title: Brigham Young University

text: Almost all BYU students are members of the LDS Church. Students attending BYU agree to follow an honor code, which mandates behavior in line with teachings of the church, such as academic honesty, adherence to dress and grooming standards, abstinence from extramarital sex, from same-sex romantic behavior, and from the consumption of alcohol and other drugs. Undergraduate students are also required to complete curriculum in LDS religious education for graduation regardless of their course of study. Due in part to the church's emphasis on missionary service, nearly 50% of BYU students have lived outside the United States, 65% speak a second language, and 63 languages are taught at the university regularly.


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU's athletic teams compete in Division I of the NCAA and are collectively known as the BYU Cougars. Their football team is a D1 Independent while their other sports teams compete in either the West Coast Conference or Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. BYU's sports teams have won a total of 12 NCAA championships and 26 non-NCAA championships. On September 10, 2021, BYU formally accepted an invitation to the Big 12 Conference and will start participating in the conference in the 2023–24 school year.


title: Brigham Young University

text: The origin of BYU can be traced back to 1862, when Warren Dusenberry started a Provo school in Cluff Hall, a prominent adobe building in the northeast corner of 200 East and 200 North. After some financial difficulties, the school was recreated in the Kinsey and Lewis buildings on Center Street in Provo, and after gaining some recognition for its quality, was adopted to become the Timpanogos branch of the University of Deseret. When financial difficulty forced another closure, on October 16, 1875, Brigham Young, then president of the LDS Church, deeded the property to trustees to create "Brigham Young Academy" after earlier hinting a school would be built in Draper, Utah, in 1867. Hence, October 16, 1875, is commonly held as BYU's founding date. Young had been envisioning for several years the concept of a church university. Said Young about his vision: "I hope to see an Academy established in Provo... at which the children of the Latter-day Saints can receive a good education unmixed with the pernicious atheistic influences that are found in so many of the higher schools of the country."


title: Brigham Young University

text: Classes at Brigham Young Academy commenced on January 3, 1876. Dusenberry served as interim principal for several months until April 1876, when Brigham Young's choice for principal arrived—a German immigrant named Karl Maeser. Under Maeser's direction, the school produced many successful graduates, including future U.S. Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland and future U.S. Senator Reed Smoot. The school, however, did not become a university until the end of Benjamin Cluff's term at the helm of the institution. At that time, the school was still privately supported by members of the community and was not absorbed and sponsored officially by the church until July 18, 1896. A series of odd managerial decisions by Cluff led to his demotion; however, in his last official act, he proposed to the board that the academy be named "Brigham Young University". The suggestion received a large amount of opposition, with many members of the Board saying the school was not large enough to be a university, but the decision ultimately passed. One opponent to the decision, Anthon H. Lund, later said, "I hope their head will grow big enough for their hat."


title: Brigham Young University

text: In 1903, Brigham Young Academy was dissolved and replaced by two institutions, Brigham Young High School (BY High) and BYU. The BY High class of 1907 was ultimately responsible for the giant "Y" that remains embedded on a mountain near campus. The Board elected George H. Brimhall as the new President of BYU. He had not received a high school education until he was forty. Nevertheless, he was an excellent orator and organizer. Under his tenure in 1904, the new BYU bought of land from Provo called "Temple Hill." After some controversy among locals over BYU's purchase of this property, construction began in 1909 on the first building on the current campus, the Karl G. Maeser Memorial. Brimhall also presided over BYU during a brief crisis involving the theory of evolution. The religious nature of the school seemed at the time to collide with this scientific theory. Joseph F. Smith, church president at the time, settled the question for a time by asking that evolution not be taught at the school. Over time, students and faculty found a way to reconcile the factual elements of evolution with the church's teachings. Even though a few at this time described the school as little more than a "religious seminary," many of its graduates from this time would go on to great success and become well renowned in a variety of fields.


title: Brigham Young University

text: In 1921, Franklin S. Harris was appointed as BYU's president and was the first in this role to have a doctoral degree. Harris made several significant changes to the school, reorganizing it into a true university, whereas before, its organization had remnants of the academy days. At the beginning of his tenure, the school was not officially recognized as a university by any accreditation organization. By the end of his term, the school was accredited under all major accrediting organizations at the time. He was succeeded by Howard S. McDonald, who received a doctorate from the University of California. When he first received the position, the Second World War had just ended, and thousands of students were flooding into BYU. By the end of his stay, the school had grown nearly five times to 5,440 students. BYU did not have the facilities to handle such a large influx, so he bought part of an Air Force Base in Ogden, Utah and rebuilt it to house some of the students. The next president, Ernest L. Wilkinson, also oversaw a period of intense growth as the school adopted an accelerated building program. Wilkinson was responsible for the building of over eighty structures on the campus, many of which still stand. During his tenure, the student body increased six-fold, making BYU the largest private school at the time. The quality of the students also increased, leading to higher educational standards at the school. Finally, Wilkinson reorganized LDS Church units on campus, with ten stakes and over 100 wards added during his administration.


title: Brigham Young University

text: Dallin H. Oaks replaced Wilkinson as president in 1971. Oaks continued the expansion of his predecessor, adding a law school and proposing plans for a new School of Management. During his administration, a new library was also added, doubling the library space on campus. Jeffrey R. Holland followed as president in 1980, encouraging a combination of educational excellence and religious faith. He believed one of the school's greatest strengths was its religious nature and that this should be taken advantage of, rather than hidden. During his administration, BYU added a campus in Jerusalem, now called the BYU Jerusalem Center. In 1989, Holland was replaced by Rex E. Lee. Lee was responsible for the construction of the Benson Science Building and the Museum of Art. A cancer victim, Lee is memorialized annually at BYU during a cancer fundraiser called the Rex Lee Run. Shortly before his death, Lee resigned and was replaced in 1995 by Merrill J. Bateman.


title: Brigham Young University

text: Bateman was responsible for the construction of 36 new buildings for BYU, both on and off the campus, including the expansion of the Harold B. Lee Library. He was also one of several key college leaders who brought about the creation of the Mountain West Conference, which BYU's athletics program joined — BYU previously participated in the Western Athletic Conference. A satellite TV network also opened in 2000 under his leadership. Bateman was followed by Cecil O. Samuelson in 2003. Samuelson was succeeded by Kevin J Worthen in 2014.


title: Brigham Young University

text: The main campus in Provo, Utah, sits on approximately nestled at the base of the Wasatch Mountains and includes 295 buildings. The buildings feature a wide variety of architectural styles, each building being built in the style of its time. The grass, trees, and flower beds on BYU's campus are impeccably maintained. Furthermore, views of the Wasatch Mountains, (including Mount Timpanogos) can be seen from the campus. BYU's Harold B. Lee Library (also known as "HBLL"), which "The Princeton Review" ranked as the No. 1 "Great College Library" in 2004, has approximately 8.5 million items in its collections, contains of shelving, and can seat 4,600 people. The Spencer W. Kimball Tower is home to several of the university's departments and programs and is the tallest building in Provo, Utah, and the Marriott Center serves primarily as a basketball arena and can seat over 19,000, making it the tenth largest on-campus arena in the nation. On Sundays, nearly all of the buildings on campus are utilized to host church services.


title: Brigham Young University

text: The campus is home to several museums containing exhibits from many different fields of study. BYU's Museum of Art, for example, is one of the largest and most attended art museums in the Mountain West. This museum aids in academic pursuits of students at BYU via research and study of the artworks in its collection. The museum is also open to the general public and provides educational programming. The Museum of Peoples and Cultures is a museum of archaeology and ethnology. It focuses on native cultures and artifacts of the Great Basin, American Southwest, Mesoamerica, Peru, and Polynesia. Home to more than 40,000 artifacts and 50,000 photographs, it documents BYU's archaeological research. The BYU Museum of Paleontology was built in 1976 to display the many fossils found by BYU's James A. Jensen. It holds many vertebrate fossils from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, and is one of the top five vertebrate fossil collections in the world from the Jurassic. The museum receives about 25,000 visitors every year. The Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum was formed in 1978. It features several forms of plant and animal life on display and available for research by students and scholars.


title: Brigham Young University

text: The campus also houses several performing arts facilities. The de Jong Concert Hall seats 1282 people and is named for Gerrit de Jong Jr. The Pardoe Theatre is named for T. Earl and Kathryn Pardoe. Students use its stage in a variety of theatre experiments, as well as for Pardoe Series performances. It seats 500 people, and has quite a large stage with a proscenium opening of 19 by . The Margetts Theatre was named for Philip N. Margetts, a prominent Utah theatre figure. A smaller, black box theater, it allows a variety of seating and staging formats. It seats 125, and measures 30 by . The Nelke Theatre, named for one of BYU's first drama teachers, is used largely for instruction in experimental theater. It seats 280.


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU has on-campus housing communities for freshmen students as well as for students 19 years and older. Single students who are freshmen have four options for on-campus housing: Heritage Halls, Helaman Halls, Riviera Apartments, and the Foreign Language Student Residence (FLSR). On-campus housing for single students 19 years old and older is available at Wyview Park, Heritage Halls, and in the Foreign Language Student Residence Halls. On-campus married students live in Wymount Terrace or Wyview Park.


title: Brigham Young University

text: Branches of the BYU Creamery provide basic food and general grocery products for students living in Heritage Halls, Helaman, Wymount, Wyview, and the FLSR. Helaman Halls is also served by a central cafeteria called the Cannon Center. The creamery, begun in 1949, has become a BYU tradition and is also frequented by visitors to the university and members of the community. It was the first on-campus full-service grocery store in the country.


