Maxwell Institute Podcast #170: Is Higher Education a Good Investment Today? Featuring Chip Oscarson

Rosalynde Welch: “Learn everything that the children of men know and be prepared for the most refined society upon the face of the earth. Then improve upon this until we are prepared and permitted to enter the society of the blessed, the holy angels that dwell in the presence of God.” These were Brigham Young’s words in 1873 and their timeless wisdom still guides Latter-day Saints pursuit of learning today. We’re counseled to learn all we can from the great libraries and laboratories of humanity and prepare ourselves to associate with the best scholars of our day, but then comes the twist. The knowledge we gain has a higher purpose than simply granting admission to the most refined society. In fact, the purpose and process of education prepare us to enter the society of the blessed in the presence of God. Today on the podcast I’m talking with Dr. Christopher Oscarson, a scholar of environmental humanities and Associate Dean of Graduate Education at BYU. Christopher, or Chip as he’s known, recently delivered an address entitled “Let Your Education Change You,” and I wanted to talk with him about another important speech he cited in his talk, President Spencer W. Kimball’s landmark address, “The Second Century of Brigham Young University.” Dr. Oscarson, like Brigham Young 150 years ago, challenged me to ask not how learning can help me get ahead, but how it can refine my character. We talk about the challenges of faith based higher education, whether real learning can happen outside the classroom, and why President Kimball worried about invading ideologies. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

Hello and welcome to the Maxwell Institute Podcast. Today, I am talking with Dr. Chip Oscarson who is an Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education here at Brigham Young University. Chip, welcome to the Maxwell Institute Podcast! 

Chip Oscarson: Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here.

Welch: So today we are talking about what is really the heart of the Maxwell Institute's purpose, what we around these parts call Disciple-Scholarship. Chip, we're hoping to kind of test the possibility that faith and reason are not enemies, but they're actually partners, they're allies. Maybe they're even help meets, one to the other. Around here we quote Elder Maxwell, whose name we bear, as you know, all the time. Elder Maxwell said, “For a disciple of Jesus Christ, academic scholarship is a form of worship, another dimension of consecration.” So our launch point today, as we discuss this, Chip, is an address by President Spencer W. Kimball, who in 1975 delivered a speech known as the “Second Century of Brigham Young University”. So that speech is obviously of great interest and is read often by folks who are connected to the university, but its themes are actually much wider. And I think they would be of interest to any believer who is drawn to scholarship and to the life of the mind. So I wonder if you would introduce us briefly to the second century address and share with us what you see as President Kimball's main message about the gospel. and about the search for truth by reason and by revelation.

Oscarson: Yeah, the second century address was given at the occasion of the centennial celebration of Brigham Young University in 1975. And the, it's really, I think, one of the reasons why we're coming back to it in the way that we are. I mean, it's always been an important address and, and a kind of founding document of sorts for the, you know, the contemporary university. I think one of the reasons that we're we find ourselves coming back to it again with renewed interest is that, you know, we're approaching the 150th anniversary of the university and higher education in, I mean, maybe every generation has said this, but it feels like higher education is kind of at a crossroads. And so going back to something like this helps us to, you know, to find our bearings and to, you know, kind of remind ourselves about the foundations of what, not only how we see ourselves, but how prophet seers and revelators who are also happen to be the board of trustees, which is a really kind of unique relationship with, you know, a board of trustees between the university and its board. How they see the university and it's so I mean the articulation is really fantastic in this. He goes a lot of different directions. There's a lot of different components, you know, to this, but I think that one of those, the main themes that we take from it is that there… We are expected at the university to be able to combine reason and revelation. And as you intimated, I don't think that this is something that is only for people at the university. There's some very specific ways that it plays out at the university and interesting ways that these come into contact in unique ways at a university. But, of course, this is applicable to every member of the church or person of faith that, as Christ taught his disciples that, that we live in the world, but not be of the world. And what does that mean? In some ways, it would be a lot easier to practice one's faith if you could shut yourself in a monastery isolated from, from any kind of influence and simply not engage in things that, that might, might be tempting or draw one astray in one way or the other, but that's most decidedly not what Christ asked of his disciples. And in fact, the true test of discipleship is to be able to navigate the world and to engage the world and to connect with the world. And this is what I think is just so remarkable about the philosophy that informs the very idea of a Latter-day Saint, Saint University. And as you were saying that there, there is not perceived to be a schism between faith and reason that they need to be able to go together. And if they don't go together, something is, something is out of kilter, something's kind of out of whack. And I’ve had this conversation with colleagues at other universities who are no of our faith, and although they, not being people of faith, they maybe kind of question the whole idea of a faith-based university. But they, at the same time, recognize that there’s something special that goes on at BYU. That it’s, while sometimes it maybe kind of feels like you might have to defend yourself, from the philosophies of the world, and certainly President Kimball uses some of that kind of language, there’s also a way that BYU so beautifully engages the academic community. It doesn’t always buy into everything that’s taught everywhere, as well it shouldn’t. No university should. And BYU has a real advantage I think in kind of this anchoring, its moral compass and a lot of universities could really benefit from that. And certainly people at universities can benefit from the idea as well. So that's one of the main things that I think comes through this. The other main one that is a little bit more specific to BYU, is that BYU is to think of itself as a unique institution. And it can be very tempting to want to pursue the kinds of things that distinguish a university in the eyes of the world. And I almost don't like using that, you know, that terminology because it sets up an us versus them that I think can, cannot be real productive. But I think that your listeners maybe will kind of recognize, the way that, you know, the honors that a university maybe would pursue in terms of academic prestige and research and things like that. Those are all…can be very worthwhile goals. But if that's all that Brigham Young University was doing, if that's all the church education system was striving for, then we would really be missing the mark, according to President Kimball, and that we need to understand ourselves as being unique. We don't give up on those things. And that’s an important point to make too. That our engagement with the academic community is really important not just for our legitimacy as an educational institution, but to serve our students well who are going to go out and be expected to engage the world. Again, not shut themselves, close themselves off somehow. They need to be able to do that and do that in an excellent kind of way, but at the same time in a way that helps them to be building their faith. And to be renewing their covenants with things that are important from an eternal perspective. President Kimball doesn’t think that there's a problem with these two things together, and he really lays out for us the challenge, and, and emphasizes again and again that it is a challenge. It was a challenge in 1975, it will be a challenge in 2025, with the sesquicentennial, and a challenge at the bicentennial. The issues will be different and will change, but this is always going to be a kind of inherent tension in the very idea of an institution like this. In the same way that this is the tension that Christ laid out, to be in the world and out of the world, to understand the world, to be able to engage the world, to be able to reach out and love people who are different than ourselves, but not necessarily be drawn away from the truth because of that.

