FARMS turned down a year earlier request from BYU President Bateman that FARMS become part of BYU, because Bateman clarified the request as coming from him as college president, not as a GA. DCP was then chairman of the board of FARMS.
FARMS acceded to GBH's request the next year (made via Bateman) that FARMS become part of BYU, because the FARMS crowed "regarded him as the Lord's prophet."
Negotiations leading to the 'affiliation' of FARMS with BYU took enormous amounts of time ["long hours of administrative work"], that was 'frustrating' for DCP.
Those negotiations "never involved anything connected with the way Religious Education was managed nor with any of its procedures". But, involved turf war skirmishes with the then-chairman of the Dept of Ancient Scripture, asserting that anything taught or written about ancient scripture at BYU came under his jurisdiction. In these affiliation negotiations that the Lord's prophet desired, DCP huffed and puffed "It'll be a cold day in hell before my dean will agree that you have jurisdiction over members of his faculty."
And as late as April 2009, "I had a pretty good and happy mission, and don't feel that I made any major mistakes -- let alone any that I need now to 'correct.'"
It makes one wonder why the Lord's current prophet (TSM) has not intervened but instead allowed FARMS and its glorious apologetics be stripped in 2012 from the OMIDs.
Isn't it marvelous? Isn't it wonderful?
Daniel Peterson, on 4/5/2009 wrote:* * *
A then-chairman of the Department of Ancient Scripture, in a meeting with me and one or two others from FARMS during the affiliation process, asserted that, given his title, anything taught or written on campus that dealt with ancient scripture came under his jurisdiction. I found this astonishing, not only as an attempt to assert control over FARMS but as a perhaps unintended assertion of jurisdiction over the Hebraists in my Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages, which is housed in the College of Humanities, not in the College of Religious Education. Quoth I: "It'll be a cold day in hell before my dean will agree that you have jurisdiction over members of his faculty." It would, I said, be as if the law school were to tell Political Science that any classes on the Constitution came under the jurisdiction of the dean of the law school. Fortunately, the dean of Religious Education agreed with me that this was an entirely unprecedented and unjustifiable assertion of control. In our talks with the University, we wanted it made clear that FARMS did not come under the control of the chairman of Ancient Scripture, and that, say, professors of Hebrew who published on Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls did not, for that reason, fall under the jurisdiction of the chairman of another department in an entirely separate college.
Why did we not turn President Hinckley's invitation down? Because, chapel Mormons that we are, we regarded him as the Lord's prophet. We had, however, turned down an earlier invitation from President Bateman. As chairman of the board, I had asked him whether he was inviting us in his capacity as a General Authority or in his capacity as president of BYU. When he unhesitatingly replied that it was in the latter capacity, I responded "Great! Then the answer is No." But he came back the next year with an invitation from President Hinckley, and that, we felt, we could not turn down. For various reasons.
Finally, the Brethren didn't insist on our publishing disclaimers. We did. That was entirely our idea, though they would have been quite justified in asking for such disclaimers if we hadn't published them.Mister Scratch wrote:But, I think it's important to note that much of this happened under a "cloak of secrecy," as it were.
Most of the University's more or less internal affairs are kept pretty much internal. When departments are merged or institutes are established or programs are terminated or faculty members are promoted or continuing faculty status is denied or budget decisions are made or deans are chosen, the deliberations that led to the decision are rarely if ever made public. And, though BYU is certainly somewhat more private than most schools, that's probably pretty much the way things are at other universities, as well. To call it a "cloak of secrecy" is nothing more than conspiracy-fantasy melodrama.
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Our [FARMS] negotiations with the University over affiliating FARMS with BYU, though, never involved anything connected with the way Religious Education was managed nor with any of its procedures. We weren't interested in those issues, nor concerned with them in any way.
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the affiliation process took enormous amounts of time, and that I found that frustrating.
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I had no "anxiety," wasn't "upset" (except about the long hours of administrative work that severely hindered my research and writing), felt no "power . . . being stripped" from me, suffered no "pain." I had a pretty good and happy mission, and don't feel that I made any major mistakes -- let alone any that I need now to "correct."
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