Rights For Rites
75 PERCENT OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION lives in countries that have high or very high legal restrictions on religious freedom. BYU’s International Center for Law and Religion Studies (ICLRS) has helped 46 countries with reform.
14 INTERNATIONAL HONOREES, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, have received the First Freedom Award for advancing human and civil rights worldwide. BYU’s ICLRS director W. Cole Durham Jr. won the award in 2009.
9 SUPREME COURT JUSTICES upheld a Lutheran school’s right to control employment in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. BYU’s ICLRS was asked to file an amicus brief for the case—the first amicus brief filed by the university.
Lonnnng-Time Professor
52 YEARS AGO, at age 27, Richard O. Cowan began teaching at BYU. Now 79, he has taught at BYU the longest of any religion professor.
40,000 STUDENTS have studied under Cowan, including a handful of his six children and 22 grandchildren. Every semester the blind professor strives to memorize his students’ names.
18 TO-SCALE TEMPLE REPLICAS that students helped Cowan build sit in his office. He has visited 60 temples and is currently completing a history of Provo’s two temples; it will be his 10th book.