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU has designated energy conservation, products and materials, recycling, site planning and building design, student involvement, transportation, water conservation, and zero waste events as top priority categories in which to further its efforts to be an environmentally sustainable campus. The university has stated "we have a responsibility to be wise stewards of the earth and its resources." BYU is working to increase the energy efficiency of its buildings by installing various speed drives on all pumps and fans, replacing incandescent lighting with fluorescent lighting, retrofitting campus buildings with low-E reflective glass, and upgraded roof insulation to prevent heat loss. The student groups BYU Recycles, Eco-Response, and BYU Earth educate students, faculty, staff, and administrators about how the campus can decrease its environmental impact. BYU Recycles spearheaded the recent campaign to begin recycling plastics, which the university did after a year of student campaigning.


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU is a part of CES. It is organized under a board of trustees, with the president of the church (currently Russell M. Nelson) as chairman. This board consists of the same people as the Church Board of Education, a pattern that has been in place since 1939. Prior to 1939, BYU had a separate board of trustees that was subordinate to the Church Board of Education. The president of BYU, currently Kevin J Worthen, reports to the Board, through the Commissioner of Education.


title: Brigham Young University

text: The university operates under 11 colleges or schools, which collectively offer 194 bachelor's degree programs, 68 master's degree programs, 25 PhD programs, and a Juris Doctor program. BYU also manages some courses and majors through the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies and "miscellaneous" college departments, including Undergraduate Education, Graduate Studies, Independent Study, Continuing Education, and the Honors Program. BYU's Winter semester ends earlier than most universities in April since there is no Spring break, thus allowing students to pursue internships and other summer activities earlier. A typical academic year is broken up into two semesters: Fall (September–December) and Winter (January–April), as well as two shorter terms during the summer months: Spring (May–June) and Summer (July–August).


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU accepted 53.4 percent of the 13,731 people who applied for admission in the spring and summer terms, and fall semester of 2017. The average GPA for these admitted students was 3.86 with an average ACT of 29.5 and SAT of 1300.


title: Brigham Young University

text: Students from every state in the U.S. and from many foreign countries attend BYU. (In the 2005–06 academic year, there were 2,396 foreign students, or eight percent of enrollment.) Slightly more than 98 percent of these students are active Latter-day Saints. In 2006, 12.6 percent of the student body reported themselves as ethnic minorities, mostly Asians, Pacific islanders and Hispanics. Also in 2020, The racial breakdown of students was 81.0% white, 7.3% Hispanic, 4.4% multi-ethnic, 3.3% international, 1.9% Asian, 1.0% unknown, 0.7% native Hawaiian or pacific islander, and 0.4% Black or African American. The racial composition of students at BYU are overwhelmingly non-Hispanic white, and BYU is one of the whitest universities in the United States.


title: Brigham Young University

text: Brigham Young University has been highly ranked in many measurements of universities. In 2004, a National Bureau of Economic Research study on revealed preference of U.S. colleges showed BYU was the 6th most-preferred choice in the Intermountain West, between Princeton and Brown.


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU is regularly recognized for its low-cost, high-quality education. In 2019, "The Wall Street Journal" and "Times Higher Education" ranked BYU tied for No. 1 "Worth the Cost" college. Likewise, "Forbes" rated BYU No. 1 on its list of "America's Best Value Colleges 2019"." U.S. News & World Report" ranked BYU No. 6 in Best Value Schools in 2022 and tied for No. 79 among national universities in the country.


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU is designated as a research university with high research activity by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. "Forbes" magazine ranked it as the No. 1 "Top University to Work For in 2014" and as the best college in Utah.


title: Brigham Young University

text: In 2016, the university's Marriott School of Management received a No. 18 ranking by "Bloomberg Businessweek" for its undergraduate programs, and its MBA program was ranked by several sources: No. 25 ranking by "Bloomberg Businessweek" in 2018, No. 19 by "Forbes" in 2017, and tied for No. 30 by "U.S. News & World Report" for 2021. For 2020, the university's School of Accountancy, which is housed within the Marriott School, received a No. 4 ranking out of 44 graduate programs rated by "U.S. News & World Report".


title: Brigham Young University

text: The BYU J. Reuben Clark Law School has a No. 29 national ranking for 2022, according to "U.S. News & World Report".


title: Brigham Young University

text: Undergraduate students may qualify for graduation honors. "University Honors" is the highest distinction BYU awards its graduates. Administered by the Honors Program, the distinction requires students to complete an honors curriculum requirement, a Great Questions requirement, an Experiential Learning requirement, an honors thesis requirement, and a graduation portfolio that summarizes the student's honors experiences.


title: Brigham Young University

text: The university also awards Latin scholastic distinctions separately from the Honors Program: summa cum laude (top 1 percent), magna cum laude (top 5 percent), and cum laude (top 10 percent). The university additionally recognizes Phi Kappa Phi graduation honors.


title: Brigham Young University

text: According to the National Science Foundation, BYU spent $40.7 million on research and development in 2018. Scientists associated with BYU have created some notable inventions. Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor and pioneer of the electronic television, began college at BYU, and later returned to do fusion research, receiving an honorary degree from the university in 1967. Alumnus Harvey Fletcher, inventor of stereophonic sound, went on to carry out the now famous oil-drop experiment with Robert Millikan, and was later Founding Dean of the BYU College of Engineering. H. Tracy Hall, inventor of the man-made diamond, left General Electric in 1955 and became a full professor of chemistry and Director of Research at BYU. While there, he invented a new type of diamond press, the tetrahedral press. In student achievements, BYU Ad Lab teams won both the 2007 and 2008 L'Oréal National Brandstorm Competition, and students developed the Magnetic Lasso algorithm found in Adobe Photoshop. In prestigious scholarships, BYU has produced 10 Rhodes Scholars, four Gates Scholars in the last six years, and in the last decade has claimed 41 Fulbright scholars and 3 Jack Kent Cooke scholars.


title: Brigham Young University

text: To provide students with opportunities for both spiritual and intellectual insight, BYU has hosted weekly devotional and forum assemblies since the school's early days. Devotionals are most common and address religious topics, often with academic perspective or insight. Devotional speakers are typically drawn from the BYU faculty and administration or LDS Church leadership, including church presidents George Albert Smith, Spencer W. Kimball, Thomas S. Monson, and Russell M. Nelson.


title: Brigham Young University

text: Several times each year the devotional is replaced by a forum, which typically addresses a more secular topic and may include a speaker from outside the BYU or Latter-day Saint community. In recent years, forum speakers have included notable politicians (e.g. Joseph Lieberman, Mitt Romney), scientists (Neil deGrasse Tyson, DJ Patil), historians (David McCullough, Richard Beeman), religious leaders (Archbishop Charles Chaput, Albert Mohler) and judicial figures (John Roberts, Thomas Griffith).


title: Brigham Young University

text: Although attendance is not required, several thousand students attend the weekly assemblies, which are also broadcast on BYUtv and archived in text, audio, and video formats on the BYU Speeches website.


title: Brigham Young University

text: Over three quarters of the student body has some proficiency in a second language (numbering 107 languages in total). This is partially because 45 percent of the student body at BYU have been Latter-day Saint missionaries, and many of them learned a foreign language as part of their mission assignment. During any given semester, about one-third of the student body is enrolled in foreign language classes, a rate nearly four times the national average. BYU offers courses in over 60 different languages, many with advanced courses that are seldom offered elsewhere. Several of its language programs are the largest of their type in the nation, such as the Russian program. The university was selected by the United States Department of Education as the location of the national Middle East Language Resource Center, making the school a hub for experts on that region. It was also selected as a Center for International Business Education Research, a function of which is to train business employees in international languages and relations.


title: Brigham Young University

text: Beyond this, BYU also runs a very large study abroad program, with satellite centers in London, Jerusalem, and Paris, as well as more than 20 other sites. Nearly 2,000 students take advantage of these programs yearly. In 2001, the Institute of International Education ranked BYU as the number one university in the U.S. to offer students study abroad opportunities. The BYU Jerusalem Center, which was closed in 2000 due to student security concerns related to the Second Intifada and later the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, was reopened to students in the Winter 2007 semester.


title: Brigham Young University

text: A few special additions enhance the language-learning experience. For example, BYU's International Cinema, featuring films in several languages, is the largest and longest-running university-run foreign film program in the country. BYU also offers an intensive foreign language living experience, the Foreign Language Student Residence. This is an on-campus apartment complex where students commit to speak only their chosen foreign language while in their apartments. Each apartment has at least one native speaker to ensure correct language usage.


title: Brigham Young University

text: In 1992, the university drafted a new Statement on Academic Freedom, specifying that limitations may be placed upon "expression with students or in public that: (1) contradicts or opposes, rather than analyzes or discusses, fundamental Latter-day Saint doctrine or policy; (2) deliberately attacks or derides the church or its general leaders; or (3) violates the Honor Code because the expression is dishonest, illegal, unchaste, profane, or unduly disrespectful of others." These restrictions caused some controversy as several professors had been disciplined according to the then-new rule. The American Association of University Professors had claimed that "infringements on academic freedom are distressingly common and that the climate for academic freedom is distressingly poor."


