Certainly there are some traditions with Evangelicalism that are anti-intellectual, but not the whole of conservative Protestantism. I think the answer is a bit messier than someone wants to believe.

You are right — that is why BYU (mostly Mormon students) sends so many of its students on to get Ph.D.s around the country (BYUn has very few Ph.D. programs of its own). OK, I am being facetious.

BYU came in 10th in the country for the most students going on to get PhDs — right after UCLA and before MIT. That certainly attests to your thesis. More details here: http://byunews.byu.edu/releases/archive06/Aug/graduates/table.gif (and NSF also has the numbers, though I could not find the latest report)

Clark, I did not say “all Mormons are anti-intellectual.” This is why arguing on the internet is usually a waste of time, because people would rather argue against something stupid that you didn’t say than confront what you did say.

It’s also a problem with the precision of your statement. It’s not just people who are going to want to argue with you who are going to translate from “Mormonism does not have a long tradition of valuing learning and scholarship” into “Mormons are anti-intellectual” (and this isn’t the only problem with that statement). It’s also people who are inclined to agree with what you didn’t say. You can argue that’s not your responsibility, but that’d go over more sincerely if it weren’t a fairly short hop between the two statements.

I haven’t seen any evidence here to the contrary

So if this evidence were to exist, what would it look like?

Also, from which evidence did you conclude “the trends are clear?”

my opinion is colored by a handful of cases of stifling academic freedom

It’s hard to discuss this, because it’s not really clear which cases have colored your opinion, but if it’s the Wikipedia entry, there’s a few things that can be said that I think can dovetail with the excellent points Clark made about BYU.

It’s correct to say that academic freedom is constrained at BYU in ways it isn’t constrained at other institutions, but it’s incorrect to characterize it as a heavy, leaden blanket thrown over the entirety of scholarship. The constraints are more or less fenced-off areas of discourse (described fairly clearly in the numbered points under the “University standards” section in the wikipedia article). As Clark said, it’s one thing to argue that this is problematic for anyone strictly loyal to universally unfettered inquiry, and if this is the foundation of suspicion among many academics regarding Mormon educational institutions (in the literal organizational sense as well as the general social sense), it’s reasonably founded.

The problem with generalizing this real suppression of dissent to the entire realm of scholarship is that the rest of the field is so wide, and there really aren’t high profile examples I’m aware of in this much bigger realm (Evensen’s case is something of an exception for me, but this trips over a pretty torrid and tangled triangle involving not only the LDS church and the arts but the arts and academia, so I don’t think it’s germane to this discssion). It’s also arguable and probably demonstrable that serious scholarship is not only largely unfettered, it’s encouraged and supported.

And this is true to limits that I suspect might surprise some people. Sean asked for “important instances in which academic freedom was put before doctrinal correctness.” As is probably not surprising, in the life sciences there’s a history of some conflict between the church and the academy, in particular the fault line between evolution and creationism. But near as I can tell, even when visiting LDS apostles were giving sermons at BYU on how evolution doesn’t line up with LDS cannon (at least as late as 1980), faculty were and still are teaching it. This is sometimes surprising to *me*, given how silly BYU as an institution can be about small matters like facial hair. But I think it’s at least in part because as an institution, the university and the church recognize that the science *isn’t* a small matter. At least inside of LDS academia, there’s a real degree of cultural respect for scientific disciplines, and an understanding that even where there’s apparent conflicts with religious teachings, an accomplished student is going to have to know their stuff by the standards of the scientific discipline.

To most people with not much more than a casual knowledge of Mormonism, such as myself, its image is more closely associated with suppressing dissent than with championing free inquiry.

I think that’s clearly true in how it handles issues central to the church itself (doctrinal and moral issues). Outside of these areas this is much less clear.

I don’t agree with the characterization of my comments as being related to modal realism. The laws I was referencing would be applicable to any rational philosophical school.