BYU Studies

Volume 59:4 (2020) - When I first arrived at the Jerusalem Center in 1994 and assumed responsibility for, among other areas, the Center’s security, I inherited from my predecessor a file with policies for how to deal with potential threats. Here are some of those policies: Procedure to evacuate the building in case of a bomb threat Procedure to deal with riots at the lower gate Procedure to deal w...

Volume 59:4 (2020) - This poem by Daniel F. Teichert won first place in the 2019 Clinton F. Larson Poetry Contest, sponsored by BYU Studies.

Volume 59:4 (2020) - I’ve been asked to focus on the construction period of the Jerusalem Center rather than the student program that, at this point in time, is the heart and soul of the Center. My wife, Frieda, and I lived for twenty years in Israel, where we also raised our family of five children. We were blessed to witness some marvelous miracles while living there, but none more marvelous tha...

Volume 59:4 (2020) - On November 21, 1993, the world dozed in watery light and I felt off-balance as the northern hemisphere listed away from the sun. Seasonal blues made watching PBS all day seem like a reasonable choice. Onscreen, a Ford Lincoln Continental zipped through Zapruder’s frame. Tomorrow would be the thirtieth anniversary. Old news footage aired to commemorate the assassination, and I...

Volume 59:4 (2020) - I think most of us are familiar with a recent trend in storytelling to revisit and tell a traditional tale from the perspective of the antagonist. The live-action Disney movie  Maleficent , for example, provides an empathetic backstory to the terrifyingly evil, but otherwise flat, character of Maleficent in the iconic animated version of  Sleeping Beauty . ...

This essay by Elena Jarvis Jube tied for first place in the 2020 Richard H. Cracroft Personal Essay Contest, sponsored by BYU Studies. The author was confronted with the possibility of the death of her fourteen-year-old son. The teenager suffered for days or weeks before being treated for a cyst in his skull. As she watched her son’s suffering, she cried for the suffering of all children...

Volume 59:4 (2020) - It is a privilege to be with you as we celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the dedication of the Jerusalem Center and the impact it has made on the lives of so many students, faculty, administrators, members of the Church from around the world, and those who currently reside in the Holy Land. A heartfelt welcome to all. The Jerusalem Center and the events leading to its com...

Volume 59:4 (2020) - A timeline of important events beginning with the first mission call to the Holy Land in 1840 and ending in the year 2020.

Volume 59:4 (2020) - The Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies was dedicated on May 16, 1989. Located on Mount Scopus, the Center offers an amazing view of Jerusalem and puts the Center’s students in the heart of Jerusalem within easy walking distance of the Mount of Olives and the Old City. During the past thirty years, the Jerusalem Center has made a significant impa...

Volume 59:3 (2020) - A poem by Tyler Chadwick.

Volume 59:3 (2020) - In the spring of 2015, I encountered two worlds within twenty-four hours—worlds yoked by creed but divided by demographic and disposition. On a crisp Wednesday evening in May, I was invited to attend a cocktail reception at the New York Yacht Club for a celebration among Jews, Catholics, and Evangelicals honoring the legacy of a man named Dietrich von Hildebrand, a philosopher...

Volume 59:3 (2020) - In their work  An Apostolic Journey: Stephen L Richards and the Expansion of Missionary Work in South America , authors Richard E. Turley Jr. and Clinton D. Christensen have compiled a documentary history of the 1948 journey of Apostle Stephen L Richards and his wife, Irene Merrill Smith Richards, to South America. Turley is a former assistant Church historian and fo...

Volume 59:3 (2020) - Even considering the fine books and articles on the history of Latter-day Saint women that have been written in the last fifty years, there are still innumerable questions about early Utah women to be explored. For example, how did the votes of women in territorial Utah from 1870 on affect local and territorial elections? Who were the first female politicians in Utah, and what...

Volume 59:3 (2020) - A poem by Marilyn Bushman-Carlton

Volume 59:3 (2020) - This is half of an interview conducted by Cherry B. Silver on August 8, 2019, in the BYU Studies offices. The other half will be published in a later issue. Many thanks to Laurel Barlow for transcribing the recording. When, as a young woman living in the Boston area, Jill Mulvay Derr heard a lecture by Maureen Ursenbach Beecher about Eliza R....

Volume 59:3 (2020) - A poem by Tyler Chadwick

Volume 59:3 (2020) - In August 1889, a number of newspapers ran an article that began with this sentence: “Belva Lockwood has long been considered the nerviest woman in the United States.” At the time, Belva Lockwood had been a household name in the U.S. for many years. By 1889, she had also established herself as an outspoken advocate who unabashedly defended the legal rights of members of T...

Volume 59:3 (2020) - My father, Ted Bushman, was an artist. He worked his way through BYU in the 1920s painting signs and drawing cartoons. Before he graduated, he worked as a fashion artist in Los Angeles for a short time. After he married my mother, he made his living as a freelance artist for Salt Lake department stores, especially Auerbach’s. When work dried up during the Depression, he took a...

Volume 59:3 (2020) - Economically, politically, socially, and theologically, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were known for being insular and cohesive at a time when the United States was stretching its boundaries and developing unifying communication and transportation networks across the continent. The concept of Manifest Destiny was imbibed by the young republic, and...

Volume 59:3 (2020) - People ask from time to time how Richard and I met. I have told the story in various ways for different occasions. It all began in 1952, some sixty-eight years ago at this writing. I call the man I eventually married Dick in this account. He later, about 1992, became Richard. After Dick Bushman had been at Harvard for two years, he was called on a Latter-day Saint mission to t...

Volume 59:3 (2020) - On a snowy April morning in 1895, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gathered within the walls of the Salt Lake Temple and unanimously declared themselves committed to women’s suffrage. 1  That same day, a large group of Relief Society women gathered nearby in the Salt Lake Assembly Hall and unanimously stood in favor of including women’s suffrage in Utah’s newly designed...

Volume 59:3 (2020) - Although it is a bit disconcerting to admit it, I am most widely known today not for my books, but for a single sentence. You’ve probably seen it:  Well-behaved women seldom make history.  I don’t get royalties when somebody prints my words on mugs, T-shirts, bumper stickers, greeting cards, or any of the other paraphernalia sold in gift shops or on the internet, but...

Volume 59:3 (2020) - February 14, 1870, was election day in Salt Lake City. Citizens might have gathered with more than the usual excitement that day to cast their ballots because this was the first election in which Utah women citizens could vote. Seraph Young (later Ford), a twenty-three-year-old schoolteacher and grandniece of Brigham Young, was the first to exercise her new right and became th...

Volume 59:3 (2020) - In 1909, Susa Young Gates listed Emmeline B. Wells, along with Elmina S. Taylor and Eliza R. Snow, as one of the three greatest women The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had produced. Biographer Carol Cornwall Madsen attests to the spread and durability of Emmeline’s influence, reminding us that “she was the most widely known Mormon woman of her time, in and outsid...

Volume 59:3 (2020) - When Bethany’s daughter Simone was almost three, she and Bethany were reading a popular LDS children’s book of scripture stories. At the end of it, Simone turned to her mom and demanded, “Where are the girls? I want to read about the girls!” Not unfamiliar with this question herself, Bethany was still surprised. She picked up the book, flipped through, and found the authors ha...