FAST FORWARD : BYU Dismisses Feminist Prof

Pro-choice feminist and English professor Cecilia Konchar Farr has been dismissed from Brigham Young University. The action came last Wednesday as part of a routine process in which 50 professors underwent three-year tenure reviews and five were effectively dismissed. Later, about 100 students rallied on the Provo, Utah, campus on Farr’s behalf.

President Rex E. Lee denied that the dismissals were based on anything but performance. He said Farr “was talked to about some of her pro-choice advocacy. While that could have been taken into account, it was not.”

The event was the latest in a series of feminist and free speech upheavals at the university, whose operations are largely financed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Farr, a practicing Mormon, said, “I think they’ve made a turn here toward a more doctrinaire, fundamentalist, religious education and away from a more broad university education.”