title: Brigham Young University

text: The newer rules have not affected BYU's accreditation, as the university's chosen accrediting body allows "religious colleges and universities to place limitations on academic freedom so long as they publish those limitations candidly", according to associate academic vice president Jim Gordon. The AAUP's concern was not with restrictions on the faculty member's religious expression but with a failure, as alleged by the faculty member and AAUP, that the restrictions had not been adequately specified in advance by BYU: "The AAUP requires that any doctrinal limitations on academic freedom be laid out clearly in writing. We [AAUP] concluded that BYU had failed to do so adequately."


title: Brigham Young University

text: In 2021, the Salt Lake Tribune noted the tension between faith and scholarship that has existed at the university as early as 1910, and how the recent LDS Church calls for a retrenchment has some BYU professors worried about a new wave of fideism at the university.


title: Brigham Young University

text: The BYU Ballroom Dance Company is known as one of the best formation ballroom dance teams in the world, having won the U.S. National Formation Dance Championship every year since 1982. BYU's ballroom dance team has won first place in Latin or Standard (or both) many times when they have competed at the Blackpool Dance Festival, and they were the first U.S. team to win the formation championships at the famed British Championships in Blackpool, England in 1972. The NDCA National DanceSport championships have been held at BYU for several years, and BYU holds dozens of ballroom dance classes each semester and is consequently the largest collegiate ballroom dance program in the world. In addition, BYU has a number of other notable dance teams and programs. These teams include the Theatre Ballet, Contemporary Dance Theatre, Living Legends, and International Folk Dance Ensemble. The Living Legends perform Latin, Native American, and Polynesian dancing. BYU boasts one of the largest dance departments in the nation. Many students from all different majors across campus participate in various dance classes each semester.


title: Brigham Young University

text: The Young Ambassadors are a song and dance performing group with a 50-year history at BYU. Prior to 1970 the group was known as Curtain Time USA. In the 1960s their world tour stops included Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. The group first performed as the Young Ambassadors at Expo '70 in Japan, and has since performed in over 56 nations. The royalty of Thailand and Jordan, along with persons of high office in countries such as India, have been among their audiences.


title: Brigham Young University

text: The BYU Opera Workshop gave the first North American performance of the Ralph Vaughan Williams opera The Pilgrim's Progress on April 28, 1969, directed by Max C. Golightly.


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU's Wind Symphony and Chamber Orchestra have toured many countries including Denmark, Hong Kong, Russia, the British Isles, and Central Europe. The Symphonic Band is also an ensemble dedicated to developing the musician, but with a less strenuous focus on performance. Additionally, BYU has a marching band program called the Cougar Marching Band.


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU has a choral program with over 500 members. The four BYU auditioned choirs include the 40-member BYU Singers, the 90-member BYU Concert Choir, the 200-member BYU Men's Chorus (the largest male collegiate choir in the U.S.), and the 190-member BYU Women's Chorus. Both the BYU Men's Chorus and BYU Singers have toured across the United States and around the globe. Each of the four groups has recorded several times under BYU's label "Tantara Records".


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU's a cappella groups, Vocal Point and Noteworthy are among the top groups in the country, both of them having been crowned International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella winners, in 2006 and 2007, respectively. Both groups release multiple music videos a year and operate under BYU's Performing Arts Management.


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU sponsors 21 athletic teams that compete in Division I of the NCAA, plus 6 teams that compete in extramural competition and over 50 intramural activities. Their college football team is a D1 Independent, while their other sports teams compete in either the West Coast Conference or Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. BYU's sports teams have won a total of 12 NCAA championships and 26 non-NCAA championships. In 2021, BYU formally accepted an invitation to the Big 12 Conference and will start participating in the conference in the 2023–24 school year. Also that year, BYU's athletics program was ranked #17 out of 293 Division I schools for overall athletics by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (Directors' Cup).


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU's athletic teams are named the "Cougars", with Cosmo the Cougar serving as the school's mascot since 1953. The school's fight song is the Cougar Fight Song. Because many of its players serve on full-time missions for two years (men when they're 18, women when 19), BYU athletes are often older on average than other schools' players. The NCAA allows students to serve missions for two years without subtracting that time from their eligibility period. This has caused minor controversy, but is largely recognized as not lending the school any significant advantage, since players receive no athletic and little physical training during their missions. BYU has also received attention from sports networks for refusal to play games on Sunday, as well as expelling players due to honor code violations.


title: Brigham Young University

text: The university's teams and individual players have won various awards for their achievements. Its football has had seven inductees into the College Football Hall of Fame and one Heisman Trophy winner, and it won the National Championship in 1984. In basketball, BYU has had several standout basketball players including 2011 Naismith College Player of the Year Jimmer Fredette and 1981 John R. Wooden Award winner Danny Ainge.


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU's stated mission "is to assist individuals in their quest for perfection and eternal life." BYU is thus considered by its leaders to be at heart a religious institution, wherein, ideally, religious and secular education are interwoven in a way that encourages the highest standards in both areas. This weaving of the secular and the religious aspects of a religious university goes back as far as Brigham Young himself, who told Karl G. Maeser when the church purchased the school: "I want you to remember that you ought not to teach even the alphabet or the


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU has been considered by some Latter-day Saints, as well as some university and church leaders, to be "The Lord's university." This phrase is used in reference to the school's mission as an ambassador to the world for the Church of Jesus Christ, and thus for Jesus Christ. In the past, some students and faculty have expressed dissatisfaction with this nickname, stating that it gives students the idea that university authorities are always divinely inspired and never to be contradicted. Leaders of the school, however, acknowledge that the nickname represents more a goal that the university strives for and not its current state of being. Leaders encourage students and faculty to help fulfill the goal by following the teachings of their religion, adhering to the school's honor code, and serving others with the knowledge they gain while attending.


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU mandates that its students who are Latter-day Saints be religiously active. All applicants are required to provide an endorsement from an ecclesiastic leader with their application for admittance. Over 900 rooms on the BYU campus are used for the purposes of Church congregations. More than 150 congregations meet on BYU campus each Sunday, where "BYU's campus becomes one of the busiest and largest centers of worship in the world" with about 24,000 persons attending church services on campus.


title: Brigham Young University

text: Some 97 percent of male BYU graduates and 32 percent of female graduates have served as Latter-day Saint missionaries. In October 2012, the church announced at its general conference that young men could serve a mission after they turn 18 and have graduated from high school. Since that time many young men have elected to enroll at BYU after their mission rather than taking a hiatus during their college studies. Missionary service often lasts up to two years for young men, and up to 18 months for young women.


title: Brigham Young University

text: All students and faculty, regardless of religion, are required to agree to adhere to an honor code. Early forms of the Church Educational System Honor Code are found as far back as the days of the Brigham Young Academy and early school President Karl G. Maeser. Maeser created the "Domestic Organization", a group of teachers who would visit students at their homes to ensure they were following the school's moral rules prohibiting obscenity, profanity, smoking, and alcohol consumption. The Honor Code was not formally created until about 1940, and was initially used mainly for cases of cheating and academic dishonesty.


title: Brigham Young University

text: President Wilkinson expanded the Honor Code in 1957 to include other school standards. This led to what the Honor Code represents today: rules regarding chastity, dress, grooming, drugs, and alcohol. A signed commitment to live the honor code is part of the application process, and must be adhered by all students, faculty, and staff. Students and faculty found in violation of standards are warned or called to meet with representatives of the Honor Council. In certain cases, students and faculty can be expelled or lose tenure. All students, regardless of religious affiliation or Church membership, are required to meet annually with a Church or other religious leader to receive an ecclesiastical endorsement for both acceptance and continuance at the university.


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU has regularly been ranked among the most LGBT-unfriendly schools in the United States, and its policies towards LGBTQ students have sparked criticism and protests. Historically, experiences for BYU students identifying as LGBTQIA+ have included being banned from enrolling due to their romantic attractions in the 60s, being required by school administration to undergo electroshock and vomit aversion therapies in the 1970s, having nearly 80% of BYU students reporting they'd refuse to live with an openly homosexual person in a poll in the 1990s, and a campus-wide ban on coming out until 2007. Until 2021 there were not any LGBTQIA+ - specific resources on campus, though there is now the Office of Student Success and Inclusion. Though the ban on coming out was lifted in 2007, the Honor Code still bans homosexual behavior as of 2022, and LGBTQ BYU students are at risk of expulsion for hugs or same-sex dating. Until 2021 queer students were banned from meeting together in an LGBTQ–straight alliance group on-campus. In February 2020, BYU removed the "homosexual behavior" section from its online honor code, including parts which banned "all forms of physical intimacy" between members of the same sex, however, both Paul Johnson, a general authority Seventy and commissioner of the Church Educational System, and Honor Code Office director Kevin Utt stated that, "same-sex romantic behavior is a violation of the principles of the Honor Code", and "is not compatible" with the Honor Code.


title: Brigham Young University

text: Current policy assures that victims "will not be disciplined by the university for any related honor code violation occurring at or near the time of the reported sexual misconduct unless a person's health or safety is at risk." In 2016 and 2017 the Honor Code, in light of identified potential conflicts with Title IX obligations, was extensively reviewed and updated. Criticism of past policy pointed to conflicts the policies and enforcement created for survivors of sexual assault. Beginning in 2014 and continuing through 2016, some students reported that, after being sexually assaulted or raped, they were told they would face discipline because of honor code violations for consensual sexual relationships in violation of the policy that came to light during the investigation of reported sexual assaults. Criticism has been leveled that this atmosphere may prevent other students from reporting sexual assault crimes to police, a situation that local law enforcement have publicly criticized. In response, the Victim Services Coordinator of the Provo Police Department called for an amnesty clause to be added to the Honor Code, which would not punish sexual assault survivors for past honor code violations discovered during the investigation. BYU launched a review of the practice, which concluded in October 2016. BYU announced several changes to how it would handle sexual assault reports, including adding an amnesty clause, and ensuring under most circumstances that information is not shared between Title IX Office and Honor Code Office without the victim's consent. In June 2017, the policy was further revised to affirm that "BYU strongly encourages the reporting of all incidents of sexual misconduct so that support services can be offered to victims and sexual misconduct can be prevented and stopped."


