An Open Letter to the Dialogue Board

by Nathan Oman
Originally published Winter 2005 (38:4)
I think that Dialogue has some serious problems. My thoughts on
this are based on many hours of conversation about Mormon intellectual
life with LDS grad students and other young people who care about
such things. I hope that you are under no illusions: There are any number
of talented young intellectuals who will be the leading Mormon
scholars of this generation who are unwilling to publish in Dialogue because
of the perception that it is the in-house journal of the disaffected
Mormon community, and they have no desire to be associated with it. I
think that this is unfortunate. However, it is a reality, and I understand
the concerns of young Mormon scholars who shy away from Dialogue.
Frankly, I share some of them. The problem is that for younger scholars
in particular, the professional rewards of publishing in Mormon studies
are virtually nil, and the belief that publishing in Dialogue will create a
negative perception among the broader Mormon community leads
them to think that it simply is not worth it. (Dialogue publications—as is
true for all publications in explicitly Mormon fora—have very little professional
value to tenure committees.) I realize that this perception of Dialogue
is not entirely fair. You publish a lot of stuff that has little or no
discernible ideological content, and pieces that are thought unduly critical
of the Church or of Mormon belief no doubt get a disproportionate
share of attention. Nevertheless, Dialogue has an image problem that is a
substantial barrier to participation by many younger Mormon intellectuals.
Read the full letter