Leo Francis Koch (February 8, 1916 – November 14, 1982) was an American academic. An Assistant Professor of biology at the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

, he was fired for promoting premarital sex.

Early life

Leo Francis Koch was born on February 8, 1916, in

Dickinson, North Dakota Dickinson is a city in and the county seat of Stark County, North Dakota, United States. The population was 25,679 at the 2020 census. Dickinson is home to the Ukrainian Cultural Institute, which has a museum and holds events year round for the ...

. He received a master's degree and a PhD in Biology from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

Career

Koch taught biology at the California State University, Fresno and California State University, Bakersfield. Later, he was an Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Illinois. In 1960, he wrote a letter to the '' Daily Illini'' defending premarital sex provoked public outrage in response to an article in the ''Daily Illini'' criticizing campus heavy petting parties. His response said in part:

...the events described are... symptoms of a serious social malaise... caused by the hypocritical and downright inhumane moral standards engendered by a Christian code... already decrepit in the age of Queen Victoria... With modern contraceptives and medical advice readily available... there is no valid reason why sexual intercourse should not be condoned among those sufficiently mature to engage in it without social consequences and without violating their own codes of morality and ethics. ..A mutually satisfactory sexual experience would eliminate the need for many hours of frustrating petting and lead to happier and longer lasting marriages among our young men and women.

As a result, David Dodds Henry, the President of the University of Illinois, fired him. Henry called the letter "offensive and repugnant." The UI Board of Trustees supported Henry, as did

Lyle H. Lanier Lyle H. Lanier (January 11, 1903 – December 30, 1988) was an American experimental psychology, experimental psychologist and writer. As a faculty member at Vanderbilt University from 1929 to 1938, Lanier published research comparing the mental a ...

, who served as the Dean of its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, while the University of Illinois Senate voted to reprimand Koch but not to censure him. The firing and Koch's subsequent battle to be reinstated became a sensation in the press. Illinois was censured by the

American Association of University Professors The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is an organization of professors and other academics in the United States. AAUP membership includes over 500 local campus chapters and 39 state organizations. The AAUP's stated mission is ...

for the ouster. Koch appealed to the

Illinois Supreme Court The Supreme Court of Illinois is the state supreme court, the highest court of the State of Illinois. The court's authority is granted in Article VI of the current Illinois Constitution, which provides for seven justices elected from the five ap ...

and the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

, which both refused to grant him a hearing. Following his dismissal from Illinois, Koch met free love advocate

Jefferson Poland John Jefferson Poland (July 12, 1942 – November 17, 2017) better known as John Fuck Poland was an activist, co-founder of the Sexual Freedom League, and convicted child molester. Early life Poland was born in Indiana in 1942. He became a stude ...

, and together they founded the Sexual Freedom League in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

.Allyn (2000), 43-44. According to reference below, he landed a position at Blake College, a small liberal arts school on the outskirts of Mexico City, where he edited Mushroom Digest, a bulletin on growing mushrooms. When he left the U of Illinois, he left behind all his plant research, including an incredible collection of more than 8,000 plant samples. With help from other experts around the country, U of I have identified much of the collection but a third of the liverworts and hornworts have not yet been identified.

Personal life

Koch was married. He had two sons and a daughter.

References

* https://las.illinois.edu/news/magazine - Fall 2022 issue

Early life

Career

Personal life

References

Further reading