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU was ranked by The Princeton Review in 2008 as 14th in the nation for having the happiest students and highest quality of life. The Princeton Review has also ranked BYU the "#1 stone-cold sober school" in the nation for 22 consecutive years, most likely due to students' adherence to the university's Honor Code. Additionally, according to the Uniform Crime Reports, incidents of crime in Provo are lower than the national average, with murder classified as very rare and robberies are about 1/10 the national average. In 2016, "Business Insider" rated BYU as the #1 safest college campus in the nation.


title: Brigham Young University

text: Fraternities and sororities are prohibited at BYU, so most on-campus student activities and clubs are organized by the BYU Student Service Association (BYUSA), the university's official student association. Other groups such as comedy troupe Divine Comedy are sponsored by academic departments. BYU also sponsored a question-answering service known as the "100 Hour Board" where anyone with an account could ask a question, with topics ranging from academic questions to questions about relationships or church doctrine, and it was answered in 100 hours by pseudo-anonymous BYU students. In its early days, it was affiliated with "The Universe". The 100 Hour Board is now scheduled for archive with its last answer being posted in 2021.


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU's Wilkinson Center serves as the hub for entertainment on campus and includes a bowling alley, a movie theater, and an eatery. BYU's Outdoors Unlimited service provides rental and repairs for recreational equipment to help students take advantage of nearby outdoor activities like mountain biking, backpacking, rafting, and skiing.


title: Brigham Young University

text: The BYU Broadcasting Technical Operations Center is an HD production and distribution facility that is home to local PBS affiliate KBYU-TV, local classical music station KBYU-FM Classical 89, BYU Radio, BYU Radio Instrumental, BYU Radio International, BYUtv and BYU Television International with content in Spanish and Portuguese (both available via terrestrial, satellite, and internet signals). BYUtv is also available via cable throughout some areas of the United States. The BYU Broadcasting Technical Operations Center is home to three television production studios, two television control rooms, radio studios, radio performance space, and master control operations.


title: Brigham Young University

text: The university produces a weekly newspaper called The Universe (it was published daily until 2012), maintains an online news site that is regularly updated called The Digital Universe and has a daily news program broadcast via KBYU-TV. The university also has a recording label called Tantara Records which is run by the BYU School of Music and promotes the works of student ensembles and faculty.


title: Brigham Young University

text: Y Magazine is the university's alumni publication, distributed quarterly to more than 200,000 addresses. With a history that dates back to the 1920s, Y Magazine covers a wide variety of BYU activities, from student life and alumni activities to athletics and research. BYU Today is the magazine's email newsletter, distributed twice a month.


title: Brigham Young University

text: , BYU has 443,426 living alumni. Alumni relations are coordinated and activities are held at the Gordon B. Hinckley Alumni and Visitors Center.


title: Brigham Young University

text: Over 21 BYU graduates have served in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, such as former Dean of the U.S. Senate, Reed Smoot (class of 1876) and former President pro tempore of the United States Senate Orrin Hatch. George Sutherland served as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court between 1922 and 1938. Cabinet members of American presidents include former Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson ('26), and former United States Solicitor General, Rex E. Lee ('60). Mitt Romney, U.S. Senator, former Governor of Massachusetts, and 2012 Republican Presidential Nominee, was class of 1971.


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU alumni in academia include former Dean of the Harvard Business School Kim B. Clark, two time world's most influential business thinker Clayton M. Christensen, Michael K. Young ('73), former president of the University of Washington, Matthew S. Holland, former president of Utah Valley University, Stan L. Albrecht, former president of Utah State University, and Stephen D. Nadauld, previous president of Dixie State University. The university also graduated Nobel laureate, Paul D. Boyer. Philo Farnsworth (inventor of the electronic television) received an honorary degree in 1967. Harvey Fletcher (inventor of the hearing aid) is also a graduate of the university. Four of BYU's thirteen presidents were alumni of the university. Additionally, alumni of BYU who have served as business leaders include Gary Crittenden ('76), former Dell CEO Kevin Rollins ('84), and Deseret Book CEO Sheri L. Dew.


title: Brigham Young University

text: In literature and journalism, BYU has produced several best-selling authors, including Orson Scott Card ('75), Brandon Sanderson ('00 & '05), Stephenie Meyer ('95) and Tara Westover ('08). BYU also graduated American activist and contributor for ABC News Elizabeth Smart-Gilmour. Other media personalities include award-winning ESPN sportscaster and former Miss America Sharlene Wells Hawkes ('86) and former co-host of CBS's "The Early Show" Jane Clayson Johnson ('90).


title: Brigham Young University

text: In entertainment and television, BYU is represented by Johnny Whitaker ('86) (best known for his role as Jody in "Family Affair)", Jon Heder ('02) (best known for his role as Napoleon Dynamite), YouTuber and former NASA engineer Mark Rober ('04), Golden Globe-nominated Aaron Eckhart ('94), animator and filmmaker Don Bluth ('54), "Jeopardy!" "Greatest of All Time" champion, Ken Jennings ('00), Academy Award-winning filmmaker Kieth Merrill ('67), and Richard Dutcher, the "Father of Mormon Cinema". In the music industry BYU is represented by lead singer of the Grammy Award-winning band Imagine Dragons Dan Reynolds, multi-platinum selling drummer Elaine Bradley from the band Neon Trees, chart-topping composer and violist Blake Allen ('10), crossover dubstep violinist Lindsey Stirling, former "American Idol" contestant Carmen Rasmusen, and Tabernacle Choir director Mack Wilberg.


title: Brigham Young University

text: BYU has also produced many religious leaders. Among the alumni are several Latter-day Saint General Authorities, including two Church Presidents: Ezra Taft Benson ('26), and Thomas S. Monson ('74), six Apostles (Neil L. Andersen, D. Todd Christofferson ('69), David A. Bednar ('76), Jeffrey R. Holland ('65 & '66), and Dallin H. Oaks ('54), and two General Presidents of the Relief Society, Julie B. Beck ('73) and Belle Spafford (1920).


title: Brigham Young University

text: A number of BYU alumni have found success in professional sports, representing the university in 7 MLB World Series, 5 NBA Finals, and 25 NFL Super Bowls. In baseball, BYU alumni include All-Stars Rick Aguilera ('83), Wally Joyner ('84), and Jack Morris, ('76). Professional basketball players include three-time NBA champion Danny Ainge ('81), 1952 NBA Rookie of the Year and 4-time NBA All-Star Mel Hutchins ('51), three-time Olympic medalist and Hall of Famer Krešimir Ćosić, ('73), NBA center Shawn Bradley, and consensus 2011 national college player of the year Jimmer Fredette ('11). BYU also claims notable professional football players including two-time NFL MVP and Super Bowl MVP and Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young ('84) & J.D. ('96), Heisman Trophy winner Ty Detmer ('90), and two-time Super Bowl winners Jim McMahon and Kyle Van Noy. In golf, BYU alumni include two major championship winners: Johnny Miller ('69) at the 1973 U.S. Open and 1976 British Open, and Mike Weir ('92) at the 2003 Masters.


title: Xolo Maridueña

text: Xolo Maridueña (; born June 9, 2001) is an American actor. His roles include Miguel Diaz in the Netflix series "Cobra Kai", Victor Graham in the NBC TV series "Parenthood", and Jaime Reyes / Blue Beetle in the upcoming DC Extended Universe film "Blue Beetle".


title: Xolo Maridueña

text: Maridueña was born in Los Angeles, California. He is of Mexican, Cuban, and Ecuadorian descent. He has four sisters. His first professional job was modeling for a Sears catalog. He was 16 when he started acting in the series "Cobra Kai". He said of his role as the Blue Beetle, as the first Hispanic superhero to star in either the Marvel or DC film universes: "The only thing that is on my mind right now is just the fact that he's Latino. I have so much pride in getting to be a part of this project... I think it's so important, and I don’t want to stand on the soapbox for too long but representation is so important."


title: COINTELPRO

text: COINTELPRO (syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program; 1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations. FBI records show COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals the FBI deemed subversive, including feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti–Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil rights and Black empowerment movements (e.g. Martin Luther King Jr., the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party), environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), Chicano and Mexican-American groups like the Brown Berets and the United Farm Workers, independence movements (including Puerto Rican independence groups such as the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican Socialist Party), a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left, and white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the far-right group National States' Rights Party.


title: COINTELPRO

text: In 1971 in San Diego, the FBI financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former members of the Minutemen anti-communist paramilitary organization, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization that targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent acts.


