CLAREMONT, Calif. — Claremont Graduate University appointed Richard Lyman Bushman as the Howard W. Hunter Visiting Professor in Mormon Studies in its School of Religion. He was named Oct. 19.
The appointment will begin in fall 2008. The visiting professor chair is named after President Howard W. Hunter, 14th president of the Church.
Brother Bushman, emeritus from the Gouverneur Morris Chair of American History at Columbia University, will play a key role in establishing the first permanent, graduate-level study of Mormonism at a secular university.
"We are committed to studying the full breadth of religious experience," said Karen Torjesen, dean of the Claremont School of Religion. "With his broad background in American cultural and religious history, Professor Bushman will make a vitally important contribution to our mission."
"We consider him to be the single most widely known and highly regarded historian of Mormonism," she said.
Dr. Bushman is author of 12 books and has received such recognitions as the Bancroft Prize in American History and the Phi Alpha Theta Prize. His contributions to Mormon studies include Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, published in 1985. In 2005, he published Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling: A Cultural Biography of Mormonism's Founder.
In addition to his career at Columbia, he has taught at Boston University, Harvard, Brown, the University of Delaware and Brigham Young University.
"It is an honor to hold a position named after President Hunter, a man I greatly admired," said Brother Bushman. "Establishing a program in Mormon studies at a university of Claremont's stature is a thrilling challenge. I want to do whatever it takes to get the program going."
During the academic year 2007-2008, he will hold a Huntington Library fellowship while residing at nearby Pasadena. His wife, Claudia Lauper Bushman, herself a scholar in American history at Columbia University, will also teach courses at Claremont as an adjunct professor.
According to Brother Bushman, the significance of inaugurating Mormon studies at Claremont lies in the opportunity for Mormons to "enter into conversation with people of other faiths about the deep issues of human life in a way that has never been possible before.
"We've been observed and thought about. But we have not been part of the conversation. Here (at Claremont) we will be."
Approval to create the Howard W. Hunter Chair in Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University was announced by the school's President Robert Klitgaard, Provost Yi Feng and board of trustees on Oct. 24, 2006. (Please see Church News, Nov. 11, 2006, p. 4.)
