Calculated Risk: Freedom for Mormons in Utah Higher Education The freedom society provides us to teach and study unpopular ideas is a calculated risk. Society taxes and contributes to make possible our expensive higher educational system because it accepts that academic freedom, despite the discomfort, even anger, it often creates, serves the long-term best interests of society. Societies that have most supported free inquiry and expression have consistently produced the greatest art and literature and also the best long-term solutions to political and social problems. The freedom accorded what Walter Lippmann called the “indispensable opposition” of minority viewpoints consistently produces more truth–and in the long run, more peace–for society. I trace the fortunes of academic freedom in Utah higher education over the past forty years and argue that it is presently greatest, for both Mormons and non- Mormons, not at the University of Utah or BYU but at Utah Valley State College. I explore ways it could and should be expanded elsewhere.

Eugene England