title: COINTELPRO

text: The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception; however, covert operations under the official COINTELPRO label took place between 1956 and 1971. Many of the tactics used in COINTELPRO are alleged to have seen continued use including; discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; illegal violence; and assassination. According to a Senate report, the FBI's motivation was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order".


title: COINTELPRO

text: Beginning in 1969, leaders of the Black Panther Party were targeted by the COINTELPRO and "neutralized" by being assassinated, imprisoned, publicly humiliated or falsely charged with crimes. Some of the Black Panthers targeted include Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Zayd Shakur, Geronimo Pratt, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Marshall Conway. Common tactics used by COINTELPRO were perjury, witness harassment, witness intimidation, and withholding of exculpatory evidence.


title: COINTELPRO

text: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover issued directives governing COINTELPRO, ordering FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and especially their leaders. Under Hoover, the agent in charge of COINTELPRO was William C. Sullivan. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy personally authorized some of the programs, giving written approval for limited wiretapping of Martin Luther King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so." Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy.


title: COINTELPRO

text: Centralized operations under COINTELPRO officially began in August 1956 with a program designed to "increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections" inside the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Tactics included anonymous phone calls, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audits, and the creation of documents that would divide the American communist organization internally. An October 1956 memo from Hoover reclassified the FBI's ongoing surveillance of black leaders, including it within COINTELPRO, with the justification that the movement was infiltrated by communists. In 1956, Hoover sent an open letter denouncing Dr. T. R. M. Howard, a civil rights leader, surgeon, and wealthy entrepreneur in Mississippi who had criticized FBI inaction in solving recent murders of George W. Lee, Emmett Till, and other African Americans in the South. When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an African-American civil rights organization, was founded in 1957, the FBI began to monitor and target the group almost immediately, focusing particularly on Bayard Rustin, Stanley Levison, and eventually Martin Luther King Jr.


title: COINTELPRO

text: After the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Hoover singled out King as a major target for COINTELPRO. Under pressure from Hoover to focus on King, Sullivan wrote:


title: COINTELPRO

text: In the light of King's powerful demagogic speech. ... We must mark him now if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security.


title: COINTELPRO

text: Soon after, the FBI was systematically bugging King's home and his hotel rooms, as they were now aware that King was growing in stature daily as the most prominent leader of the civil rights movement.


title: COINTELPRO

text: In the mid-1960s, King began to publicly criticize the Bureau for giving insufficient attention to the use of terrorism by white supremacists. Hoover responded by publicly calling King the most "notorious liar" in the United States. In his 1991 memoir "Washington Post" journalist Carl Rowan asserted that the FBI had sent at least one anonymous letter to King encouraging him to commit suicide. Historian Taylor Branch documents an anonymous November 21, 1964 "suicide package" sent by the FBI that contained audio recordings obtained through tapping King's phone and placing bugs throughout various hotel rooms over the past two years, and that was created two days after the announcement of King's impending Nobel Peace Prize. The tape, which was prepared by FBI audio technician John Matter, documented a series of King's sexual indiscretions combined with a letter telling him: "There is only one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation". King was subsequently informed that the audio would be released to the media if he did not acquiesce and commit suicide prior to accepting his Nobel Peace Prize. When King refused to satisfy their coercion tactics, FBI Associate Director, Cartha D. DeLoach, commenced a media campaign offering the surveillance transcript to various news organizations, including "Newsweek" and "Newsday". And even by 1969, as has been noted elsewhere, "[FBI] efforts to 'expose' Martin Luther King Jr. had not slackened even though King had been dead for a year. [The Bureau] furnished ammunition to opponents that enabled attacks on King's memory, and ... tried to block efforts to honor the slain leader."


title: COINTELPRO

text: During the same period the program also targeted Malcolm X. While an FBI spokesman has denied that the FBI was "directly" involved in Malcolm's murder in 1965, it is documented that the Bureau worked to "widen the rift" between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad through infiltration and the "sparking of acrimonious debates within the organization", rumor-mongering, and other tactics designed to foster internal disputes, which ultimately led to Malcolm's assassination. The FBI heavily infiltrated Malcolm's Organization of Afro-American Unity in the final months of his life. The Pulitzer Prize-winning asserts that most of the men who plotted Malcolm's assassination were never apprehended and that the full extent of the FBI's involvement in his death cannot be known.


title: COINTELPRO

text: Amidst the urban unrest of July–August 1967, the FBI began "COINTELPRO–BLACK HATE", which focused on King and the SCLC, as well as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), the Deacons for Defense and Justice, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Nation of Islam. BLACK HATE established the Ghetto Informant Program and instructed 23 FBI offices to "disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate type organizations".


title: COINTELPRO

text: A March 1968 memo stated the program's goal was to "prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups"; to "Prevent the RISE OF A 'MESSIAH' who could unify ... the militant black nationalist movement"; "to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence [against authorities]."; to "Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining RESPECTABILITY, by discrediting them to ... both the responsible community and to liberals who have vestiges of sympathy..."; and to "prevent the long-range GROWTH of militant black organizations, especially among youth". Dr. King was said to have potential to be the "messiah" figure, should he abandon nonviolence and integrationism, and Kwame Ture was noted to have "the necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way" as he was portrayed as someone who espoused a much more militant vision of "black power". While the FBI was particularly concerned with leaders and organizers, they did not limit their scope of target to the heads of organizations. Individuals such as writers were also listed among the targets of operations.


title: COINTELPRO

text: This program coincided with a broader federal effort to prepare military responses for urban riots and began increased collaboration between the FBI, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and the Department of Defense. The CIA launched its own domestic espionage project in 1967 called Operation CHAOS. A particular target was the Poor People's Campaign, a national effort organized by King and the SCLC to occupy Washington, DC. The FBI monitored and disrupted the campaign on a national level, while using targeted smear tactics locally to undermine support for the march. The Black Panther Party was another targeted organization, wherein the FBI collaborated to destroy the party from the inside out.


title: COINTELPRO

text: Overall, COINTELPRO encompassed disruption and sabotage of the Socialist Workers Party (1961), the Ku Klux Klan (1964), the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party (1967), and the entire New Left social/political movement, which included antiwar, community, and religious groups (1968). A later investigation by the Senate's Church Committee (see below) stated that "COINTELPRO began in 1956, in part because of frustration with Supreme Court rulings limiting the Government's power to proceed overtly against dissident groups." Official congressional committees and several court cases have concluded that COINTELPRO operations against communist and socialist groups exceeded statutory limits on FBI activity and violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association.


title: COINTELPRO

text: The program was secret until March 8, 1971, when the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI burgled an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, took several dossiers, and exposed the program by passing this material to news agencies. The boxing match known as the Fight of the Century between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in March 1971 provided cover for the activist group to successfully pull off the burglary. Muhammad Ali was a COINTELPRO target because he had joined the Nation of Islam and the anti-war movement.


title: COINTELPRO

text: Many news organizations initially refused to immediately publish the information, with the notable exception of "The Washington Post". After affirming the reliability of the documents, it published them on the front page (in defiance of the Attorney General's request), prompting other organizations to follow suit. Within the year, Director J. Edgar Hoover declared that the centralized COINTELPRO was over, and that all future counterintelligence operations would be handled case by case.


title: COINTELPRO

text: Additional documents were revealed in the course of separate lawsuits filed against the FBI by NBC correspondent Carl Stern, the Socialist Workers Party, and a number of other groups. In 1976 the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, commonly referred to as the "Church Committee" after its chairman, Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), launched a major investigation of the FBI and COINTELPRO. Many released documents have been partly or entirely redacted.


title: COINTELPRO

text: The Final Report of the Select Committee castigated the conduct of the intelligence community in its domestic operations (including COINTELPRO) in no uncertain terms:


title: COINTELPRO

text: The Church Committee documented a history of the FBI (initially called BOI until 1936) exercising political repression as far back as World War I, and through the 1920s, when agents were charged with rounding up "anarchists, communists, socialists, reformists and revolutionaries" for deportation. From 1936 through 1976, the domestic operations were increased against political and anti-war groups.


title: COINTELPRO

text: The intended effect of the FBI's COINTELPRO was to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize" groups that the FBI officials believed were "subversive" by instructing FBI field operatives to:


title: COINTELPRO

text: In an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr in February 1996, Noam Chomsky—a political activist and MIT professor of linguistics—spoke about the purpose and the targets of COINTELPRO, saying:


title: COINTELPRO

text: COINTELPRO was a program of subversion carried out not by a couple of petty crooks but by the national political police, the FBI, under four administrations... by the time it got through, I won't run through the whole story, it was aimed at the entire new left, at the women's movement, at the whole black movement, it was extremely broad. Its actions went as far as political assassination.


title: COINTELPRO

text: While the declared purposes of these programs were to protect the "national security" or prevent violence, Bureau witnesses admit that many of the targets were nonviolent and most had no connections with a foreign power. Indeed, nonviolent organizations and individuals were targeted because the Bureau believed they represented a "potential" for violence—and nonviolent citizens who were against the war in Vietnam were targeted because they gave "aid and comfort" to violent demonstrators by lending respectability to their cause.


title: COINTELPRO

text: The imprecision of the targeting is demonstrated by the inability of the Bureau to define the subjects of the programs. The Black Nationalist program, according to its supervisor, included "a great number of organizations that you might not today characterize as black nationalist but which were in fact primarily black". Thus, the nonviolent Southern Christian Leadership Conference was labeled as a Black Nationalist-"Hate Group".


