Teaching Freedom

Profile A Third Alternative

Teaching American Founding Principles in War-Torn Kosovo By Patrick Butler

How do communists

ruling a nation prevent an American professor from teaching a course called “Foundations of American Political Thought” at a Muslim university, using the Bible as a source?

They couldn’t. Or perhaps they just didn’t.

Either way, professor Bill Burtness of the University of Pristina in Kosovo taught hundreds of Muslim students the U.S. Founding Fathers’ ideas of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness over a period of 10 years.

“These were principles our Founding Fathers believed in,” Burtness told Insight on Jan. 10.

“Their concepts came from the Reformation, and the Fathers believed the principle of self-government under God was the key to freedom itself, both nationally and individually.

“The state was not sovereign in their view, and the individual was not sovereign because it led to anarchy.”

There was a “Third Alternative,” the title of his lecture notes, self-published by Burtness, who had been studying American political thought for years.

“The third alternative is an individual governing themselves and being responsible to a sovereign God,” he said.

“The Fathers believed that if people would do that, the nation would avoid tyranny—which many of them had come out of—and anarchy, which was every man selfishly for himself.

“Friends at home were very interested in this and asked if I’d written it down. I finally self-published my notes and began handing it out. An American doctor volunteering in Kosovo read the notes, and passed it along to a regent of the university.

“When we were in Kosovo volunteering to build freshwater wells, this doctor set up a lunch meeting with the regent to discuss my notes. At that meeting he told the regent, ‘Bill wants to teach a course at the university,’ and I looked at him and said, ‘I do?’

“He said, ‘Yes, you do.’ And that’s how that happened.”

Bill Burtness and his wife, Susan, were hired by the university, but the new, war-torn nation was strapped for cash and couldn’t deliver on the promise of payment, living accommodations, or an allowance for traveling back and forth from America to Kosovo.

“We didn’t start out as volunteers,” he said. “That only happened because no one paid us. We had a contract. We were supposed to be paid.”

So why did they volunteer?

“Here was a chance to set a nation straight right from the beginning,” he said. “The students were crazy to hear how Americans thought, believed, and how we’d sustained liberty for so long. They had no idea how it worked.”

“We looked into their faces, hungry to learn,” Susan Burtness said. “They were so excited. We simply couldn’t say no.”

The Burtnesses didn’t have much money themselves. Travel was expensive. One time they arrived in Austria without any money at all.

“Waiting for our connecting flight to Pristina, we asked ourselves, ‘What are we going to do?’ Right then, we were told our flight was overbooked, but they would pay us 700 euros to take another.

“We lived on that money for almost two months in Kosovo,” she said.

The class wasn’t in huge demand—at first.

“We had 12 students the first class, then 25 the next semester; then 60 the next, then 110. Eventually, there was a class of 300. My wife had to stand at the back of the class and keep the doors closed while people banged on them, demanding to be let in.”

Even as the results were exciting, volunteering was hard sometimes.

“Living conditions were difficult because the communist mindset was in charge,” Bill Burtness said. “If someone in our sector failed to pay their electricity bill, they would turn off the power to the entire sector until that person paid, so it was freezing in our apartment.”

Even so, they were continuously amazed at the reception their class got.

“It’s astonishing what you can experience if you are willing to sacrifice some of your personal peace and comfort,” he said.

Professor Bill Burtness (L) answers questions from students attending a course he teaches, “Principles of American Political Thought,” at the University of Pristina in Kosovo, in this file photo.