‘sanctimonious’ university is ridiculous.”
12 March, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
Bright sun this afternoon, glorious but still chilly for the light cotton shorts we both wear. A shiny black deposit on a rock proves to be relatively fresh fox (Vulpes fulva) scat. “A touch of diarrhea,” I observe.
“Here’s a set of paw prints.” On his knees, Sam points to small, rounded depressions in yesterday’s mud. Around the corner, we pass the scat of a more regular fox, a tight twist of black “tobacco,” also deposited conspicuously on a rock. Two years ago, we surprised a pair of red foxes dancing circles here, rising on two legs to paw at and dance with one another. A few weeks later, we looked down on a golden-brown fox backlit by a brilliant sunset, lighter hair marking a cross down the length of its back and across its shoulders. And that fall, we stood and watched the same cross-phase fox trot slowly away, watching us warily as it traversed a draw and bounded up a hill. At the top, it sat back on its haunches and watched us pass.
Since then, over the course of several hundred rides, we have seen many signs of foxes—but no actual foxes. Scat and tracks have served as the presence of an absence. We have come to relish this indirect, mediated relationship, to respect the intimate distance. Whenever we top a rise from which we have seen foxes in the past, our eyes scan the landscape. When no fox appears, we breathe a sigh of relief.
Relief?
It’s complicated, but maybe we’re relieved because we recognize ourselves as forerunners (foreriders) of the human wave encroaching on Utah’s wild places. If the foxes can slip our sight, they will be better off.
Grass is beginning to fill openings between the oak brush. Spears of death camus dot the meadow, a few of them cropped by browsing deer, we surmise, although that perplexes us. I try to dig up a bulb.
“Careful,” Sam warns.
It’s a double warning. There is the poison, of course. But Sam is sensitive to intrusion, to human hubris in the face of nature. I’ve heard him argue that we would have a better world if we accorded legal standing to trees. Last summer, when I plucked a blooming stalk of hound’s tongue to take home to draw, Sam couldn’t suppress an “awwww!”
The pointed leaves of the death camus rise a couple of inches from the ground. I dig for more than four inches and still don’t reach the bulb. When I pull on the plant, it breaks off.
“The bulbs will be deep,” Sam explains. “Maybe a foot down.”
I wipe my fingers carefully on my sweatshirt.
Sam points to another plant. “Look at this little umbel. The yellow buds in the center are already open.”
The inconspicuous plant hugs the ground, the yellow mass of tiny flowers surrounded by almost fern-like green leaves, streaks of purple along the triply forked stems. “Maybe a carrot,” Sam surmises. “Or a parsnip. At least some sort of umbel. The first spring flowers on the foothills of Mt. Timpanogos this year!”
“By the way,” I tell Sam on the ride down, “there was a quick response to our appeal. The letter from the Chair of the panel came yesterday. ‘We regret the disappointment,’ he wrote, ‘and we hope for a day in which you will be able to understand and appreciate the perspectives of all your colleagues here.’”
“He’s got a point, Abbott,” Sam says. “What we have here is a failure to communicate how much you understand and appreciate the self-righteousness of the so-called leaders who are destroying what