Welch: Yeah, I love the way you're talking about education and the life of the mind as one of the ways that as Christians we are in the world, right? It's through our mind in some ways that we relate to the world, also through our bodies, through our service and our engagement. But our willingness to encounter new ideas and to contemplate what the world is telling us itself is one of the ways that we can be in the world as Christ instructed us to. And yes, as you say, it's very striking that President Kimball is very positive about education and about learning. In fact, he calls BYU or he gives for us the aspiration that BYU should be an educational Everest. Right? He's a big fan of higher education and what BYU stands for, but he has this metaphor that runs through the whole speech about languages, about being bilingual. And he calls Latter-day Saint scholars to become bilingual, speaking two languages, the language of revelation and the language of reason. And he expects us to be excellent in both of those languages. And as you say, there really seems to be no problem in his mind, no conflict between speaking both of these languages, just as one could become very, very fluent in Spanish and in Portuguese, right? And the trick... comes, I think, the challenge comes in knowing what your audience is and in knowing what is the context and the realm to use one language or another. And there may be times, as you said, President Kimball warns us that there might be times when BYU has to speak the language of revelation more than the language of reason and it might have to go a different direction from other players in the field of higher education and use what he calls gospel methodology. Gospel concepts and insights to solve the problems that confront us. But we should never read that to understand him denigrating or dismissing the possibilities of the language of reason.

Oscarson: No, I think that's right. And part of what I do is I'm a language teacher. I teach in Scandinavian studies. And so language is an important part of how I think about the world. And my ability to speak and read Swedish and French are an important part of how I engage the world just because of my particular background and family situation. And to push the metaphor. It's not, I don't think of languages as a, like a decoder ring, where there's, or maybe like Google Translate sometimes presents itself, where there's this one-to-one relationship between two things. It's almost like a language is a view of the world. It's a way of understanding the world. It opens up the world in a new kind of way if you speak a language. And Anyone who has learned different languages knows that there are certain ideas and terms and concepts that exist in one language that simply don't exist in translation. I mean, you can do an approximation, but it's kind of this and kind of that, but not exactly either one sort of thing. And so think about what that means in terms of how he's articulating things, that we know things, we experience things, we see things because of our familiarity with the language, the language of the spirit. We see, we know, and we understand things because of the language of scholarship as well. And I love the way that Annie Dillard talks about this in her pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a book that I love to teach, and has meant a lot to me. She talks a lot about seeing , and what’s involved in seeing, and how we have these constructs sometimes. We have to almost have the form before we can actually see what’s in front of us. And she talks about how certain things are only apparent to the knowledgeable and the lover. What she means by this, is that you form a relationship to these things, and you have to form a relationship before you really begin to see what’s there. And the kind of intensity that language study requires is a great metaphor for thinking about the spirit and the kind of effort it takes to learn to listen to the spirit and to allow the spirit to open things up. to your eyes and that same kind of discipline. And I use the word intentionally here, right? That is used in spiritual things that there's something analogous in academic things too, that the kind of focus and patience and humility that's required to understand through academic study, it's just not all that different than the kind of attention that has to be paid to the language of the spirit. And so I really like it as a metaphor. And I like it, especially if we think about the way that it really compliments, things complement and reinforce each other and give different dimensions, as opposed to pulling us in two completely different directions.

Welch: Yeah, I like that. So I hear you saying sort of two different things. One is that the language of reason and the language of revelation are different in some ways, like the language of Danish and the language of Norwegian, right? And that there are things that we can know and ways that we can know them in one language that we just can't replicate in the other, right? So there are going to be things that we can know through faith, that we can never quite know in the same way through study. But likewise, there are gonna be things that we can appreciate and understand through study that faith wouldn't get us there. So they're different and they can provide differing insights, but through the Spirit, I'm hearing you say, they can be united and they can work together through the mediation of the Spirit to give us this full kind of apprehension and appreciation of the world as we live in it as disciples of Christ.

