The NCAC Free Speech Matters Benefit was a great success. Over 200 people came to the City Winery in downtown Manhattan to celebrate free speech and honor YA writer Lauren Myracle, school librarian Dee Ann Venuto, and YFEP 2009 Film Contest Winner Jordan Allen. All three work hard to promote free expression. Lauren Myracle is a NYTimes bestselling author of [...]
A photograph of a male nude by Savannah College of Art & Design student Nicole Craine was among the several artworks taken down before an Open Studio Exhibition at the school in October. Reportedly, the students were given no explanation as to why their work was taken down. College administrators later admitted that the content would be “unacceptable” for a [...]
Last week, the Plano Independent School District in Texas decided to pull a humanities textbook that is used by freshmen and sophomores in the district's gifted and talented program. The book in question, Culture and Values: A Survey of the Humanities: Alternative Volume, is a survey of various pieces of artwork throughout history. Apparently, a couple was concerned that their [...]
This year we received more than 70 film contest submissions from youth all over the country in response to this year's theme: "I'm All For Free Speech, BUT..." After viewing all the entries, we chose the top ten films -- some personal, some provocative, some profound, some just plain fun! We congratulate the semifinalists and all our applicants for their [...]
The First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech.” It doesn’t have an age restriction. Yet for the last 50 years, the Supreme Court has essentially written young people out of the First Amendment, holding that their rights to speech and access to information are limited and conditional. As a result, young people experience infringements on their rights in countless situations. Moreover, the exceptions that have been carved out for youth often affect the speech rights of adults as well.
Blanca Barrera & April Dash, "Uncensored and Censored Religion" Lizzie Boone, Kya Gibson, & Christian Serra, "Censor Yourself" Aaron Dunbar, "Hare Tactics: When Free Speech Goes Too Far" Evangeline Fachon & Lindsay Tomasetti, "Static" Aidee Guzman, "Freedom of Speech?" Moriah Love, Lauren Wirth, Jacob Waddle & Lauren Brunn, "The Censors-Bowl" Sarah Phan & Lyndi Low, "Malediction" Tate Phillip, "Society's Lack [...]
NCAC devotes the latest issue of Censorship News to video games and the latest in a series of efforts to “protect” minors by restricting their freedom of speech. We discuss the video game case heard in the Supreme Court on November 2, Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association. The Court will decide whether the state can impose criminal penalties for selling [...]
Issue 113, Winter 2010-11 Using the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the NEA “decency clause,” NCAC initiated a conversation about the arts and their place in society today. Two panels, organized in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, brought together survivors of the culture wars and culture workers who are coming to creative maturity [...]
NCAC devotes the latest issue of Censorship News to video games and the latest in a series of efforts to “protect” minors by restricting their freedom of speech.
Alexander Nehamas is professor of philosophy at Princeton University. This is an excerpt from a longer article that appeared as an online opinion piece in The NY Times's philosophy series, The Stone, on August 29th, 2010
Issue 113, Winter 2010-11 An invitation to young adult novelist Ellen Hopkins to speak at Teen Lit Fest 2011 in Humble, Texas was revoked because some parents complained about the content of Hopkins' novels. Other scheduled authors dropped out in protest and the Festival was canceled. In response to one elementary school parent complaining about the book's content, the [...]
In Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the Supreme Court will decide whether the state can impose criminal penalties for selling or renting violent video games to minors. It may seem inconsequential to nongamers, but it poses a critically important issue even for people who will never play a video game: whether representations of violence will continue to be protected by the First Amendment.
Many of you are familiar with our concerns about ratings. They’re highly subjective, they reflect value judgments about content, and they reduce complex material to a few letters and numbers.
Every lower federal court to consider state or local laws restricting minors’ access to violent content has found them unconstitutional. Here’s a brief rundown:
We write to express concern about the cancellation of the Flagler Palm Coast High School production of a To Kill a Mockingbird and to urge you to review that decision and allow students to go ahead with the production.
A Florida high school production of a play based on Harper Lee’s 1960 Pulitzer prize-winning novel about racial conflict, To Kill a Mockingbird, has been cancelled. At the center of the controversy that prompted the cancellation was the historically necessary use of the word “nigger”. The reason “nigger” is a word that carries such painful weight, of course, is due [...]
Like all the other forms of expression that were feared initially – including the printing press – video games will certainly become part of mainstream culture, and the anxiety over their effects on young people will appear foolish in retrospect.
On November 4, 2010, President Obama signed an executive order for controlled unclassified information that establishes a logical and productive process for getting control of the chaos of information categories.
Students and volunteer artists got together during the Starting Artists Afterschool Program to create this experimental music video public service announcement. First, we created a grid of nails using fabric and particleboard. We made a grid in order to spell out recognizable text messages using rubber bands that make up each letter. We brainstormed popular text message abbreviations and we [...]
The Parents Television Council has done a lot of things bordering on the inane, but this time they’ve outdone themselves by saying that the cover of GQ magazine “borders on pedophilia.” As Frank Bruni pointed out in the New York Times, the women pictured on the cover are 24. Somebody at PTC should check the dictionary before using big words. [...]
NCAC Files Brief in Supreme Court Video Game Case; "Violent Video Games Are Protected Speech" Says National Free Speech Organization FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 1, 2010 MEDIA CONTACTS Teresa Koberstein, National Coalition Against Censorship, (212) 807-6222 ext. 19 or [email protected] NEW YORK -Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will decide whether the state of California can impose criminal penalties for selling [...]