title: COINTELPRO

text: Furthermore, the actual targets were chosen from a far broader group than the titles of the programs would imply. The CPUSA program targeted not only Communist Party members but also sponsors of the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee and civil rights leaders allegedly under Communist influence or deemed to be not sufficiently "anti-Communist". The Socialist Workers Party program included non-SWP sponsors of anti-war demonstrations which were cosponsored by the SWP or the Young Socialist Alliance, its youth group. The Black Nationalist program targeted a range of organizations from the Panthers to SNCC to the peaceful Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and included every Black Student Union and many other black student groups. New Left targets ranged from the SDS to the InterUniversity Committee for Debate on Foreign Policy, from Antioch College ("vanguard of the New Left") to the New Mexico Free University and other "alternate" schools, and from underground newspapers to students' protesting university censorship of a student publication by carrying signs with four-letter words on them.


title: COINTELPRO

text: Examples of surveillance, spanning all presidents from FDR to Nixon, both legal and illegal, contained in the Church Committee report:


title: COINTELPRO

text: The COINTELPRO operators targeted multiple groups at once and encouraged splintering of these groups from within. In letter-writing campaigns (wherein false letters were sent on behalf of members of parties), the FBI ensured that groups would not unite in their causes. For instance, they launched a campaign specifically to alienate the Black Panther Party from the Mau Maus, Young Lords, Young Patriots and SDS. These racially diverse groups had been building alliances, in part due to charismatic leaders such as Fred Hampton and his attempts to create a "Rainbow Coalition". The FBI was concerned with ensuring that groups could not gain traction through unity, specifically across racial lines. One of the main ways of targeting these groups was to arouse suspicion between the different parties and causes. In this way the bureau took on a divide and conquer offensive.


title: COINTELPRO

text: The COINTELPRO documents show numerous cases of the FBI's intentions to prevent and disrupt protests against the Vietnam War. Many techniques were used to accomplish this task. "These included promoting splits among antiwar forces, encouraging red-baiting of socialists, and pushing violent confrontations as an alternative to massive, peaceful demonstrations." One 1966 COINTELPRO operation tried to redirect the Socialist Workers Party from their pledge of support for the antiwar movement.


title: COINTELPRO

text: The FBI has said that it no longer undertakes COINTELPRO or COINTELPRO-like operations. However, critics have claimed that agency programs in the spirit of COINTELPRO targeted groups such as the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, the American Indian Movement, Earth First!, and the anti-globalization movement.


title: COINTELPRO

text: According to attorney Brian Glick in his book "War at Home", the FBI used five main methods during COINTELPRO:


title: COINTELPRO

text: The FBI specifically developed tactics intended to heighten tension and hostility between various factions in the black power movement, for example between the Black Panthers and the US Organization. For instance, the FBI sent a fake letter to the US Organization exposing a supposed Black Panther plot to murder the head of the US Organization, Ron Karenga. They then intensified this by spreading falsely attributed cartoons in the black communities pitting the Black Panther Party against the US Organization. This resulted in numerous deaths, among which were San Diego Black Panther Party members John Huggins, Bunchy Carter and Sylvester Bell. Another example of the FBI's anonymous letter writing campaign is how they turned the Blackstone Rangers head, Jeff Fort, against former ally Fred Hampton, by stating that Hampton had a hit on Fort. They also were instrumental in developing the rift between Black Panther Party leaders Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton, as executed through false letters inciting the two leaders of the Black Panther Party.


title: COINTELPRO

text: Dhoruba Bin Wahad, a former Black Panther, reflects on how these tactics made him feel, saying he had a combat mentality and felt like he was at war with the government. When asked about why he thinks the Black Panthers were targeted he said, "In the United States, the equivalent of the military was the local police. During the early sixties, at the height of the civil rights movement, and the human rights movement, the police in the United States became increasingly militaristic. They began to train out of military bases in the United States. The Law Enforcement Assistance Act supplied local police with military technology, everything from assault rifles to army personnel carriers. In his opinion, the Counterintelligence Program went hand-in-hand with the militarization of the police in the Black community, with the militarization of police in America."


title: COINTELPRO

text: The FBI also conspired with the police departments of many U.S. cities (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago) to encourage repeated raids on Black Panther homes—often with little or no evidence of violations of federal, state, or local laws—which resulted in the police killing many members of the Black Panther Party, most notably Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969. Whether or not the FBI sanctioned his killing remains unproven. Before the death of Hampton, long-term infiltrator, William O'Neal, shared floor plans of his apartment with the COINTELPRO team. He then gave Hampton a dose of secobarbital that rendered Hampton unconscious during the raid on his home.


title: COINTELPRO

text: In order to eliminate black militant leaders whom they considered dangerous, the FBI is believed to have worked with local police departments to target specific individuals, accuse them of crimes they did not commit, suppress exculpatory evidence and falsely incarcerate them. Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, a Black Panther Party leader, was incarcerated for 27 years before a California Superior Court vacated his murder conviction, ultimately freeing him. Appearing before the court, an FBI agent testified that he believed Pratt had been framed, because both the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department knew he had not been in the area at the time the murder occurred.


title: COINTELPRO

text: Some sources claim that the FBI conducted more than 200 "black bag jobs", which were warrantless surreptitious entries, against the targeted groups and their members.


title: COINTELPRO

text: In 1969 the FBI special agent in San Francisco wrote Hoover that his investigation of the Black Panther Party had concluded that in his city, at least, the Panthers were primarily engaged in feeding breakfast to children. Hoover fired back a memo implying the agent's career goals would be directly affected by his supplying evidence to support Hoover's view that the Black Panther Party was "a violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means".


title: COINTELPRO

text: Hoover supported using false claims to attack his political enemies. In one memo he wrote: "Purpose of counterintelligence action is to disrupt the Black Panther Party and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge."


title: COINTELPRO

text: In one particularly controversial 1965 incident, white civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo was murdered by Ku Klux Klansmen, who gave chase and fired shots into her car after noticing that her passenger was a young black man; one of the Klansmen was Gary Thomas Rowe, an acknowledged FBI informant. The FBI spread rumors that Liuzzo was a member of the Communist Party and had abandoned her children to have sexual relationships with African Americans involved in the civil rights movement. FBI records show that J. Edgar Hoover personally communicated these insinuations to President Johnson.


title: COINTELPRO

text: FBI informant Rowe has also been implicated in some of the most violent crimes of the 1960s civil rights era, including attacks on the Freedom Riders and the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.


title: COINTELPRO

text: The FBI also financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former Minutemen, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization that targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent acts.


title: COINTELPRO

text: Hoover ordered preemptive action "to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence."


title: COINTELPRO

text: Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and too much information has been illegally collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. The Government, operating primarily through secret and biased informants, but also using other intrusive techniques such as wiretaps, microphone "bugs", surreptitious mail opening, and break-ins, has swept in vast amounts of information about the personal lives, views, and associations of American citizens. Investigations of groups deemed potentially dangerous—and even of groups suspected of associating with potentially dangerous organizations—have continued for decades, despite the fact that those groups did not engage in unlawful activity.


title: COINTELPRO

text: Groups and individuals have been assaulted, repressed, harassed and disrupted because of their political views, social beliefs and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable. Unsavory, harmful and vicious tactics have been employed—including anonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings, ostracize persons from their professions, and provoke target groups into rivalries that might result in deaths. Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials. While the agencies often committed excesses in response to pressure from high officials in the Executive branch and Congress, they also occasionally initiated improper activities and then concealed them from officials whom they had a duty to inform.


title: COINTELPRO

text: Governmental officials—including those whose principal duty is to enforce the law—have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law.


title: COINTELPRO

text: The Constitutional system of checks and balances has not adequately controlled intelligence activities. Until recently the Executive branch has neither delineated the scope of permissible activities nor established procedures for supervising intelligence agencies. Congress has failed to exercise sufficient oversight, seldom questioning the use to which its appropriations were being put. Most domestic intelligence issues have not reached the courts, and in those cases when they have reached the courts, the judiciary has been reluctant to grapple with them.


title: COINTELPRO

text: While COINTELPRO was officially terminated in April 1971, domestic espionage continued. Between 1972 and 1974, it is documented that the Bureau planted over 500 bugs without a warrant and opened over 2,000 pieces of personal mail. More recent targets of covert action include the American Indian Movement (AIM), Earth First!, and Committees in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. Documents released under the FOIA show that the FBI tracked the late David Halberstam—a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author—for more than two decades. "Counterterrorism" guidelines implemented during the Reagan administration have been described as allowing a return to COINTELPRO tactics. Some radical groups accuse factional opponents of being FBI informants or assume the FBI is infiltrating the movement. COINTELPRO survivor Filiberto Ojeda Rios was killed by the FBI's hostage rescue team in 2005, his death described by a United Nations special committee as an assassination.


title: COINTELPRO

text: Environmentalist Eric McDavid convicted on arson charges was released after documents emerged demonstrating that the FBI informant in his Earth Liberation Front group provided crucial leadership, information, and material without which the crime could not have been committed, repeating the same pattern of behavior of COINTELPRO. It has been claimed these sorts of practices have become widespread in FBI "counter-terrorism" cases targeting Muslims in the 2009 Bronx terrorism plot and others.


