Brigham Young Rejects Pulitzer Prize Winner as Speaker

Brigham Young University has scrapped the idea of inviting the only female Pulitzer Prize winner in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to speak at its annual women’s conference. No one seems to know why.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the award-winning historian who teaches at the University of New Hampshire, had been recommended as a speaker by a panel working on the conference. The April event is jointly sponsored by the Church and BYU.

Brigham Young’s Board of Trustees rejected the idea, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. A BYU spokeswoman says it was the administration’s decision.

Those mixed signals have prompted lots of speculation on the campus. Some believe that the board made the decision when its two female trustees were absent. “A case of men making decisions about women’s conferences” is how one professor describes it.

Ms. Ulrich, who has spoken at the university before, doesn’t think she’s “a dangerous radical,” though she writes for a feminist Mormon journal, Exponent II, which she says is controversial.

Regardless of who made the decision, Ms. Ulrich believes it is part of a bigger debate over academic freedom now going on at BYU. “There’s a lot of tension on the campus right now,” she says.