D. Michael Quinn is one of the best and most controversial scholars of Mormonism. Dr. Quinn has made discussion of treasure digging and magic an indispensible topic in scholarship of early Mormonism. He wrote a groundbreaking two-volume work on the development of the Mormon Church's hierarchy. According to a Wall Street Journal Online article written by Daniel Golden, he is also finding it impossible to find employment in the area of his expertise.
I have an interesting perspective on this story. Before I explain why Dr. Quinn, one of the foremost scholarly authorities on Mormonism is having a difficult time finding a job, I will share my perspective.
For some time I lurked or posted over at FAIR. FAIR, which is among the links on my blog here, is an online apologist resource. It has a discussion board. In one forum on the board, apologists of all stripes and critics of Mormonism gather to slug it out. I grew tired of the predictable slant in moderating the board. If criticism reached a certain level of pointedness or effectiveness, a thread would get shut down, usually right after someone like professor Daniel Peterson had the last word.
I am capable of being practical. FAIR was created for the purpose of promoting Mormonism. Arguments that call truth claims of Mormonism into question are likely to get shut down. In my last thread at FAIR I made the mistake of bringing up the employment of two men who had written an inept review of Vogel's biography of Joseph Smith. Although men like Daniel Peterson have no problem using the ad hominem when it comes to identifying the atheism of critics of Mormonism, he did have a big problem when I called into question the scholarly objectivity, such that it can exist, of two men who have to hold temple recommends to keep their jobs.
My point was not welcome, and I was put on the 'queue.' This meant that anything I wrote had to be approved by the moderators. I tried to post something through this route once, and my post never saw the thread. I am sure the moderators really are too busy to screen these things, which makes putting people in the 'queue' very similar to putting on the gag. Fair enough. I have learned my lesson.
The apologists had their own day of realization when they abandoned ZLMB, the leading board of the time, because in spite of favorable moderating policies carried out by a team of LDS and non-LDS moderators. They felt they were being victimized by the biting posting of critics. So they left for the safe harbors of FAIR where agressive moderation in their favor made their lives more comfortable and their arguments more likely to seem to prevail.
Now we get closer to the point of this exercise. One of the FAIR board's most prolific posters and moderators is a graduate student at Claremont College. She is studying religion. She likes to crow about how the days of amateur Mormon scholarship by "counter-Mormons" (a 'counter-Mormon' is a secularist amateur scholar who writes Mormon scholarship with a secularist agenda) is drawing to a close, and that people like herself are the vanguard of the future of academic Mormon Studies. Sounds to me like her triumphalism is motivated by something more than guess work.
I had no idea how true this could be until I read the Goldman article. Mr. Goldman briefly documents how it is wealthy Mormons who are funding Mormon Studies chairs, and that these donors' views ultimately influence the hiring process. You pay for the chair, and it happens to turn out that they hire someone you don't find offensive. There's no conspiracy here. We're simply talking about the money of those who are flush and motivated (wealthy Mormons) dictating, to no negligible degree, how the academic study of Mormonism will be conducted.
The Goldman article also shows how people like Mike Quinn are edged out in other ways. Quinn made the mistake of asking BYU prof. and Mormon historian Thomas Alexander for a letter of recommendation when he went up for a job at the University of Utah--a state-funded institution. Alexander cautioned the U against hiring Quinn because his controversial scholarship would cost the university donations. Now, it is clear to me that Alexander stabbed Quinn in the back, but what he said is true, and in the modern, capitalist, corporate university knowledge is controlled by money.
For this reason Mike Quinn has been turned down for at least two jobs he was eminently qualified for. When he had a visiting position at Yale, BYU threatened to withdraw funding for an academic conference on Mormonism hosted by Yale if Mike were allowed to present a paper. In the end, Quinn personally yielded and merely introduced a paper for someone else. Once again, it is the power of money that determines which information sees the light of day.
These are the realities of our world. Don't be fooled. The Academy is not the place where any well-founded argument can have a fair showing in the arena of ideas. It is not the place where any useful question can be asked. And where it concerns different fields of specialty in Religious Studies, expect that the person who teaches your child about Islam, Evangelical Christianity, Mormonism, Catholicism, or New Age spirituality, will increasingly be a person who has an agenda to spin that informaion in a panegyrical manner.
What is at stake here? Honest education. Do we want Religion Departments at major universities to become arenas for proselytizing? Is Religious Studies a valid field of academic endeavor when the people who staff it are well-educated missionaries for their personal faith? It sounds OK when you think of your faith being taught by someone who sees things in a favorable light and teaches accordingly, but what if you are an Evangelical and your child is learning Mormonism from a Mormon, or Islam from a Muslim? Does it seem just a little more like missionary work then?
Apologists argue that if you want accurate information about a religion, you should go to a believer. I say that if you want someone to try to persuade you to join a religion, go to a believer. If conversion is your goal, by all means restrict your exposure to favorable sources. If education is your goal, then consider different perspectives, not just a believer's.
If you are a well-published, Yale-trained scholar like Mike, you may forever remain unemployed in the field of your expertise and fame. If you are a relatively unknown, unproven, brassy polemicist at FAIR with a graduate degree from Claremont, you may just have an eager financial backer. Wanna be like Mike?
