1911 Brigham Young University modernism controversy

[1] The four instructors' courses were popular among students and other faculty, but university and church officials accused the professors of promoting heretical views, and in 1911 offered the Petersons and Ralph Chamberlin a choice: alter their teachings or lose their jobs.

[8] Ann Weaver Hart wrote that the 1911 BYU controversy made Utah comparatively less emotional and reactionary than other parts of the country during the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial.

[9] At the University of Utah in Salt Lake City a similar controversy — what some at the time described as 'a tempest in a teapot' — erupted four years later in February 1915.

The 1911 BYU controversy — involving some of the same professors, including the Peterson brothers and the Chamberlins — led in part to the University of Utah debacle.

[10] Appearing in the inaugural December 1915 volume of the Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors, this became the AAUP's foundational statement on the rights and corresponding obligations of members of the academic profession.