title: COINTELPRO

text: Authors such as Ward Churchill, Rex Weyler, and Peter Matthiessen allege that the federal government intended to acquire uranium deposits on the Lakota tribe's reservation land, and that this motivated a larger government conspiracy against AIM activists on the Pine Ridge reservation. Others believe COINTELPRO continues and similar actions are being taken against activist groups. Caroline Woidat says that, with respect to Native Americans, COINTELPRO should be understood within a historical context in which "Native Americans have been viewed and have viewed the world themselves through the lens of conspiracy theory." Other authors argue that while some conspiracy theories related to COINTELPRO are unfounded, the issue of ongoing government surveillance and repression is real.


title: COINTELPRO

text: FBI Agent Richard G. Held is known to have increased FBI support for the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOON) squads, who were a private paramilitary group established in 1972 by the elected tribal chairman, Dick Wilson under authority of the Oglala Sioux. AIM accused GOONs of involvement in 300 assaults and 64 homicides of political opponents. Despite this, The Bureau rarely investigated them and instead used its resources overwhelmingly to prosecute AIM. In 2000, the FBI released a report regarding these alleged unsolved violent deaths on Pine Ridge reservation and accounted for most of the deaths, and disputed the claims of unsolved murders. The report stated that only four deaths were unsolved and that some deaths were not murders.


title: COINTELPRO

text: In April 2018, the "Atlanta Black Star" characterized the FBI as still engaging in COINTELPRO behavior by surveilling the Black Lives Matter movement. Internal documents dated as late as 2017 showed that the FBI had surveilled the movement. In 2014, the FBI tracked a Black Lives Matter activist using surveillance tactics which "The Intercept" found "reminiscent of a rich American history of targeting black Americans," including COINTELPRO. This practice, along with the imprisonment of black activists for their views, has been associated with the new FBI designation of "Black Identity Extremists".


title: COINTELPRO

text: Defending Rights & Dissent, a civil liberties group, cataloged known instances of First Amendment abuses and political surveillance by the FBI since 2010. The organization found that the FBI devoted disproportionate resources to spy on peaceful left-leaning civil society groups, including Occupy Wall Street, economic justice advocates, racial justice movements, environmentalists, Abolish ICE, and various anti-war movements.


title: COINTELPRO

text: In December 2012, the FBI released redacted documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF). Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the executive director of PCJF, said the documents showed that FBI counterterrorism agents had monitored the Occupy movement from its inception in August 2011 and that the FBI acted improperly by collecting "information on people's free-speech actions" and entering it into "unregulated databases, a vast storehouse of information widely disseminated to a range of law-enforcement and, apparently, private entities" (see Domestic Security Alliance Council). The FBI also communicated with the New York Stock Exchange, banks, private businesses and state and local police forces about the movement. In 2014, the PCJF obtained an additional 4,000 pages of unclassified documents through a Freedom of Information Act request, showing "details of the scrutiny of the Occupy protests in 2011 and 2012 by law enforcement officers, federal officials, security contractors and others."


title: COINTELPRO

text: In October 2020, Katie Reiter, chief of staff to Michigan state Senator Rosemary Bayer, had an FBI task force come to her house and aggressively question her about a draft bill she had recently discussed which would have limited the use of tear gas against protesters. Reiter had discussed the proposed ban on tear gas on a private 90-minute Zoom call with Bayer and a handful of other staffers. Reiter says the two officers refused to answer any questions about how they became aware of her private meeting. "The Intercept" reported about the incident: “Reiter said that the FBI’s visit left her confused and fearful. ‘It has impacted my sleep, it has caused me quite a bit of anxiety,’ she said. ‘And it has certainly impacted how we talk. I try not to let it, I’ll just be like, ‘No, we’re going to talk about this.’ But it's in my mind all the time.’” A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment on the record, as did a spokesperson for Zoom.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, (; 17 November 1887 – 24 March 1976), nicknamed "Monty", was a senior British Army officer who served in the First World War, the Irish War of Independence and the Second World War.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: Montgomery first saw action in the First World War as a junior officer of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. At Méteren, near the Belgian border at Bailleul, he was shot through the right lung by a sniper, during the First Battle of Ypres. On returning to the Western Front as a general staff officer, he took part in the Battle of Arras in AprilMay 1917. He also took part in the Battle of Passchendaele in late 1917 before finishing the war as chief of staff of the 47th (2nd London) Division.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: In the inter-war years he commanded the 17th (Service) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers and, later, the 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment before becoming commander of the 9th Infantry Brigade and then General officer commanding (GOC), 8th Infantry Division.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: During the Western Desert campaign of the Second World War, Montgomery commanded the British Eighth Army from August 1942, through the Second Battle of El Alamein and on to the final Allied victory in Tunisia in May 1943. He subsequently commanded the British Eighth Army during the Allied invasion of Sicily and the Allied invasion of Italy and was in command of all Allied ground forces during the Battle of Normandy (Operation Overlord), from D-Day on 6 June 1944 until 1 September 1944. He then continued in command of the 21st Army Group for the rest of the , including the failed attempt to cross the Rhine during Operation Market Garden.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: When German armoured forces broke through the US lines in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge, Montgomery received command of the northern shoulder of the Bulge. This included temporary command of the US First Army and the US Ninth Army, which held up the German advance to the north of the Bulge while the US Third Army under Lieutenant General George Patton relieved Bastogne from the south.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: Montgomery's 21st Army Group, including the US Ninth Army and the First Allied Airborne Army, crossed the Rhine in Operation Plunder in March 1945, two weeks after the US First Army had crossed the Rhine in the Battle of Remagen. By the end of the war, troops under Montgomery's command had taken part in the encirclement of the Ruhr Pocket, liberated the Netherlands, and captured much of north-west Germany. On 4 May 1945, Montgomery accepted the surrender of the German forces in north-western Europe at Lüneburg Heath, south of Hamburg, after the surrender of Berlin to the USSR on 2 May.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: After the war he became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in Germany and then Chief of the Imperial General Staff (1946–1948). From 1948 to 1951, he served as Chairman of the Commanders-in-Chief Committee of the Western Union. He then served as NATO's Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe until his retirement in 1958.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: Montgomery was born in Kennington, Surrey, in 1887, the fourth child of nine, to a Church of Ireland minister, Henry Montgomery, and his wife, Maud ("née" Farrar). The Montgomerys, an Ulster-Scots 'Ascendancy' gentry family, were the County Donegal branch of the Clan Montgomery. The Rev. Henry Montgomery, at that time Vicar of St Mark's Church, Kennington, was the second son of Sir Robert Montgomery, a native of Inishowen in County Donegal in the north-west of Ulster, the noted colonial administrator in British India; Sir Robert died a month after his grandson's birth. He was probably a descendant of Colonel Alexander Montgomery (1686–1729). Bernard's mother, Maud, was the daughter of The V. Rev. Frederic William Canon Farrar, the famous preacher, and was eighteen years younger than her husband.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: After the death of Sir Robert Montgomery, Henry inherited the Montgomery ancestral estate of New Park in Moville, a small town in Inishowen in the north of County Donegal in Ulster, the northern province in Ireland. There was still £13,000 to pay on a mortgage, a large debt in the 1880s (equivalent to £ in ) and Henry was at the time still only an Anglican vicar. Despite selling off all the farms that were at Ballynally, "there was barely enough to keep up New Park and pay for the blasted summer holiday" (i.e., at New Park).


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: It was a financial relief of some magnitude when, in 1889, Henry was made Bishop of Tasmania, then still a British colony and Bernard spent his formative years there. Bishop Montgomery considered it his duty to spend as much time as possible in the rural areas of Tasmania and was away for up to six months at a time. While he was away, his wife, still in her mid-twenties, gave her children "constant" beatings, then ignored them most of the time as she performed the public duties of the bishop's wife. Of Bernard's siblings, Sibyl died prematurely in Tasmania, and Harold, Donald and Una all emigrated. Maud Montgomery took little active interest in the education of her young children other than to have them taught by tutors brought from Britain, although he briefly attended the then coeducational St Michael's Collegiate School. The loveless environment made Bernard something of a bully, as he himself recalled, "I was a dreadful little boy. I don't suppose anybody would put up with my sort of behaviour these days." Later in life Montgomery refused to allow his son David to have anything to do with his grandmother, and refused to attend her funeral in 1949.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: The family returned to England once for a Lambeth Conference in 1897, and Bernard and his brother Harold were educated at The King's School, Canterbury. In 1901, Bishop Montgomery became secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the family returned to London. Montgomery attended St Paul's School and then the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from which he was almost expelled for rowdiness and violence. On graduation in September 1908 he was commissioned into the 1st Battalion the Royal Warwickshire Regiment as a second lieutenant, and first saw overseas service later that year in India. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1910, and in 1912 became adjutant of the 1st Battalion of his regiment at Shorncliffe Army Camp.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: The Great War began in August 1914 and Montgomery moved to France with his battalion that month, which was at the time part of the 10th Brigade of the 4th Division. He saw action at the Battle of Le Cateau that month and during the retreat from Mons. At Méteren, near the Belgian border at Bailleul on 13 October 1914, during an Allied counter-offensive, he was shot through the right lung by a sniper. Montgomery was hit once more, in the knee. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for gallant leadership: the citation for this award, published in the "London Gazette" in December 1914 reads: "Conspicuous gallant leading on 13th October, when he turned the enemy out of their trenches with the bayonet. He was severely wounded."


