A couple weeks ago, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that BYU-I was declining to renew[fn1] instructors’ contracts based on nebulous and unexplained criteria.
And yes, I understand that the BYUs have odd and specific contractual provisions, one of which is that employees’ employment is contingent on getting an ecclesiastical endorsement from their bishop. But here’s the thing: the bishops of the two instructors the story interviews did provide ecclesiastical endorsements. That is, the people in question went to their bishops. They answered the questions bishops are supposed to ask. Their bishops endorsed them. They had current temple recommends. They had done everything that the BYUs say they needed to do.
But they were told they weren’t renewed because they didn’t get “ecclesiastical clearance” and therefore didn’t qualify to teach at BYU-I.
A quick interjection here: the BYUs can certainly have cryptic, unstated, unknowable reasons for firing/not renewing employees’ contracts, provided those reasons don’t conflict with state law, with the employees’ contractual terms, or with their accreditor’s requirements. Other than that, though, this is something that the BYUs can do.
But can is not should. And the BYUs absolutely should not fire employees for failing to meet nebulous, unstated standards. Doing so is harmful to employees, to students, and to the schools themselves.
Harm to Employees
This one is probably the most obvious. One of the fired instructors points out that losing this job cost her family more than 1/3 of its income. And contingent faculty is generally in a precarious position anyway—they lack job security, they’re underpaid, and they often teach so much that they can’t do the research and publishing that might land them a tenure-track position. That’s a shameful part of academia writ large, but it’s doubly shameful for schools that profess to be followers of Jesus.
And it doesn’t just hurt the faculty who are fired. If your colleagues are getting fired for not meeting some unknowable standard (and, since BYU-I refuses to explain why they were fired or what this “ecclesiastical clearance” standard is, it’s an unknowable standard), that’s going to affect your security and satisfaction.
Harm to Students
This kind of firing hurts students, too, in a number of ways. The discouragement and uncertainty makes it less likely that qualified instructors will go to BYU-I. The BYUs are often able to get overqualified faculty, in part because many church member feel a call to help the development and growth of Mormon students. But if you might lose your job at the whims of someone you don’t even know, I suspect you’ll think twice about taking that job. If you can get a job somewhere else, you’re likely to do that. So BYU students will, as time goes on, have less qualified instructors.
And they won’t get the faith mentorship that they so desperately need. Both instructors featured in the story believe that their firing has to do with their positions on LGBTQ rights. And here’s the thing—their positions were absolutely the opposite of radical. They amounted roughly to the idea that they should consider the wellbeing of the LGBTQ community.
And here’s the thing: that baseline of concern for the LGBTQ community is an absolute floor for most of the rising generation. There are exceptions, of course, but the vast majority of our young people know their LGBTQ, like them, and believe that they should enjoy a baseline of civil rights and civil treatment. And if we want to keep them in the church, we need to provide some kind of model for how to maintain activity in the church in spite of many of its policies on LGBTQ members. It’s not an easy line to walk, and teachers who can model that tension will do far more for our young members than sermons about religious freedom.
But to the extent we (figuratively) excommunicate those people from our society, we send a message to our young people (straight and LGBTQ alike). And it’s not the message we should be sending.
But if professors and instructors at church schools are afraid they’ll lose their jobs for modeling faith in the face of that tension, those who continue teaching face significant incentives not to model that critical behavior.
Harm to the BYUs
Finally, the schools themselves will be hurt. They’ll attract less-qualified professors and instructors. They’ll attract less-qualified students. The students they do get will have a harder time getting into grad school. Getting jobs.[fn2] Etc.
Some Last Thoughts
Look, I’m not suggesting that the BYUs cannot decline to renew contracts of instructors. I’m not saying it can’t fire people. But I am saying that it needs to be transparent. If it’s laying people off to save money, that sucks, but sometimes we have to save money. But be explicit about it. If they don’t want their professors expressing concerns about the treatment of LGBTQ individuals, well, that sucks but say it in advance. If there is some other ecclesiastical qualification necessary to work for the BYUs, tell employees and prospective employees in advance.
But firing people for failing to meet unknown and unknowable standards is academically and religiously unacceptable.
[fn1] I initial wrote “firing,” but it’s not clear whether they’re being fired; in fact, the headline says they were “fired.” But the intricacies of academic contracts—and particularly contracts for contingent and part-time faculty—are varied and I don’t know what these instructors’ contracts looked like. But either they were fired or their contracts, presumptively renewable, were not renewed. For purposes of this post, it doesn’t really matter which it was.
[fn2] It’s beyond the scope of this particular post, but if you believe that students at BYU are going to be bigoted, why admit them into your program? why hire them? It’s only going to create problems for you down the line. And this isn’t a purely hypothetical problem: when I was at BYU, a number of BYU-grad med students were apparently making misogynistic remarks to their female classmates. The med school let BYU know that it wasn’t inclined to admit BYU students if that was how they would act. Was it resolved? IDK. I went to law school and know very little about the BYU-to-med-school pipeline.