Oscarson: Now, I think that's exactly right. And maybe one way to think about what both of these ways of understanding or knowing or believing, both of them push towards connectedness. And so this idea of how our faith should connect us to God and to each other, to his creations, right? Our study should do likewise. And it doesn't necessarily do that. Either way, right, that there's a way that one can allow one's faith to turn into a fanaticism where you stop understanding how a belief in God also connects you to others and to creation. There's likewise a way in our academic study that the exact same thing can happen, right? But insofar that both of these push us into meaningful and productive connectedness with God and with others. I just, I think it's a... beautiful complementarity.

Welch: I agree. And it's striking that as Latter-day Saints, we have this complementarity sort of built into our scriptures and into our foundational precepts. President Kimball refers on several occasions throughout the second-century address to the unique character and the unique purpose of BYU. And I've thought about that. You know, what makes BYU unique? Certainly there are other, you know, religiously affiliated universities out there. Indeed, the university started as a religious institution centuries ago. But one thing that truly does make BYU unique, and all Latter-day Saint learners, of course, are heirs to this tradition, is our canon, right? The canon of revelations that we have through Joseph Smith and through other prophetic utterances that have come since then. And that really is unique. in countenancing both reason and revelation as valid ways of knowing. So I wonder, you actually recently gave a devotional at BYU on precisely this topic. And I wonder if you would just briefly review for us the scriptural and historical basis for the uniqueness of the Latter-day Saint approach to reason and revelation.

Oscarson: I think that this is one of the things that's just really remarkable about us as a faith community, that we have this kind of relationship to truth that is so expansive, so capacious, right? That, and Joseph Smith and other prophets have reminded us again and again that don't believe for a second that we have a corner on truth, right? That we have very, you know, a lot of unique things in terms of authority and, you know, and... things like this, but truth is kind of dispersed and that there have been great women and men throughout history who have had access to this truth that we can learn from. And so, some of those, what I would think of as kind of foundational documents in terms of how we think about learning and education in the church would be things like Doctrine and Covenants 88 and Doctrine and Covenants 93. And of course, in Doctrine and Covenants 88, this is the school of the prophets. So this is Kirtland, Ohio. This is the edge of the American frontier. We're dealing with people who, none of whom have been members of this formal church for more than three years, right? I mean, it's that young. They tend to be younger. They don't tend to be particularly well-educated. Some of them have very little formal education at all. And yet the Lord is commanding them in Doctrine and Covenants 88 to learn out of the best books and about things above the earth and beneath the earth. And... you know, the things in history about the complexities of nations, you know, language, tongues and peoples. I mean, it is just absolutely audacious that, you know, it's not about let's make sure that we understand, you know, basic farming technique or, you know, how to do some really basic city planning so that we can… I mean, yes, that, but all of this other stuff too, right? And we know that, part of the School of the Prophets, that they're studying Hebrew and German and... all of these kinds of things that just seem to be so, I don't know, extra. And so the question is, well, why is the Lord asking? And then, I mean, to push us a little bit further too, it's not about practicalities. Obviously it's not about practicalities. He doesn't say, you party, you go, and you study kind of water management and you Brigham, you go and study this language. And no, everyone is supposed to do everything. And it is this kind of manifesto for general education in a lot of ways that that's what they're being asked to do. And the way that I interpret it is that precisely they're not supposed to necessarily all become experts on everything. That's not possible. Nor are they especially is the mandate to become a specialist in one thing, but something about the process of learning itself, is in the words that keep coming back in Doctrine and Covenants 88, it's sanctifying. And that if it's done in the right way, with an eye single to the glory of God and to the service of our neighbor, that it will have this refining effect on us. And of course, we're not unique in believing this. You mentioned the medieval, you know, kind of history of the university, which is very religious. And if you go back to antiquity even, the idea of education was precisely An education was about the refinement of the individual. And even the idea of a liberal education, liberal was used because it was about liberating the individual from ignorance. This was the proper education of a free person that they had to have this. And the American version of that re-emphasized that in that if we were to have a functional democracy, we have to have an educated electorate that's not going to be swayed by demagogues and false ideas, but we'll be able to make sound and prudent decisions about who their leaders and representatives should be. So we're not entirely kind of unique in this idea that an education changes us in some core and fundamental way. The thing that's happened in recent years with other universities is it's been increasingly difficult to come to a consensus about what the goal of that should be. And the thing that most universities can agree on is that, well, a person should be useful when they get done, that they should be able to use their degree for something. And so you've seen a push towards professionalization and a kind of more technical, you know, kind of education. General education as an idea and a philosophy has been under attack at a lot of universities where they keep scaling it back to make more room for specialization classes with the idea being that you can get a job right out of the university and that that's our goal, right? That that's our goal is to make you a professional. And I think we've really lost something if that's, and certainly I don't see that as being BYU's goal, right? That the mission and aims of BYU are quite explicit, that it is about the pursuit of perfection and exaltation, right? That, that's, it's this kind of audacious sort of ambition. And if you happen to be employable at the end of the day, that's great, we want that too. But that's not our main goal, right? Our main goal is that you've changed as a person and that you are more committed to serving God and to serving your neighbor, that's the ultimate quest. And what’s unique, again, to come back to what we have that’s so great is that we come together on that because we share this faith, right? And that’s the kind of the core and foundation of the university, that we are committed to this idea of quest of perfection and eternal life. And a lot of universities would be envious to have something so clear cut as the mission of ambition, that isn’t just about one’s personal enrichment, right? That one’s personal ability to accumulate wealth or status or anything else. We have much higher ambitions. And that’s certainly how I read the Doctrine and Covenants too, is that, that’s the point. And you don’t have to go to university. I’m certainly not arguing that a university is the only way to do that, but it’s one that has some particular advantages. It’s like the parable of the talents. If you’re given more, more will be required of you, it’s not necessary but it’s a great tool.