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: After recovering in early 1915, he was appointed brigade major, first of the 112th Brigade, and then with 104th Brigade training in Lancashire. He returned to the Western Front in early 1916 as a general staff officer in the 33rd Division and took part in the Battle of Arras in AprilMay 1917. He became a general staff officer with IX Corps, part of General Sir Herbert Plumer's Second Army, in July 1917.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: Montgomery served at the Battle of Passchendaele in late 1917 before finishing the war as GSO1 (effectively chief of staff) of the 47th (2nd London) Division, with the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel. A photograph from October 1918, reproduced in many biographies, shows the then unknown Lieutenant-Colonel Montgomery standing in front of Winston Churchill (then the Minister of Munitions) at the parade following the liberation of Lille.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: After the First World War Montgomery commanded the 17th (Service) Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, a battalion in the British Army of the Rhine, before reverting to his substantive rank of captain (brevet major) in November 1919. He had not at first been selected for the Staff College in Camberley, Surrey (his only hope of ever achieving high command). But at a tennis party in Cologne, he was able to persuade the Commander-in-chief (C-in-C) of the British Army of Occupation, Field Marshal Sir William Robertson, to add his name to the list.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: After graduating from the Staff College, he was appointed brigade major in the 17th Infantry Brigade in January 1921. The brigade was stationed in County Cork, Ireland, carrying out counter-insurgency operations during the final stages of the Irish War of Independence.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: Montgomery came to the conclusion that the conflict could not be won without harsh measures, and that self-government for Ireland was the only feasible solution; in 1923, after the establishment of the Irish Free State and during the Irish Civil War, Montgomery wrote to Colonel Arthur Ernest Percival of the Essex Regiment:


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: In one noteworthy incident on 2 May 1922, Montgomery led a force of 60 soldiers and 4 armoured cars to the town of Macroom to search for four British officers who were missing in the area. While he had hoped the show of force would assist in finding the men, he was under strict orders not to attack the IRA. On arriving in the town square in front of Macroom Castle he summoned the IRA commander, Charlie Browne, to parley. At the castle gates Montgomery spoke to Browne explaining what would happen should the officers not be released. Once finished Browne responded with his own ultimatum to Montgomery to "leave town within 10 minutes". Browne then turned heels and returned to the Castle. At this point another IRA officer, Pat O'Sullivan, whistled to Montgomery drawing his attention to scores of IRA volunteers who had quietly taken up firing positions all around the square - surrounding Montgomery's forces. Realising his precarious position, Montgomery led his troops out of the town, a decision which raised hostile questions in the House of Commons but was later approved by Montgomery's own superiors. Unknown to Montgomery at this time, the four missing officers had already been executed.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: In May 1923, Montgomery was posted to the 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division, a Territorial Army (TA) formation. He returned to the 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1925 as a company commander and was promoted to major in July 1925. From January 1926 to January 1929 he served as Deputy Assistant Adjutant General at the Staff College, Camberley, in the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: In 1925, in his first known courtship of a woman, Montgomery, then in his late thirties, proposed to a 17-year-old girl, Betty Anderson. His approach included drawing diagrams in the sand of how he would deploy his tanks and infantry in a future war, a contingency which seemed very remote at that time. She respected his ambition and single-mindedness, but declined his proposal of marriage.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: In 1927, he met and married Elizabeth (Betty) Carver, "née" Hobart. She was the sister of the future Second World War commander Major-General Sir Percy Hobart. Betty Carver had two sons in their early teens, John and Dick, from her first marriage to Oswald Carver. Dick Carver later wrote that it had been "a very brave thing" for Montgomery to take on a widow with two children. Montgomery's son, David, was born in August 1928.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: While on holiday in Burnham-on-Sea in 1937, Betty suffered an insect bite which became infected, and she died in her husband's arms from septicaemia following amputation of her leg. The loss devastated Montgomery, who was then serving as a brigadier, but he insisted on throwing himself back into his work immediately after the funeral. Montgomery's marriage had been extremely happy. Much of his correspondence with his wife was destroyed when his quarters at Portsmouth were bombed during the Second World War. After Montgomery's death, John Carver wrote that his mother had arguably done the country a favour by keeping his personal oddities—his extreme single-mindedness, and his intolerance of and suspicion of the motives of others—within reasonable bounds long enough for him to have a chance of attaining high command.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: Both of Montgomery's stepsons became army officers in the 1930s (both were serving in India at the time of their mother's death), and both served in the Second World War, each eventually attaining the rank of colonel. While serving as a GSO2 with Eighth Army, Dick Carver was sent forward during the pursuit after El Alamein to help identify a new site for Eighth Army HQ. He was taken prisoner at Mersa Matruh on 7 November 1942. Montgomery wrote to his contacts in England asking that inquiries be made via the Red Cross as to where his stepson was being held, and that parcels be sent to him. Like many British POWs, the most famous being General Richard O'Connor, Dick Carver escaped in September 1943 during the brief hiatus between Italy's departure from the war and the German seizure of the country. He eventually reached British lines on 5 December 1943, to the delight of his stepfather, who sent him home to Britain to recuperate.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: In January 1929 Montgomery was promoted to brevet lieutenant-colonel. That month he returned to the 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment again, as Commander of Headquarters Company; he went to the War Office to help write the Infantry Training Manual in mid-1929. In 1931 Montgomery was promoted to substantive lieutenant-colonel and became the Commanding officer (CO) of the 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment and saw service in Palestine and British India. He was promoted to colonel in June 1934 (seniority from January 1932). He attended and was then recommended to become an instructor at the Indian Army Staff College (now the Pakistan Command and Staff College) in Quetta, British India.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: On completion of his tour of duty in India, Montgomery returned to Britain in June 1937 where he took command of the 9th Infantry Brigade with the temporary rank of brigadier. His wife died that year.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: In 1938, he organised an amphibious combined operations landing exercise that impressed the new C-in-C of Southern Command, General Sir Archibald Percival Wavell. He was promoted to major-general on 14 October 1938 and took command of the 8th Infantry Division in the British mandate of Palestine. In Palestine, Montgomery was involved in suppressing an Arab revolt which had broken out over opposition to Jewish emigration. He returned in July 1939 to Britain, suffering a serious illness on the way, to command the 3rd (Iron) Infantry Division. Reporting the suppression of the revolt in April 1939, Montgomery wrote, "I shall be sorry to leave Palestine in many ways, as I have enjoyed the war out here".


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 and the 3rd Division, together with its new General Officer Commanding (GOC), was deployed to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), commanded by General Lord Gort. Shortly after the division's arrival overseas, Montgomery faced serious trouble from his military superiors and the clergy for his frank attitude regarding the sexual health of his soldiers, but was defended from dismissal by his superior Alan Brooke, commander of II Corps, of which Montgomery's division formed a part. Montgomery had issued a circular on the prevention of venereal disease, worded in such "obscene language" that both the Church of England and Roman Catholic senior chaplains objected; Brooke told Monty that he did not want any further errors of this kind, though deciding not to get him to formally withdraw it as it would remove any "vestige of respect" left for him.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: Although Montgomery's new command was a Regular Army formation, comprising the 7th (Guards), and the 8th and 9th Infantry Brigades along with supporting units, he was not impressed with its readiness for battle. As a result, while most of the rest of the BEF set about preparing defences for an expected German attack sometime in the future, Montgomery began training his 3rd Division in offensive tactics, organizing several exercises, each of which lasted for several days at a time. Mostly they revolved around the division advancing towards an objective, often a river line, only to come under attack and forced to withdraw to another position, usually behind another river. These exercises usually occurred at night with only very minimal lighting being allowed. By the spring of 1940 Montgomery's division had gained a reputation of being a very agile and flexible formation. By then the Allies had agreed to Plan D, where they would advance deep into Belgium and take up positions on the River Dyle by the time the German forces attacked. Brooke, Montgomery's corps commander, was pessimistic about the plan but Montgomery, in contrast, was not concerned, believing that he and his division would perform well regardless of the circumstances, particularly in a war of movement.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: Montgomery's training paid off when the Germans began their invasion of the Low Countries on 10 May 1940 and the 3rd Division advanced to its planned position, near the Belgian city of Louvain. Soon after arrival, the division was fired on by members of the Belgian 10th Infantry Division who mistook them for German paratroopers; Montgomery resolved the incident by approaching them and offering to place himself under Belgian command, although Montgomery himself took control when the Germans arrived. During this time he began to develop a particular habit, which he would keep throughout the war, of going to bed at 21:30 every night without fail and giving only a single order−that he was not to be disturbed, which was only very rarely disobeyed.


title: Bernard Montgomery

text: The 3rd Division saw little action compared to many other units and formations in the BEF but, owing to the strict training methods of Montgomery, who ensured that his division was thoroughly well-trained, disciplined and rehearsed, the division always managed to be in the right place at the right time, especially so during the retreat into France. By 27 May, when the Belgian Army on the left flank of the BEF began to disintegrate, the 3rd Division achieved something very difficult, the movement at night from the right to the left of another division and only 2,000 yards behind it. This was performed with great professionalism and occurred without any incidents and thereby filled a very vulnerable gap in the BEF's defensive line. On 29/30 May, as the 3rd Division moved into the Dunkirk bridgehead, Montgomery temporarily took over from Brooke, who received orders to return to the United Kingdom, as GOC of II Corps for the final stages of the Dunkirk evacuation.