To help Brigham Young University celebrate its 150th anniversary, two presidents — both past BYU presidents and current senior leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who carry the title of “President” — shared memories and perspectives of their time learning from and leading at the Church-sponsored university in Provo, Utah.
President Dallin H. Oaks, President of the Church, and President Jeffrey R. Holland, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, spoke together regarding BYU’s past half-century in a video released Sunday, Nov. 9, on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
They spoke with conviction and authority from a shared pattern of experiences:
- Both completed their undergraduate studies at BYU — President Oaks graduating in 1954, and President Holland in 1965. President Holland also earned a master’s degree in 1966. And both have had children and grandchildren who have done their undergraduate studies at BYU.
- Both returned to BYU in their 30s to fill leadership roles, with each serving as university president — President Oaks from 1971 to 1980 and President Holland from 1980 to 1989. And both taught classes during their tenures as president.
- Both were called to the Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles — President Oaks in 1984 and President Holland in 1994. As Apostles, each served as a member of the BYU board of trustees as well as chairman of the board’s executive committee.
“For all intents and purposes, our journey to the Twelve was through BYU,” said President Holland, later adding, “I think it is fair to say that we are both BYU men from the ground up.”
Said President Oaks of their perspectives: “We have both lived long enough to be witnesses of the last 50 years.”
With President Oaks and President Holland facing each other in front of a backdrop of images of the Savior and BYU logos and photos, the 20-minute video includes 55 photos and video clips — some historical, some recent, some of the campus, some of events and activities, some of President Oaks and President Holland separately as students or university leaders, and some of the two together in leadership roles.
Both said they never expected to receive BYU or Church leadership roles. “I have been drawn into things that I never dreamed I would do,” President Oaks said.
He recalled enrolling at BYU with plans to be a doctor, following in his late father’s footsteps. But a few weeks into a freshman zoology class, “I realized I was not cut out to be a doctor,” said President Oaks, who later found another major as a junior.
“I majored in accounting because I could see that I enjoyed that, and I could put together graduation on schedule. It was only as I began my senior year that I gave thought to being a lawyer.”
President Oaks was announced as president at BYU at the same time the Church announced a new law school for the university. “So my first and most important duty as president was to get a law school established, to get a library, to get faculty, to identify a dean, to identify a place where the students could meet,” he said. “And I was grateful for that, because it was something I knew how to do.”
President Holland recalled being hired by President Oaks to be BYU’s dean of religious education — a half-dozen years before the former replaced the latter as university president.
“It is a privilege to follow Dallin Oaks in anything, and I have followed you for so long,” President Holland told President Oaks in their conversation. “I love you like a brother. You are a brother.”
Responded President Oaks: “And I love you. You have helped me solve a lot of problems that were my responsibility as well as yours.”
President Holland talked about the “spiritual obligation” to students that is part of BYU’s mission. “Now, it is a university — we come there to study and to [earn] degrees, and it is everything from art to zoology,” he said. “But running through it is a foundation and a theme that these are children of God. We are to teach them for eternity — ‘education for eternity’ was a phrase that we used.”
President Oaks agreed, saying, “That challenge to have religion a dominant factor in university instruction is something that BYU has been living with and guided by in all of its 150 years.”
President Oaks also talked about the presence of students who are returned missionaries or preparing to serve missions as an additional key BYU spiritual characteristic, with the impact of those returned missionaries who have served in foreign lands and learning another language as “a powerful advantage that our Church Educational System institutions have in the quality of education they can offer.”
President Holland said the creation of student wards and stakes has “dramatically affected and saved and encouraged the spirituality of our students.”
Both leaders talked about BYU having more undergraduate women than men. President Holland shared his “justifiable pride” that both men and women were engaged in post-graduate studies, such as at the Marriott School of Business. And President Oaks said more than half of the J. Rueben Clark Law School student body is women. President Holland also heralded the recently announced medical school.
President Oaks said in the last 50 years, the number of living BYU alumni has grown from 125,000 to 466,000, adding, “That is a pretty good measure of the increasing prominence of BYU in the educational community.”
President Holland also saluted the successes, rankings and achievements of BYU’s athletic teams as well as the alumni support they draw at competitions and events. “I don’t think there is a school in America that has the built-in alumni support and visible athletic support that BYU has wherever it goes,” he said, with President Oaks adding, “in numbers and in quality.”
President Oaks expounded on the alumni support, saying that in recent years, BYU has organized with opposing host schools a variety of local service and humanitarian efforts.
President Holland concluded his comments by highlighting the importance of his student experience at BYU and a memory as a new president of the university.
“My life was changed like a tsunami,” he said. “It was a major, major reset in my life — but with eternal consequence." Besides his marriage, he said “the two decisions that I made that changed my life forever were to serve a mission and enroll at Brigham Young University. And those two set my course forever.”
President Holland recalled that at the BYU dance celebrating his 1980 inauguration, he looked out through the Wilkinson Center windows eastward to Y Mountain, with the block “Y” awash in lights celebrating the event. His wife, the late Sister Patricia Holland, came up and said, “They’re lighting that for you.”
“I just wept, like I am now,” he recalled. “I just wept that a place I loved that much, and a place to which I owed that much, and the friends that I had made there that I loved so much — I just wept over that lit, outlined ‘Y’ on the hill, and it still means that much to me.”
President Oaks said he remains grateful to BYU for teaching him what education is, adding that he often recognized his classes having “a profound effect” in life and being “profoundly useful to me in the various things I have been asked to do in life.”
He singled out his freshman English class for “introducing me to education, how to read, how to write, how to judge, how to use my time in the learning process,” and he also credited the religion classes he took in helping provide the advanced gospel understanding he received.
“I know that BYU is the Lord’s university because it was established by a prophet,” President Oaks said. “It has been carried on with prophetic leadership to this day, and it places the highest priority for its students and its faculty and its administration and its position in the community to furthering the ideals, the teachings and the values of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
“That is what BYU means to me.”