Welch: I think it's such a powerful idea that when we are bilingual in this way, when we are willing to bring our faith and our trust in our leaders to provide the revelatory framework to bear on our search for knowledge, it fundamentally changes what we're doing when we seek knowledge, right? Because now we have an end that it's aimed towards. And it’s the cultivation of our character, the character of our students, and ultimately that’s for the creation of Zion, right? Its for the, it serves the, the vision of a beloved community where we live together in peace and in flourishing. And that gives you a reason to get up in the morning and it gives you a reason to crack those books, and it gives you a reason to buckle down in the discipline that’s required to master an academic discipline. So I’m curious, I wanted to push you a little bit on this, because as you alluded to earlier we are at a kind of crisis point in public confidence in higher education. As price tags have gone up, as our sort of broad shared consensus around values has broken down, it seems that it’s just not worth it to more and more Americans. And so, you know, one way we might make the case for higher education, for those of us who believe that, indeed, it's important not only for those of faith but to have a broadly educated populace. One way we might make the case for higher education is to say, well lets bring down costs by doing things like creating these massive online courses, and creating more venues for remote education, providing more channels for information to be widely and democratically distributed, but without the bottleneck of having a personal relationship between professor and student.So I’m curious what you think of that? What is the mechanism for the improvement of the soul that happens when we study? Is it just through exposure to the information, or does it have something to do with the relationship between professor and student? Can it scale up in these sort of technical ways that we see universities experimenting with?

Oscarson: Yeah, that's a really great question. And there's a lot of dimensions to this. I would say that, so one of my roles here at the university right now is I'm the director of the general education program. And so we grapple with these exact kinds of questions all of the time about scale and about, I guess, ways to bring down cost, in essence, right? To be more efficient, to be able to do these sorts of things. And I think that you point to something really important about this idea of relationship, right? And I mentioned this earlier that fundamentally, one of the things an education should do is put us in relationship with God, with others, and with God's creations, right? And all of these things, of course, are tied up with each other. I wouldn't preclude the possibility, maybe even the inevitability, that there are a lot of really positive things that come from this kind of technological mediation, whether it be kind of learning through YouTube videos or the like, or like you're saying, these online classes that are somewhat impersonal, but more democratic. There's a lot of really productive things that I think can come from those. But I think that there's a real danger if they come completely at the expense of the relationship that you're talking about, the relationship between a teacher and a learner. is a really powerful one. And between the community of learners. One of my great fears is that, that in education, because of the way the institutions have evolved and developed, they’re becoming increasingly wedges in our society, as opposed to something the brings people together. And so for example, if you look at the evidence of people who research what’s the best way to diminish prejudice and racism in a community? That best way to do that, according to how this has been studied, is that you put people in equal relationships working with each other on a common project, right? And if you are doing all of your learning in isolation, it's, it's harder to do that. And, what we tend to see when everything is completely democratic, completely my choice of what I wanna do, I'm not constrained by any requirements or anything else is that I will build around me an echo chamber that tells me what I want to hear, what I already believe is true. And this notion of that has only grown in recent decades, this kind of,. moral relativism that my truth is true for me and your truth is true for you. And there's no such thing as facts. There's no such thing as a kind of a consensus knowledge that we can come back to. Truth even with a capital T, that's really, really dangerous. And it's harder to come to that when we're in these atomized bubbles. And technology has a tendency to create them. And so, again, I certainly kind of embrace the democratic impulses of technologies to be able to involve more people in education. But if it makes it an a la carte menu where I choose what pleases me and I'm not invited to engage things that are difficult for me to consider that happened to be true, then it's really damaging. And I really like we had on campus a few months ago, someone not of our faith, the president of Yeshiva University, Ari Berman, who talked about this. And the way that he categorized it was the difference between a consumerist approach to education and the covenantal approach to education. And the consumerist approach is exactly what I just described, right? Where I kind of go down the list. I choose what pleases me. I'm looking for the immediate return on investment. And I have no obligation to it beyond my wanting to purchase it. And after I purchase it, I'm absolved of any obligation to it. The covenantal is entirely different. And he uses the, you know, as an analogy, marriage, which I think resonates with our culture very much. That, when you're building a productive relationship with a spouse, you do not, you cannot take this consumerist kind of approach where it's, what does this do for me? I have no obligations or vulnerability to, to the other. Rather, a productive relationship is one where you open yourself up to the possibility of change, and that can be painful at times, and does demand a great deal of vulnerability, but in his words, the rewards of it are all the greater too, right? Whereas the consumerist, the reward of the consumerist is purely transactional. He says the covenantal, the reward is that it can be transformational. And I really do believe that. And so that we have these things that require something of us. It requires some kind of sacrifice of us, and some kind of engagement. I just think that that's really, really fundamental in however we think about the institutions that help us to become better educated.

