| OCR Text |
Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 4-90_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 12/5/12 9:38 AM Page 71 L. TOM PERRy SPECIAL COLLECTIONS STudENT POLITICAL ACTIVISM Wilkinson wrote, “The John Birch Society is BYU students in 1969. a real patriotic living and moving organization....I would probably agree with 90 percent of their teachings.”30 BYU political scientist Louis C. Midgley took a dimmer view and publicly rebuked Birch devotees in 1964: “Their morality is simply the old notion that the end justifies the means; any stick to beat the devil.”31 Two months later, twenty-two BYU teachers signed an open letter condemning John A. Stormer’s 1964 conservative call-to-arms None Dare Call It Treason as a “piece of fanaticism.”32 They explained that their letter was written because Stormer’s book was “being distributed in certain BYU religion classes... [and] regarded as authoritative because of this sponsorship.”33 David O. McKay, who worried that Birch-LDS inroads were “causing...embarrassment,” instructed BYU officials not to “bring [Birch] speakers to the campus... The matter [should be] dropped entirely.”34 The number of non-Birch Society conservative lecturers picked up considerably following Wilkinson’s unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate in 1964 and return to campus.35 Favored speakers included General Carlos P. Romulo of the Philippines; George M. Mardikian, San Francisco restaurateur and U.S. military advisor on food preparation; Kenneth W. McFarland, superintendent of the Topeka (Kansas) Public School District; and news commentator Paul Harvey. As Wilkinson explained: “I am looking for the very best speakers in the nation, but they must have honest-to-God 30 Wilkinson, Diary, August 19-22, 1965, April 13, 1966. “Birch Society Review,” Daily Universe, May 22, 1964. 32 “None Dare Call It Treason Causes Sincere Concern,” Daily Universe, July 23, 1964. 33 Richard D. Poll, Letter, Daily Universe, July 30, 1964. 34 Combined from Earl C. Crockett, Memorandum, December 11, 1965, and McKay, Letter to Crockett, June 4, 1964, Wilkinson Papers (while Wilkinson ran for office, Crockett was Acting President). 31 71 |
