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Scott Carrier: Najibullah among the good and bad mormons at UVU, an excerpt from his book, *Prisoner of Zion*
The following is an excerpt from Scott Carrier's book, *Prisoner of Zion*. I really enjoyed this book, and I couldn't put it down. Here he talks about beginning work as a professor among the mostly mormon studentbody at UVU. > They told me I'd have complete academic freedom, that no one would tell me what to teach or how to teach, but that I'd have to justify my methods in terms of pedagogical theory or something like it that we could make up later. Phil said he'd help me with that part. Phil would be my boss and he would help me with everything and he promised me that it wasn't so bad that all, or almost all, the students were Mormons. He said he had, in fact, learned to become a better teacher and scholar because of it. > I didn't want to take the job because I thought it would mean admitting I'd failed as an independent writer and radio producer, and I didn't feel like I'd failed. I'd been turning out stories on a regular schedule, more than ever, for an NPR program called ["Hearing Voices."](http://hearingvoices.com/) In June of 2006, I picked up a Peabody Award in New York City for a show we produced on illegal immigration. Most of our money, however, came from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and in 2006 the CPB cut most of its funding for independent radio producers. I was heavily in debt, having always spent more money on stories than I made, covering the payments by taking out equity loans on our home. My friends and family, who were aware of my financial situation, were all telling me that if I didn't take the job I'd be acting irresponsibly. I remember my first day of work, driving fifty miles south on the freeway during rush-hour, thinking my life was over and from now on I was going to die very slowly. > I took the job and I hated it and the result was that I was a lousy teacher. The first comment posted about me on rateyourprofessor.com was, "Horrible! Horrible! Horrible!" and it just got worse from there. > Najib was not one of my students because he was an economics major in the school of business and I taught journalism courses and an introduction to mass communication. My students were mostly public relations majors who only took my classes because they were requirements. I didn't like these students-- first because they were public relations majors and second because they were Mormons. > I grew up among Mormons, I live among Mormons, my best friends come from Mormon families...I do not hate the Mormons. But to live among them and see them in the grocery store or in their cars is one thing, whereas being surrounded by Mormons in a classroom is something else all together. It's suffocating. As I spoke in class it felt like I was trapped in a large block of Jell-O. I could speak but it was hard to breathe. I could speak and my students could hear me, but my words had different meanings for them, so no real communication ever happened. They just sat there and looked at me wondering what I did to get put inside a big block of Jell-O. > On the first day of my first journalism class I told the students there were only three rules in journalism and I could explain them in ten minutes, the rest was practice. > "The first rule," I said, "is tell the truth, or at least try to tell the truth. I'm 50 years old, and I still don't know what the truth is or how to tell it. So I try, and accept the consequences." > I saw their faces tighten and their eyes squint to focus, like, 'Who is this guy?' > They already knew the truth and how to tell it because this was part of their religion. For them, the truth was a list called The Articles of Faith, and they all had it memorized. For them, the truth was a matter of faith. For me, the truth was a matter of reason and logic. Same word, different meaning. > Moving on, I said, "The second rule of journalism is that the journalist must serve as an independent monitor of power." Then I quoted Edward Abbey: > > The moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home: to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own government, his own culture...I believe that words count, that writing matters, that poems, essays, and novels-- in the long run-- make a difference. If they do not, then in the words of my exemplar Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the writer's work is of no more importance than the barking of village dogs at night. > The students could understand the idea of questioning authority, after all it's a common theme of Hollywood movies-- the good little guy stands up to the big bad guy and takes him down-- but as for actually doing it themselves, no, it wasn't going to happen, especially not on a local level. They lived in a culture of obedience. Obedience was their first principle of heaven and their twelfth article of faith: > > We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law. > There's a saying that all Mormons know-- "When the prophet speaks, the thinking has been done." The prophet speaks and his words carry down through the church hierarchy step by step to the common member who obeys as proof of his or her faith, a mighty pyramid of obeisance. So my asking them to question authority was, to them, no different than asking that they go against their religion, and they just weren't going to do it. > "The third rule of journalism," I said, "is that the journalist works for the public, not the publisher. Normally when you have a job you owe your loyalty to the person who signs your paychecks, but a journalist owes his loyalty to the people who read or watch or listen to his stories. This means that good journalists often get fired and end up un-employable because they won't take orders from their bosses and have to make it on their own as freelancers or independents, with no regular paychecks or health insurance, living alone in low-rent apartments where they die from drinking and smoking too much." > I pretty much lost that class in less than a hour, and the rest of the semester was a nightmare. > Also that semester, in a different class, I succeeded in emptying the room, as every student got up and walked out. It happened in my *Introduction to Mass Communication* class. I was showing a video of the 1972 Vietnam War documentary "Hearts and Minds." I introduced it by explaining how the film strengthened the anti-war movement and helped change the course of history. It was an example of a story that made a difference. > Everything was fine through the first half of the movie. Nobody seemed to mind the images of bombs dropping on villages or of the resulting civilian carnage, but then there was a scene where two U.S. soldiers were in two beds with two Vietnamese prostitutes. The prostitutes were naked and the soldiers' hands were upon their breasts. The students saw it as pornography, and they were constantly being told by their church leaders not watch pornography. The exodus began with four students, both boys and girls, who packed their bags and got up from their seats. Then the whole class of about 30 followed them out of the room. I sat there watching the movie by myself, fuming mad. > I'd bet my house that every student in that room had watched R-rated movies and had seen naked breasts before and liked it, but they couldn't do it as a group, when others were watching them, when they were all watching each other watching the naked breasts together. That was so scary it made them all run away. This is why I didn't like my students and why, in return, they did not like me. **edit:** [Here](http://www.prisonerofzion.com/) is the website for the book. That site also links to Carrier's [interview](http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kuer/news/news.newsmain/article/0/0/1846850/news/83111.Prisoner.of.Zion) with Doug Fabrizio on Radio West. Download [mp3](http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kuer/.jukebox/media/kuer/984323/mp3/news/podcast/228/984323.mp3) **edit 2:** I found the book for sale online [here.](http://www.kensandersbooks.com/shop/rarebooks/28433.html) more