Welch: And I think it's worth pointing out that these covenantal or consecrated learning relationships don't have to take place in the context of university. I think especially as Latter-day Saints through our associations at church, we have many models for constructing and creating in our own lives relationships of trust and of learning. I was recently speaking to a woman in my Relief Society, Shirley. She just recently turned 90 years old and we were talking about a friend of hers, Anne, who recently passed away. And I was just stunned when Shirley told me that she and Anne had been calling each other on the phone almost daily, every day for 40 years, to study the scriptures together. I loved that so much and the faithfulness of that relationship. the intimacy that they must have shared over the course of those 40 years, their dedication and their reverence for the sacred text. All of that story just moved me so much. And then when I found out that her friend, Anne, was actually Anne Madsen, who taught Old Testament here for many years and actually was my Old Testament teacher when I was an undergrad at BYU, it just made that story so much more meaningful. We can find opportunities to create a relational context for learning together, whether or not we have the opportunity to study formally at a university.

Oscarson: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I love another dimension of what you're suggesting with that story too, which is becoming a learner is not getting a degree, right? And that distinction is really, really important. Becoming a learner is like a disposition. It's a posture that one has to assume and then maintain. And you can lose it at any time, right? Anytime you begin to think that, oh, I've got it. There's nothing more there for me, that we're losing gratitude, we're losing patience, all of these kinds of things that are so essential to remaining open to the fact that the Lord can demand anything of me at any time because he understands something about my needs that I don't understand myself. And that learning how to be a learner, that really is the goal of the university. And like you're saying, it doesn't have to be a university that produces it. It is a great place to learn those things, but if you get you degree and you're done, you have completely missed the point. This education for eternity, the name of another one of President Kimball’s talks. It’s about learning how to learn and continually be open to the magnificence of God’s creation that manifests itself both through the spirit as well as from that active attempt to understand the world better.

I really loved the example Chip just shared. Even though it was uncomfortable for a while in his academic circles, he was faithful to the prophetic witness that humans are made in God’s image, and are an intrinsically good part of creation. Not a problem to be eliminated. And in time, with patient persistent effort, he saw that view vindicated. As secular scholars too came to understand that humans must be integral to the renewal and healing of our planet. Hisfaith provided values and parameters to spark his rational thought, and together they yielded a creative solution to the problem at hand. If you’re enjoying what Dr. Oscarson has to say, I’ll recommend another Maxwell Institute book, Dr. George Handley’s collection of essays titled “If Truth Were a Child.” George, like Chip, happens to be a scholar of environmental humanities, and his book explores how education in the humanities can enrich our pursuit of truth and increase our faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. You’ll find it listed on the Maxwell Institute website under publications and we’ll link it in the show notes. Let’s get back to the interview. Chip shares a story about his mother, the former Young Women General President, Bonnie L. Oscarson, and the time that she was a student in the college course he was teaching. It’s a great story.

Welch: So we've been describing, I think, the best case scenario for a beautiful integration of modes of learning through study and also through faith. And my experience is that most of the time, those two modes complement each other beautifully and seamlessly. But there might occasionally be a time when there seems to be a conflict between what we're learning by reason and what we're... taught to understand by faith and by revelation. One example, I'm no expert here, but it's a widely known example, is evolution. Where through much of the 20th century, there was a real conflict between proponents of evolution and religious believers who believed in a creationist account. And oftentimes, in fact, almost always, it was schools that were the battleground where that played out, and what should prevail? Creationist or evolutionary accounts. And it's not always easy to see your way through the commitments that we owe to both reason and to revelation when there appears to be a conflict. So how should we proceed when those two languages don't seem to be working in concert?

