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News Item: Ralph Brown--Indonesia RM and BYU Professor
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| Ralph Brown--Indonesia RM and BYU Professor | 30 Nov 2005 |
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Sociology professor shares love of learning By Brooke Eddington Daily Universe Staff Reporter - 30 Nov 2005 Photo Courtesy of Ralph Brown Ralph Brown stands with his family this past summer in Cambodia in the Angkor Wat complex, the largest religious structure in the world. For the second year, Brown took a group of BYU students to southeast Asia for three months.The gray area. The unsure; the middle ground; a place of shaky footing or insecurity. But when Ralph Brown, BYU sociology professor, talks about the gray area, he’s citing a location of beauty. When people seek learning, Brown said, there is always the possibility of the new knowledge disagreeing with the old knowledge. “The only reconciliation [to that] is, there must be areas of gray,” he said. “God doesn’t paint with a monochromatic brush. We judge the entire complexity of the world based on two colors of crayons, [but] God uses all the colors in the spectrum — including gray.” From that gray area, it seems, came Ralph Brown. Born to a blue-collar family in Logan, Brown grew up independent. His parents both worked, and by the time he was ready to serve a mission, he had a blue-collar job of his own lined up for when he came home. “I never planned on going to college,” he said. “It was the furthest thing from my mind.” His mission to Indonesia changed all that. “I went on a mission to the other side of the world and discovered that a lot of what I had assumed to be true, quite simply, was not,” Brown said. “There’s a lot of beauty in [the gray area] that we systematically bypass when we’re so worried about pigeonholing things into black and white.” After being home a few months, he realized that college was the only option for him. From Brown’s mission and subsequent enrollment in college came a young man enthralled with thinking. His desire for a college education was such that, to foot the bill, he worked a swing shift in a cheese factory for five years while attending classes. He got an undergraduate degree in sociology and went on to complete both master’s and doctorate degrees. “One of Ralph’s biggest pet peeves is ignorance,” said Jake Cluff, a student who has assisted Brown in both teaching and research. “I know that he struggles with students and other individuals that claim they have [all] truth and are already educated.” In Brown’s mission, proselyting was illegal, so missionaries had to get into the culture. Brown read an English translation of the Quran to get more familiar with the people. “I thought, ‘I’m asking them to read my book, I ought to read theirs,’” Brown said. “They felt like you cared enough about them that you didn’t just want to cram your message down their throat.” So went the rest of his life. Brown since has spent a significant amount of time overseas, including time in Kenya and Southeast Asia, constantly learning and adapting his mindsets as he discovers truth in each culture he encounters. As a result of these experiences, Brown said his attitude about America has become a little more bitter at times. “Ralph is critical of the ways in which economic concerns structure our values and attitudes,” said Chad Compton, associate professor of communications and international cultural studies at BYU-Hawaii. “Accordingly, he built his home in Springville by buying many of his materials from Deseret Industries — it is a beautiful home and from foundation to roof reflects his academic critiques and sense of ethics and morality in society.” His children come home from church and other activities and say, “We’re weird, aren’t we?” Brown replies. He asks them if by being weird, they mean that they care about people a little more, they talk to people a little more, or if by doing so they see the world a little differently from others in their suburbian neighborhood. “If this is what weird means, are you comfortable with being weird?” he asks his children. The answer they give is yes. Brown’s concept of “weird” affects many people he comes in contact with. “He is really excited about living and teaching and thinking about the world,” said Whitney Todd, a 21-year-old former student and sociology minor from Fairfax, Virginia. “He’s really passionate about presenting everything in his life. He’s really personable.” Brown has sometimes 200 students in a semester and makes it a goal to know each person’s name. He remembers them years later, too, and talks to all of them as colleagues. “You leave the tight confines of your tight little hovel; you have philosophical discussions,” Brown said. “I want to retire in a place where I’ll walk out of my door, and I’m immediately absorbed in a free-flowing consciousness where you have to talk to each other, rather than voting on an opinion poll.” http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/57654 |
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