Alexander joined the BYU history faculty in 1964, teaching Utah history and American environmental history. He was the Lemuel Hardison Redd, Jr. Professor of Western American History from 1992 until his retirement in 2004. He was the director of the Charles Redd Center for Wester Studies at BYU from 1980 until 1992. He taught at USU, UC Berkeley, the University of Nebraska at Kearney, Southern Illinois University, and the University of Utah. He has received BYU's highest faculty award, the Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award. In 2001, he received the Emeriti Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award from WSU. Alexander has served in various historical and academic organizations. He was president of the Mormon History Association from 1974 until 1975. He has also been president of the Pacific Branch of the American Historical Association; president and fellow of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters; president of the Association of Utah Historians; chair of the Utah Board of State History; chair of the Utah Humanities Council; national president of Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society; fellow of the Utah State Historical Society; and chair of BYU's Faculty Advisory Council. He was president of the Sons of Utah Pioneers in 2015 and as of 2019 was on the editorial staff for the organization's publication, Pioneer Magazine.
Historical perspective
Alexander wrote an essay about the epistemological stance of historians practicing "New Mormon History." Alexander identified two parties that seek to define New Mormon History, traditionalists and secularists. He listed Louis C. Midgley and David E. Bohn among the traditionalists who describe New Mormon Historians as positivists. Alexander stated that this is a miscategorization, because New Mormon Historians usually accepted spiritual experiences like Joseph Smith's visions, rather than attributing them to mental illness or fabrication as a positivist might. Some critics of New Mormon History, like Michael T. Walton and E. K. Hunt, made arguments in favor of positivism in response to traditionalist arguments. They argued that God and religious experiences could not be considered objective, and that therefore academic history should not consider them. Alexander placed New Mormon History in the "historicist tradition." Rather than using historical models to predict the future, as a scientist might, historicists use models of history to improve their understanding of history. In a later essay, Alexander described the views of New Mormon Historians as "that of a relativist and a revisionist." Alexander wrote Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, a biography of Wilford Woodruff, the LDS Church's fourth president, which provides insight into the development of Mormonism and the American West. Alexander asserts that Woodruff was "...arguably the third most important figure in all of LDS Church history after Joseph Smith... and Brigham Young." While other LDS and western historians may disagree with the ranking, his work provides a careful study of a very important leader in the emerging Mormon faith. Writing for Sunstone magazine, Kenneth L. Cannon II called the book "one of the two or three best and most important biographies of nineteenth-century Church leaders."
Personal life
Alexander married Marilyn Johns in 1959 and they are the parents of five children. He has served in various positions in the LDS Church, including as a bishop and stake high councilor. From 2004 to 2005, he and his wife served a Church Educational System for the church in Berlin, Germany.
Alexander has authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited 25 books and over 150 scholarly articles. He has won numerous awards for his work, including Mormonism in Transition and Things in Heaven and Earth. The Utah state government commissioned Alexander to write Utah: The Right Place as the state's official centennial history.