Oscarson: Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, I think patience is such an important kind of principle, and it's not a very satisfying one, unfortunately, when the conflict seems acute. But I think about the story that people are familiar with that Elder Uchtdorf recited in a devotional here on campus, and maybe it was even a general conference talk where he talked about, the six blind men all approaching an elephant and understanding something different about what an elephant was because you know one was touching the tail another the tusk another the trunk, right? And they all had this very different idea of what it was and of course none of them all of them are right and none of them are right at the same time and I think that when there are these kinds of conflicts I think in almost every case we simply don't know enough, and that we need to to kind of abide with it and to be patient and to learn. And I mean, it's interesting that, the case of evolution, I think that on both sides, certain assumptions are made that make it seem like these are incongruous positions to hold that both things could be true. And yet there's ways, now it seems like it's easier to understand ways that these might actually fit together in a very beautiful kind of way. And so I mean, I think that that, you know, first and foremost is the, is the principle. The other one that for me personally that I follow is that, when in doubt, follow the prophet and that it might, it might take longer than I might want for there to be some kind of resolution between these things. But I do believe that the, you know, that resolution will come. I'll give another example real quick, if I could, from my own studies. So one of the areas that kind of within Scandinavian studies that I'm interested in is the environmental humanities. And one of the things about our doctrine that's pretty core is that, humans are unique. I mean, we get this from the biblical and kind of probably great price accounts of, of the creation of humans. It's distinct among creations in that we were made in the image of God, given dominion, over creation. And this is kind of an uncomfortable truth for me for a long time, is thinking about these kinds of questions about human relationship to the environment. Do we have to think of humans as kind of unique? And for many environmentalists, they would say absolutely not, that that's the source of all of the kinds of environmental crisis that proceeds out of that belief that humans are unique and distinct. But something became apparent to me that has also become apparent to others who study this, that I think is really interesting about how the truths of the gospel, if we're willing to be patient with them, that they actually open up kind of new dimensions. Environmentalists generally have painted themselves into a kind of a corner with that belief, because the only solution then to any environmental problem is, well, get rid of the humans. And that is kind of a morally suspect position, as I hope it is for most of the listeners here, right? That I don't believe that that's the solution to most of our problems. And that there's been this kind of emergence of ideas in kind of the most recent decade, really, talking about the Anthropocene and trying to think about, well, what is the role of maybe we need to stop thinking about people as being the problem, because we're thinking about people being outside of nature. People are, are part of nature, right? And so how do we think about humans as being part of these systems and functioning productively within these systems? There's an unproductive way to operate within these ecological systems, but to think about them productively. And suddenly you go back and you read these scriptures and you're like, well, this makes perfect sense. The Lord is giving a stewardship to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and saying, you need to be careful. You need to be aware of how you exist within what I have created. and that you have an outsized role because you have certain capabilities that can magnify your footprint in essence. And yes, you're invited to kind of use these resources, but I'm asking you to use them with restraint and to learn how to control yourself, because that is some of the attributes of Godhood that I'm inviting you to learn through this moral existence. And so suddenly, something that I used to think of as kind of an embarrassment almost kind of within our... our doctrine in light of this kind of these environmental ideas. Well, suddenly it's produced this really powerful insight that others are coming to from other directions actually as well. And so patience, you know, that, that's one of the keys of learning, whether you're learning spiritual things or more secular things, is that you need to learn to be patient and to be humble, right? And intellectual humility is absolutely key. if the frontiers of knowledge are to be advanced on any front, it's going to be because of those things.

Welch: I love that example Chip. Where your patient and humble faithfulness to the truth of the prophet witness, right? We talked about how revelation can give us the end of the aim that we’re headed towards. So your faithfulness to that prophetic witness, that humans are made in God’s image, that actually took awhile, but it gave you an insight. A creative insight that you might not otherwise have gotten, had you simply allowed your mind to run on its own, right? Instead, your faith kind of provided parameters or constraints for your reason that produced creative sparks and yielded a new solution to this problem of the role of human beings both in creating and in solving the logical crisis. That’s a really, really wonderful example of how that process can work. I'm really moved by this one passage from President Kimball, and I don't really know why it moves me so much, but I think there's a kind of harmony and humility and a kind of ecological balance that he strikes when he writes about the ideal ecosystem of a university. He says, “The individual and collective wisdom we find when a dedicated faculty interacts with a wise administration, an inspired governing board, and an appreciative body of students.” That's such a beautiful picture to me of the harmony that results when each component in that functioning machine approaches its role with patience and with humility, with faith, and with love. And at our best, at our best we get there.

Oscarson: Now I love your characterization of that. It’s an educational ecosystem. I think that’s exactly right. And the other component too is gratitude, right? That there's a kind of, which to me is so closely tied to the humility you’re talking about, that it’s, it opens us up to learning things that we don’t think we already know. Which is just so key.

Welch: So one thing that you notice right away, if you read through President Kimball's address, is that he's defensive. And in part, that's his role, right? He is a watchman on the tower. He has been charged as a prophet to watch over, to protect, and to guide the church and BYU, this kind of educational flagship of the church. And he... He sees problems on the horizon in 1975. He warns of these invading ideologies and charges the faculty very strictly to be sentries, to warn their students against false ideas, false ideologies. I wonder, 50 years on, Chip, whether you think his defensive posture is still warranted. As teachers and professors and scholars and thinkers of faith, are there particular invading ideologies that we should be on guard against?

Oscarson: I think so. I do think that, well I guess you could put it this way… As a scholar, one of the things I was trained is to be skeptical. And there's a productive kind of skepticism and there's an unproductive skepticism. The unproductive skepticism doesnt ever believe truth, it never believes that we arrive to any kind of truth, right? I don’t know that that’s terribly productive in the end, but there’s a healthy skepticism that when you’re confronted with new ideas that you want to say, “Okay, well show me the proof. What is it that motivates this truth? What is the evidence of this truth?” And that’s something that the academy at large suffers from. And it’s not unique in this. I think that many institutions, kind of broad institutions, suffer from this. That there are popular discourses that emerge and ther isn’t enough critical thinking about the implications. And I don’t necessarily want to venture into what exactly those are today, because I’m not sure I’m right, about what all of those things might, or might not be. But I will mention a couple, because I think there’s evidence for this in the text of the talk itself. One of the things that, he talks specifically about departing from what good women and men at universities have done for centuries. And that insofar that a university abandons that, that it's kind of lost something important. And one of those is what I was referring to earlier, is this move towards a strictly professionalization at the university. I think that if a university does that, I think that he's very concerned about that. And there's different places in the talk where he comes back. And so that we remember what the roots of a university are in terms of cultivating character and faith and morality. That this is a really important idea that's held, that's cherished at BYU and not particularly valued at all institutions. I won't say, I think there are other institutions that do, but not all institutions. So that would certainly be one of those kinds of invading ideologies. But in a more general sense, any kind of ideology that shuts down our ability to think, or to... or to lose a connection with God and each other, those are the ones that we need to be cared for. And that we have an obligation to help our students also be caredl for. They might need to understand them. They might need to be able to understand the argument in its own terms, but that doesn't mean that they have to adopt it. So I do think that one of the roles that I see that I play at the university is helping our students to navigate this. Understanding that they're going to go on perhaps to graduate school, not at BYU, where they're going to need to understand certain kinds of ideas and to make sure that they're prepared to deal with that, that they have the critical and faith apparatus in place to be grounded enough to know that, okay, when things come into conflict, what do I do? Well, I need to- to listen to the spirit, I need to be patient, I need to understand prophetic guidance, I need to understand the argument and the full dimensions and context of the argument. And I need to be true to myself and my faith and be willing to make an argument from a position of faith, even though that's not always popular. That can be a difficult thing and that's what he's encouraging us to do is to basically do what's right, not do what's... what's easy and it's really easy to go with the ideological flow of the day and to stop, you know, to stop thinking about that, you know, critically. And I can think of examples in graduate school where I was, you know, not at BYU and an institution that prides itself on being the home of the free speech movement and I got a wonderful education there. But there were also times when I did not feel free to open my mouth, because I knew it would not be received. And is that free speech? Right, where you've created that kind of atmosphere where all perspectives cannot be articulated. There's a lot of ways in which I feel more free teaching at BYU than I felt teaching there, in that I can bear my testimony and I can talk to my students about how this intersects with my faith and how my faith has led me to pursue certain kinds of questions in a certain kind of way. That's really important to me. And I hope it's important to all BYU faculty and that we help develop its importance within our students.

Welch: Well, I'd love you to say more about that. I know right now you're serving in an administrative role, but your home base is environmental humanities. And you talk in your devotional address, you talk about the ways that the Spirit led you to that work and continues to enlighten your mind and lead you through that intellectual exploration. So first of all, I'd love you to share with our listeners what is environmental humanities, and then talk to us more about how the spirit has led you into and through that work.

Oscarson: Yeah, so the environmental humanities, broadly speaking, is the study of the human relationship and the representation of the human relationship with the environment, with what is nature and the world that surrounds us, how do we interact with it? And there's all kinds of different dimensions of it, of course. And I came to it out of my graduate work. I was interested in questions of environmental crisis. How do we get to those places, not necessarily from a scientific or technological standpoint, but more from a philosophical or theoretical standpoint? What is it that informs the kinds of attitudes that lead to the technological developments that perhaps lead to crisis in different ways? And I've had the opportunity to teach this in various contexts. I teach a class here at the university that is humanities and the environment. And we read both nature writers and texts that you wouldn't necessarily think of as being environmental, but we ask the question, well, what are the assumptions that the author is making here about what the relationship is between the subject and what's around the subject in different kinds of ways? And one of the texts that we, that I've taught the last couple times I've done it is a book by Robin Wall Kimmerer called Braiding Sweetgrass. And Dr. Kimmerer is a botanist and she is unique in her voice in that while she's committed to her work as a scientist, she's also an Indigenous woman, a Potawatomi Indian. And Both of these are really important parts of her identity. And that the way that she feels like she needs to do science is inflected by these other identities that she's equally committed to. And it really got me thinking about how I could help our students to understand how they too have a unique position and way of seeing the world. And I was inspired by a quote by Ezra Taft Benson that he gave at a commencement address, I think at BYU Hawaii, where he's talking about environmental issues. And of course, when he was addressing this back in the 60s or 70s, when he gave the address, these issues weren't quite as politicized as they've become in more recent decades. But he, in talking about them, he's saying that you have to understand that if you don't understand the spiritual truths behind these crises, you're never gonna solve them. And so we, we’re kind of thinking about that together with students and my admonition to them is, you know, there's a lot of people who want to work on, you know, whether it be climate change or, you know, specific localized environmental pollution, you know, kind of water use, you know, what you name it. You know, there's lots of people that are going to do that and they're going to do that with great technical, you know, facility. They're going to understand the, you know, all of the technical aspects of it. And you might be one of those people too, that through your study and your discipline here at the university, you're gonna develop some of those specialties. But what else do you bring to the table, right? How does your position as a Latter-day Saint or a person of faith inform why you're interested in these issues? And if you can learn to articulate those as well as you can learn to articulate the technical aspects that that's going to... That's value added right there. That's something that you can't come out of any other institution. And you'll be kind of uniquely equipped, in President Kimball's words, to kind of share your unique light with the world. And I’ve been trying to do better with that. In the course of these things to help students realize that you’re not the only ones doing this. Here she is, a Native American woman who’s sharing her indigenous knowledge and indigenous way of seeing the world, look at how she's doing that. What can you learn about how to share your own faith? You don’t need to be ashamed of it. You don’t need to be afraid of it. You know, look at the way that she puts that front and center. And has the always been respected? Certainly not, right? That she’s needing to carve out a space to be able to do that, you need to be able to do the same. And it's amazing to see how empowered that helps students to feel, right? that they can not only be a good environmental scientist or sociologist or statistician, but a Latter-day Saint statistician, and that means something, that that's different.

Welch: I love that. Our faith doesn't need to be an embarrassment or a drawback or even just a distraction or irrelevant to our work. Instead, it can be the purpose for our work and the light that guides our work towards its intended end. Well, as we're starting to wrap up here, Chip, I wanted to invite you to share a little something about your mother. And the reason why I invite you to talk about your mom is because you talk about her in your devotional address. She has an amazing story that really illustrates the way that learning for its own sake and for the cultivation of the soul, even apart from seeking for degrees or status or professional opportunities, but the process of learning itself can prepare us to contribute in the kingdom. So share with us a little bit about your mother.

Oscarson: Yeah, so my mom kind of had a unique educational experience that she started her degree here at BYU back in the 60s. And she married my father. They met, well, they technically didn't meet here on campus, but their relationship kind of took off here on campus, and they were married. My father's four years older than my mom, and so he finished his degree before she did. And because of a great job offer, they decided to follow his job and that she would finish her degree. And it was important to her to finish her degree. Her patriarchal blessing actually told her that she needed to, I mean, literally finish her degree, not just get an education, but finish her degree. And just a little bit of a background about my mother, she was studying to be a graphic designer. She has a very creative mind, and she’s a reader, she just, she is. The whole time growing up I just always remember her with a book. And she would read everything. She was a fast reader which can be a real advantage, and she was willing to venture into things that she didn't know very much about, and controversial things, because I wouldn’t understand what the issues are. You name it, she would do it. And one child led to another, and suddenly it was a little bit harder to go back to school. And then at a very young age, she and my father were called as mission leaders to Sweden. And this really made it difficult for her to finish her degree. Well, they ended up having seven of us all together. And it was when my youngest sibling was finally in high school that she had a little bit more time and she really felt like this was an important thing for her to do to finish her degree. And so BYU has a great continuing education program that can, a bachelor of general studies that helps students exactly like her come back and finish. And it was really difficult. She couldn’t do graphic design anymore, because the field had so completely changed from the 1960’s. And, and her interests had changed too, quite frankly. So she decided to do a degree in english. And it was a fairly difficult process to do remotely. She would come on campus in the summer sometimes for a class here and there. But she finally did it. Then within just a couple of years of finishing her degree, she and my father were called back to Sweden as a temple president and matron. And one of the things she had to do actually was go through a Swedish literature course for the General Education requirement, which was not an easy task for her. I happened to be teaching the class, which helped. And there was a whole story kind of behind that, but some fortuitous things that came together that helped make that happen for her. But when she got to Sweden, she was ready. She had been practicing Swedish and... and could hit the ground running again, even though it had been decades since she and my father had lived there. They got back from Sweden, and within a very short time, she was called as the Young Women's General President of the Church. And of course, there's not much that prepares you for these kinds of callings. But especially for women in the church, there's not the same kind of leadership structure that kind of, maybe gives you a little bit more experience that she had been a seminary teacher, an early morning seminary teacher, which was its own kind of preparation, by the way, right? She knew the scriptures, she had taught them. But she has said multiple times that the discipline that she learned in sitting down and thinking through ideas in articulating, kind of clearly what she thought and believed in papers, in organizing messy data, right? There's nothing messier than a novel, to kind of organize what's really going on here, what's at stake and how to pull that together. She says that this was one of the best preparations that she could have. hope for, for what she ended up doing for five years at the general level of the church with all the talks and articles. And she said she was just writing constantly and she was able to kind of proceed with the kind of confidence that she probably wouldn't have had she not had that experience. And I just think it's a really good example of the, in Doctrine and Covenants 88 to return to where we kind of started. That one of the reasons that the Lord gives for this, you know, this educational mandate that he gives is that you may be prepared when I call you on the mission, which I prepared for you. And there's no way my mom could have known about the missions, you know, literal and figurative that, that she was to be called on. And, but the Lord had prepared her and he prepared her in this case through a formal education and that, and what was required to, to become educated, both. formally through these classes, but informally as well, which I think is really key. He was preparing her. And I think that her motivation was, was the right kind of motivation that she went into it, wanting to learn and get as much as she could out of it, not just to kind of check off the boxes. And because of that, that when the Lord called her, she was ready to go. And of course the spirit helped her. And she is quick to point that out too, that her own abilities were magnified in some miraculous ways, because of the mantle of the calling. And certainly the Lord does qualify those whom he calls. But if he's given you opportunities to learn and to grow before that calling comes, it's on us if we haven't taken them.

Welch: I love that story and I love your mother. She is a powerful leader. She inspired me for many years with her articulate talks, her understanding of the gospel, and her model of what it means to be a woman of Christ who's prepared to serve in every way. I too am blessed with an incredible mother who made the most of formal and informal learning opportunities and who perfectly models study by learning and also by faith. So with endless gratitude to our amazing mothers, Chip Oscarson, I thank you for coming and being with us today on the Maxwell Institute Podcast.

Oscarson: Well, thank you, Rosalynde. It's been a great conversation.